Political Communication Lab
The Political Communication Lab is a research group that includes faculty and graduate students from Stanford University's Communication and Political Science departments who work on large-scale content analysis of news and elite rhetoric, experimental studies of political polarization, and cross-national investigations — spanning more than fourteen countries — of public opposition to immigration.
— PCL News and Highlights —
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How Did Politics Get So Personal?, The New York Times
New findings suggest that the sources of dispute in contemporary life go far beyond ideological differences or mere polarization. They have become elemental, almost tribal, tapping into in-group loyalty and out-group enmity. -
Why Partyism Is Wrong, The New York Times
David Brooks' opinion piece on PCL research showing that people are now less judgmental about different lifestyles, but they are more judgmental about policy labels. -
Political animosity exceeds racial hostility, new Stanford research shows, Stanford Report
PCL research shows that Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polar opposites – their political biases spill over into their social lives. -
'Partyism' Now Trumps Racism, Bloomberg View
Shanto Iyengar and PCL graduate student Sean Westwood conducted a large-scale implicit association test and found people’s political bias to be much larger than their racial bias. - Shanto Iyengar was the 2013-2014 Internationale Francqui Professor, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium.
- Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization, S. Iyengar & S.J. Westwood
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Do Attitudes About Immigration Predict Willingness to Admit Individual Immigrants? A Cross-National Test of the Person-Positivity Bias, S. Iyengar et al.
Citizens in seven advanced industrialized democracies generally oppose more open immigration policies, but stand ready to admit individual immigrants. - View ObamaCare issue ads
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Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization, S. Iyengar, G. Sood & Y. Lelkes
Exposure to messages attacking the out-group reinforces partisans’ biased views of their opponents. -
The 2012 Elections: Why Obama Won and the Implications for Governance
Symposium featured Dan Balz, Washington Post, Matthew Kaminski, the Wall Street Journal, David Brady, Hoover Instution, Douglas Rivers, YouGov/Polimetrix. Moderated by Shanto Iyengar, Political Communication Lab.
Research Objectives
The lab was formed to develop and administer experimental studies of public opinion and political behavior through the use of both online and traditional methods. The advantages of online experimentation are clear in light of the explosion in the number of households with access to the Internet. Moreover, issues of sampling bias -- previously endemic to experiments -- can be overcome through the greater "reach" of online experiments and by the application of standard probability sampling techniques to the recruitment of online experimental participants. These developments significantly alleviate concerns over the generalizability of experimental research and as a result, experiments now represent a dominant methodology for political communication researchers.