Aaron S King
Biographic Data
| ID | 1049002 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aaron S King |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aaron S |
| FAMILY NAME | King |
| SIGNATURE | KING A S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina Wilmington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2435-0449 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The effect of experts on attitude change in public-facing political science
How can scientists best inform the public and change attitudes? Does the message or the messenger matter more? We test the effect of scientific expert messengers and messages in a preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment in the United States. Consistent with our hypotheses, scientists can move public attitudes in areas where knowledge is based on a non-ideological misperception to a greater extent than the same science-based mes…
Tweet like Trump
Objective We examine how congressional candidates use social media such as Twitter (X) to promote a political brand and connect with voters during campaigns. Methods Using a mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approach, we first conduct a brand analysis using 22 candidates from 11 open‐seat races in 2020. We develop and test several hypotheses using our races from 2020 and the subsequent contests in these districts in 2022, as well as the universe of…
The Promise and Peril of Constituent Interactions
Even before its founding, town hall meetings have been woven into the fabric of American politics as a quintessential tool in a representative democracy. We might expect legislators would host these events with routine frequency; however, our research shows this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. While town halls may strengthen the legislator‐constituent relationship, they also carry risk, especially in our polarized political climate. We argue t…
Permeable boundaries
Studies of candidate entry in the USA have either focused on the major parties and their primaries, non-major parties, or both but separately. We extend the research on American party politics by analyzing how potential candidates weigh different routes to the general election: major party primaries versus non-major party paths. We develop a theoretical model of candidate entry that recognizes the option to run outside of major party primaries an…
Updating with Others
What role does information concerning the beliefs of others play in the correction, or persistence, of misperceptions? Can social pressure affect whether someone will change their mind on a salient political issue? Building on the “backfire effect” and informational context literatures, we theorize that informational social influence can affect one's willingness to accept new information. Specifically, when individuals receive partisan cues, thei…
Women's Representation and the Gendered Pipeline to Power
The leading explanation for the underrepresentation of women in American politics is that women are less likely to run for office than men, but scholars have given less attention in recent years to the gender makeup of the pipeline to elected office. We examine the gendered pipeline to power across three potential candidate pools: lower-level officeholders, those named in newspapers as likely candidates, and lawyers who made political contributio…
Setting the Table
This article joins the growing tide of research that studies party effects in the United States Senate. Previous work has shown that certain procedural tools disproportionately advantage the majority party at the expense of the minority. We build on this research by exploiting a new dataset that allows us to study motions to table amendments from the 91st to the 111th Congress. By examining the success of these motions, analyzing the voting calcu…
The Personal Politics of Same‐Sex Marriage
Research on attitudes toward gay people and same‐sex marriage finds that individuals who know a gay person in their immediate personal network are not only more likely to view gay people positively but also support same‐sex marriage. Here we examine whether this result extends to an individual's stance toward specific ballot measures regarding same‐sex marriage across different social and political climates ranging from the conservative South to …
Ideological Extremity and Success in Primary Elections
Many cite the growing tendency of political parties to nominate ideologically extreme candidates in U.S. primary elections as a reason for increasing congressional polarization. However, a lack of quantitative data on candidate ideology makes this claim difficult to test. We propose a unique solution to this problem that exploits data from the increasingly popular realm of social media by estimating ideal points for candidates for the U.S. Senate…
Women's Representation and the Gendered Pipeline to Power
The leading explanation for the underrepresentation of women in American politics is that women are less likely to run for office than men, but scholars have given less attention in recent years to the gender makeup of the pipeline to elected office. We examine the gendered pipeline to power across three potential candidate pools: lower-level officeholders, those named in newspapers as likely candidates, and lawyers who made political contributio…
Ideological Extremity and Success in Primary Elections
Many cite the growing tendency of political parties to nominate ideologically extreme candidates in U.S. primary elections as a reason for increasing congressional polarization. However, a lack of quantitative data on candidate ideology makes this claim difficult to test. We propose a unique solution to this problem that exploits data from the increasingly popular realm of social media by estimating ideal points for candidates for the U.S. Senate…
The Promise and Peril of Constituent Interactions
Even before its founding, town hall meetings have been woven into the fabric of American politics as a quintessential tool in a representative democracy. We might expect legislators would host these events with routine frequency; however, our research shows this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. While town halls may strengthen the legislator‐constituent relationship, they also carry risk, especially in our polarized political climate. We argue t…
Permeable boundaries
Studies of candidate entry in the USA have either focused on the major parties and their primaries, non-major parties, or both but separately. We extend the research on American party politics by analyzing how potential candidates weigh different routes to the general election: major party primaries versus non-major party paths. We develop a theoretical model of candidate entry that recognizes the option to run outside of major party primaries an…
