Curtis Bram
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534481 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Curtis Bram |
| GIVEN NAMES | Curtis |
| FAMILY NAME | Bram |
| SIGNATURE | BRAM C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9604-5793 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Punitive Public? Exploring the Opinion-Election Connection in Criminal Justice Policy
A long-standing line of research attributes criminal legal policy outcomes in America to policy attitudes held by the public. For these scholars, one possible mechanism driving this relationship is a punitive public electing punitive politicians. This article presents new evidence demonstrating that citizens’ criminal legal policy attitudes do not directly translate into their electoral choices. We use three conjoint experiments to demonstrate th…
Voice and Value
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our …
The Donor Went Down to Georgia
Stepping Up the Political Ladder
Do at-large elections reduce black representation? A new baseline for county legislatures
Expectations for Policy Change and Participation
What policy changes do people expect from elections, and how do these expectations influence the decision to vote? This paper seeks to understand the relationship between people’s expectations and their subsequent voting behavior by examining beliefs about what candidates would actually do if given political power. I start with a survey of political scientists and compare their forecasts about what presidential candidates will accomplish to those…
The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime
This article argues that a psychological bias called “focalism” contributes to an overestimation of the differences between political candidates, which in turn increases participation and polarization. Focalism causes people to confuse the allocation of attention to things with the importance of those things. Because attention to politics typically centers on conflict, the result is an exaggeration of differences across the partisan divide. I tes…
A Professional Development Course for Political Science Undergraduates
This article describes a course designed to help political science majors formulate career goals, apply for internships and full-time positions, and eventually succeed on the job. Students benefit from exposure to guest speakers representing a range of careers and from collaborations with other campus institutions (e.g., the career center and graduate programs). Additionally, students produce job-market materials that highlight how their educatio…
When a conspiracy theory goes mainstream, people feel more positive toward conspiracy theorists
This paper uses an experiment and a follow-up survey immediately before and after the publicly revealed results of the Department of Defense’s 2021 report on unidentified flying object (UFO) origins to test how public opinion changes when government leaders across the political spectrum take an issue that had been on the margins of respectability seriously. In both studies, I find that when politicians acknowledge the possibility that UFOs are ex…
Where you stand depends on where you live
The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime
This article argues that a psychological bias called “focalism” contributes to an overestimation of the differences between political candidates, which in turn increases participation and polarization. Focalism causes people to confuse the allocation of attention to things with the importance of those things. Because attention to politics typically centers on conflict, the result is an exaggeration of differences across the partisan divide. I tes…
Expectations for Policy Change and Participation
What policy changes do people expect from elections, and how do these expectations influence the decision to vote? This paper seeks to understand the relationship between people’s expectations and their subsequent voting behavior by examining beliefs about what candidates would actually do if given political power. I start with a survey of political scientists and compare their forecasts about what presidential candidates will accomplish to those…
The Donor Went Down to Georgia
Voice and Value
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our …
A Professional Development Course for Political Science Undergraduates
This article describes a course designed to help political science majors formulate career goals, apply for internships and full-time positions, and eventually succeed on the job. Students benefit from exposure to guest speakers representing a range of careers and from collaborations with other campus institutions (e.g., the career center and graduate programs). Additionally, students produce job-market materials that highlight how their educatio…
Where you stand depends on where you live
When a conspiracy theory goes mainstream, people feel more positive toward conspiracy theorists
This paper uses an experiment and a follow-up survey immediately before and after the publicly revealed results of the Department of Defense’s 2021 report on unidentified flying object (UFO) origins to test how public opinion changes when government leaders across the political spectrum take an issue that had been on the margins of respectability seriously. In both studies, I find that when politicians acknowledge the possibility that UFOs are ex…
Where you stand depends on where you live
A Professional Development Course for Political Science Undergraduates
This article describes a course designed to help political science majors formulate career goals, apply for internships and full-time positions, and eventually succeed on the job. Students benefit from exposure to guest speakers representing a range of careers and from collaborations with other campus institutions (e.g., the career center and graduate programs). Additionally, students produce job-market materials that highlight how their educatio…
Expectations for Policy Change and Participation
What policy changes do people expect from elections, and how do these expectations influence the decision to vote? This paper seeks to understand the relationship between people’s expectations and their subsequent voting behavior by examining beliefs about what candidates would actually do if given political power. I start with a survey of political scientists and compare their forecasts about what presidential candidates will accomplish to those…
The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime
This article argues that a psychological bias called “focalism” contributes to an overestimation of the differences between political candidates, which in turn increases participation and polarization. Focalism causes people to confuse the allocation of attention to things with the importance of those things. Because attention to politics typically centers on conflict, the result is an exaggeration of differences across the partisan divide. I tes…
Do at-large elections reduce black representation? A new baseline for county legislatures
The Punitive Public? Exploring the Opinion-Election Connection in Criminal Justice Policy
A long-standing line of research attributes criminal legal policy outcomes in America to policy attitudes held by the public. For these scholars, one possible mechanism driving this relationship is a punitive public electing punitive politicians. This article presents new evidence demonstrating that citizens’ criminal legal policy attitudes do not directly translate into their electoral choices. We use three conjoint experiments to demonstrate th…
Voice and Value
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our …
The Donor Went Down to Georgia
Stepping Up the Political Ladder
Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Public opinion (3 works) · Public relations (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works)