John Bullock - Reconsidering the Stability of Policy Preferences
John Bullock, Associate Professor, Northwestern University
Since Converse advanced his “nonattitudes” thesis in 1964, scholars have debated the extent to which people have stable preferences over public policies. The debate has yet to reach a consensus. We argue that two of its little-noted features help to explain the current stalemate. First, every attempt to correct for measurement error is met with the charge that it “corrects” not only for measurement error but for genuine instability in people’s thinking. Second, both sides of the debate have relied on making statistical arguments, rather than attempting to collect new types of data. In this preregistered study, we do present a new type of data: policy-preference data from questions less prone to measurement error than those that others have used. The data suggest highly stable preferences, not only in general policy areas, but over specific policies.
Bullock studies the effects of partisanship on people's political views. Three questions motivate his work in this area: how can people make sensible political choices when they know so little about politics? When will partisanship dominate people's thinking about political choices? And to what extent does partisan polarization create or reflect bias in political thinking? With these questions in mind, Bullock's research speaks to concerns about "fake news," partisan response patterns in surveys, and the effects of position-taking by party leaders on the views of ordinary citizens.
Bullock's scholarly articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Politics, and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science.