Benjamin E. Lauderdale
Graduate Student
324 Robertson Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544-1013
Office Hours:
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail: blauderd@princeton.edu
Specialization:
A.B. (Physics), Harvard '04; M.A. (Politics), Princeton '07
Thesis Title: Essays on Public Opinion Formation and Legislative Representation
Committee: Chris Achen, Scott Ashworth, Larry Bartels
Abstract: I model how citizens form political views using the beliefs of others, which are often the most readily available sources of information about complicated political issues. From a simple model of how citizens keep track of the relationships between political issues and actors, I derive testable hypotheses about how citizens infer unknown information and respond to new information. Building on resulting insights about cue-taking, evaluation of political actors, projection and polarization, I offer an explanation for why Congress appears more polarized than the public. Congress may reflect the distribution of public opinion that would exist if citizens paid more attention to politics, rather than the distribution of public opinion held by the actual, relatively uninformed public.
Link to: Personal Web site