Ohio State Communication, Opinion, and Political Studies Group

I'm glad to announce that this paper, published in collaboration with former COPS students Hyunjin Song (now at University of Vienna) and Myiah Hutchens (now at University of Florida) is now out in the journal in print: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19312458.2019.1612865

This paper demonstrates that people are not as accurate in perceiving the political viewpoints of their political discussants as prior research has suggested. The political context appears to play some role; evenly divided contexts make guessing harder and so decrease accuracy. The paper also makes the case for paying attention not just to the accuracy vs. inaccuracy dichotomy, but to the threshold for trying to guess or accepting uncertainty -- that one just doesn’t know. And communication plays a role in both of these processes.