Summary:‍ ‍This book advances a new theory of political participation—prosocial politics—to explain why many people engage in politics even when they lack resources or face no direct personal consequences. Rather than focusing only on self-interest or social identity, I argue that participation often stems from prosocial political preferences: the degree to which individuals see helping others as a core political value. These preferences become especially powerful when people have clear cues about which groups are in need and which groups hold power. In the United States, I argue that these cues arise from shared understandings of social hierarchy and sociopolitical development. I empirically test components of the prosocial politics theory across four large-scale original national studies conducted between 2021-2024. In these studies, I introduce and validate the prosocial political preferences scale and demonstrate its value as a strong and consistent predictor of political engagement. Even after accounting for the influence of income, education, partisanship strength, and political interest, individuals high in prosocial political preferences are substantially more likely to participate; in one study, they were 28.1 percentage points more likely to intend to vote. This effect is not limited to electoral participation, with prosocial political preferences also meaningfully predicting intent to donate, volunteer, and attend a protest.

Co-Authored with Amir Fleischmann

Summary: An increasing body of academic research identifies the United States as an oligarchy. The rise of oligarchy in the United States is facilitated by “wealth defense”: a set of strategies used by oligarchs to maintain control over their fortunes and incomes (Winters, 2011). Despite the centrality of wealth defense policies to sustaining oligarchy in the United States, public opinion research has yet to explore how Americans support or oppose these practices. Instead, previous research has either focused on downward redistributive attitudes (Bartels, 2005; McCall, 2013; Cavaillé, 2023), social comparison vantage points (Condon, Wichowsky), affective sentiments (Piston, 2018), media framing (Culpepper and Lee, 2022), or specific policies put to voters in state ballot initiatives (Franko et al, 2013; Newman and Teten, 2021; Tolbert et al, 2019).

How does the public support or oppose the actual policies (such as tax havens, loopholes, less tax brackets) which entrench global inequality? We answer this question with evidence from a national online survey conducted in March of 2024 (n=1,200). We investigate opposition to wealth defense using nine novel policy items, and test the mechanisms which drive opposition to wealth defense with common empirical predictors. Overall, we find broad support for policies which eliminate tax avoidance among the rich and increase tax burdens on the ultra wealthy (e.g. creating new tax brackets, taxing the rich at higher rates). Although opposition to wealth defense is higher among liberals and Democrats, there is consistent bipartisan agreement on a number of policies, like creating new tax brackets, and closing tax loopholes.

Co-authored with Franshelly Martinez-Ortiz

Summary: Our understanding of how Latines in the United States fit into the political landscape typically misses the nuanced relationship Latines have with their own racialization in society, and its consequences for American democracy. In this project, we seek to clarify how anti-blackness among Latines influences policy preferences and political attitudes. We theorize that Latines are likely to show inherent biases against Blackness–despite their political identification with more liberal policies, or their identification with the Democratic party. In other words, we expect that anti-blackness is not just a marker of Latines who prefer conservative policies, or the Republican party. Instead, anti-blackness among Latines also represents a deep desire to escape the treatment Black people experience in the United States by transcending “race” as a factor that shapes their assimilation. Using a survey experiment, we propose testing how increasing the salience of skin-tone and its role in shaping opportunities in the U.S. affects how Latines express political priorities, discuss social stratification, and support or oppose reparations.