Research Areas
My research interests fall within the general categories of public opinion and political psychology. Specifically, I am interested in the importance of psychological processes relating to the formation and persistence of political choices.
Information Processing and Political Decision Making
Much of my research centers around the psychological processes that underlie the public's assessment of political actors. Specifically, I am concerned with the way individuals use (or do not use) information, such as scandal involvement, in their environment to assess political candidates and make political decisions.
Explore my published scandal research.
My new work, funded by UMKC's Funding Faculty for Excellence Program, uses a multi-modal approach to explore the effect of scandal on the political aspirations of rogue politicians operating in a hyper-partisan environment.
Memory Organization and Memory Failure
The limitations, biases, and structures of the brain affect human decision making in important and surprising ways. One of my research areas explores how voters organize campaign information in memory and how that organization affects retrieval of information.