I leave tomorrow for the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, IL. I’m presenting my first single-authored paper at a professional conference (PDF), and also presenting a co-authored paper and participating in a roundtable on academic blogs.

Here’s a summary of my paper:

THE HIGH PRICE OF CONSTRAINT?
Comparing the relative impact of verification threat and
counter-framing in partisan debate

Can institutions help citizens make good decisions? I present a national survey experiment
testing two possible answers to this question from the literature: verification threat, which
may promote counter-attitudinal persuasion, and counter-framing, which may promote
partisan or ideological constraint. Surprisingly, the results indicate that verification threat and
counter-framing tend to increase partisan constraint in a competitive political context.

Academics rarely solicit public feedback on their work, but I believe in the collective intelligence of my readers and would appreciate any feedback you have. I will be revising this paper soon for publication so constructive comments are especially helpful.