Updating with Others
What role does information concerning the beliefs of others play in the correction, or persistence, of misperceptions? Can social pressure affect whether someone will change their mind on a salient political issue? Building on the “backfire effect” and informational context literatures, we theorize that informational social influence can affect one's willingness to accept new information. Specifically, when individuals receive partisan cues, thei…
Setting the Table
This article joins the growing tide of research that studies party effects in the United States Senate. Previous work has shown that certain procedural tools disproportionately advantage the majority party at the expense of the minority. We build on this research by exploiting a new dataset that allows us to study motions to table amendments from the 91st to the 111th Congress. By examining the success of these motions, analyzing the voting calcu…
The Personal Politics of Same‐Sex Marriage
Research on attitudes toward gay people and same‐sex marriage finds that individuals who know a gay person in their immediate personal network are not only more likely to view gay people positively but also support same‐sex marriage. Here we examine whether this result extends to an individual's stance toward specific ballot measures regarding same‐sex marriage across different social and political climates ranging from the conservative South to …
Tweet like Trump
Objective We examine how congressional candidates use social media such as Twitter (X) to promote a political brand and connect with voters during campaigns. Methods Using a mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approach, we first conduct a brand analysis using 22 candidates from 11 open‐seat races in 2020. We develop and test several hypotheses using our races from 2020 and the subsequent contests in these districts in 2022, as well as the universe of…
The Personal Politics of Same‐Sex Marriage
Research on attitudes toward gay people and same‐sex marriage finds that individuals who know a gay person in their immediate personal network are not only more likely to view gay people positively but also support same‐sex marriage. Here we examine whether this result extends to an individual's stance toward specific ballot measures regarding same‐sex marriage across different social and political climates ranging from the conservative South to …
Ideological Extremity and Success in Primary Elections
Many cite the growing tendency of political parties to nominate ideologically extreme candidates in U.S. primary elections as a reason for increasing congressional polarization. However, a lack of quantitative data on candidate ideology makes this claim difficult to test. We propose a unique solution to this problem that exploits data from the increasingly popular realm of social media by estimating ideal points for candidates for the U.S. Senate…
Setting the Table
This article joins the growing tide of research that studies party effects in the United States Senate. Previous work has shown that certain procedural tools disproportionately advantage the majority party at the expense of the minority. We build on this research by exploiting a new dataset that allows us to study motions to table amendments from the 91st to the 111th Congress. By examining the success of these motions, analyzing the voting calcu…
Women's Representation and the Gendered Pipeline to Power
The leading explanation for the underrepresentation of women in American politics is that women are less likely to run for office than men, but scholars have given less attention in recent years to the gender makeup of the pipeline to elected office. We examine the gendered pipeline to power across three potential candidate pools: lower-level officeholders, those named in newspapers as likely candidates, and lawyers who made political contributio…
Updating with Others
What role does information concerning the beliefs of others play in the correction, or persistence, of misperceptions? Can social pressure affect whether someone will change their mind on a salient political issue? Building on the “backfire effect” and informational context literatures, we theorize that informational social influence can affect one's willingness to accept new information. Specifically, when individuals receive partisan cues, thei…
Permeable boundaries
Studies of candidate entry in the USA have either focused on the major parties and their primaries, non-major parties, or both but separately. We extend the research on American party politics by analyzing how potential candidates weigh different routes to the general election: major party primaries versus non-major party paths. We develop a theoretical model of candidate entry that recognizes the option to run outside of major party primaries an…
Tweet like Trump
Objective We examine how congressional candidates use social media such as Twitter (X) to promote a political brand and connect with voters during campaigns. Methods Using a mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approach, we first conduct a brand analysis using 22 candidates from 11 open‐seat races in 2020. We develop and test several hypotheses using our races from 2020 and the subsequent contests in these districts in 2022, as well as the universe of…
The Promise and Peril of Constituent Interactions
Even before its founding, town hall meetings have been woven into the fabric of American politics as a quintessential tool in a representative democracy. We might expect legislators would host these events with routine frequency; however, our research shows this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. While town halls may strengthen the legislator‐constituent relationship, they also carry risk, especially in our polarized political climate. We argue t…
The effect of experts on attitude change in public-facing political science
How can scientists best inform the public and change attitudes? Does the message or the messenger matter more? We test the effect of scientific expert messengers and messages in a preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment in the United States. Consistent with our hypotheses, scientists can move public attitudes in areas where knowledge is based on a non-ideological misperception to a greater extent than the same science-based mes…
Political science (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Social Media and Politics (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Economics (3 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (3 works)