Working Papers
Essig, J. The Nature of Framing Effects: Connecting Theory and Evidence. Job Market Paper. (PDF)
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Under Contract
Xu, P. & Essig, J. From Free Trade to America First: How Trump’s Rhetoric and Policies Reshaped American Views on Trade. Under Contract with Cambridge Elements in Experimental Political Science.
Manuscripts in Preparation
Essig, J. Facts vs. Feelings?: Framing, Information, and Emotion in Perceptions of the Economy.
Abstract: Retrospective voting is widely considered a key mechanism of political accountability, yet there is little consensus on the psychological process underlying citizens’ evaluations of past economic performance. Differences between objective economic indicators like GDP growth or the rate of inflation and subjective perceptions in the mass public requires accounting for gaps between factual information and citizen evaluations. This paper presents experimental evidence incorporating informational treatments alongside varied frames to clarify the mechanisms of retrospective voting. I propose and test several explanations for the disconnect between objective criteria and voter evaluations. First, responses to the same information are heterogeneous among voters because of variation in the prevalence of pocketbook and sociotropic voting. Second, even when voters successfully update their factual beliefs in the direction of the truth, these beliefs are not always proximate to political behavior in the presence of competing psychological or emotional factors. Third, citizens can be susceptible to framing effects despite accurate perceptions. Failure to measure psychologically relevant variables alongside objective beliefs can therefore result in misleading conclusions about the capacity of voters to make accurate retrospective evaluations. Even if voters are perfectly rational in their belief updating, information does not necessarily dominate other psychological processes including partisan motivated reasoning, emotional responses, and framing effects.
Essig, J. Measuring Beliefs in Political Psychology: Attitudes, Affect, or Information?