Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Nicholas Valentino

Date: 

Monday, October 17, 2022, 12:00pm to 1:15pm

Location: 

Allison Dining Room

Outgroup Empathy and Opposition to Electorally Restrictive Voting Laws

Nicholas Valentino, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan

Abstract: This study examines the role of outgroup empathy in response to restrictive voting laws and voter suppression efforts. We test a series of hypotheses using nationally representative data from the 2020 American National Election Studies survey and the 2022 Group Empathy Study conducted by YouGov. The results indicate that outgroup empathy has a sizable and significant effect on opinions concerning race-based electoral injustice, above and beyond the effects of partisanship, ideology, and a host of socio-demographic controls. We also predict, and find, that the effects of group empathy on opposition to voting restrictions are conditional on political sophistication: Those most likely to be aware of the groups these laws target bring outgroup empathy (or lack thereof) to bear most strongly on support or opposition to voter suppression. The findings suggest that group empathy—especially among the most politically sophisticated—can catalyze opposition to restrictive voting laws recently adopted by several states, which threaten the United States’ democratic health, equality, and representation. (co-authored with Cigdem V. Sirin and José D. Villalobos)

Nicholas A. Valentino is a Professor of Political Science and Research Professor in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as a PI of the American National Election Studies (ANES). He was President of the International Society for Political Psychology from 2019-2020 and has served on the American National Election Studies Board since 2010, becoming Associate PI in 2018. Valentino specializes in political psychological approaches to understanding public opinion formation, socialization, information seeking, and electoral participation. His work employs experimental methods, surveys, and content analyses of political communication. The research has focused on the intersecting roles of racial attitudes and public emotions, especially the distinct power of anger versus fear. He has also written extensively on the causes and consequences of empathy for ethnic outgroups. 

His work has been published in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political SciencePolitical PsychologyPolitical Communication, and Public Opinion Quarterly. He is a co-author (with Cigdem Sirin and Jose Villalobos) of Seeing Us in Them: Social Divisions and the Politics of Group Empathy (Cambridge University Press). The book has won several awards, including the APSA Best Book, the David Sears Best Book in Political Psychology at ISPP, and the Robert Lane Best Book in the Political Psychology section of APSA. He also wrote Beyond Rationality: Behavioral Political Science in the 21stCentury (Cambridge University Press), coauthored with Alex Mintz and Carly Wayne. Valentino is currently exploring the changing nature of racial rhetoric in America and around the world, and the ways empathy for outgroups can blunt dangerous overreactions to threats from globalization and multiculturalism.