Ethan C Busby
Biographic Data
| ID | 342921 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ethan C Busby |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ethan C |
| FAMILY NAME | Busby |
| SIGNATURE | BUSBY E C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brigham Young University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8931-6348 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 259 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Looking Under the Hood
Handbook of Innovations in Political Psychology
Speaking populism
Debates on the nature and causes of populism persist in the public and among academics. We test two contemporary theories of populism – issue-based and ideational – by exploring their implications for the expression of populist rhetoric among citizens. In a large scale, cross-national experiment ( N ~ 18,000), we prompt the expression of populism through an elaboration task exploring the causes and solutions to current policy problems. The task f…
Do They Even Care? Empirical Evidence for the Importance of Listening in Democracy
Unheard Voices
All citizens are not listened to equally, despite the importance of responsiveness and listening to different theories of democracy. We take an intersectional approach to make several novel predictions about how citizens’ identities, the topic of constituent messages, and the identities of elected officials combine to influence responsiveness. These theories lead us to expect (and empirically confirm) that Black men in particular - more than othe…
Balancing Large Language Model Alignment and Algorithmic Fidelity in Social Science Research
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize social science research. However, researchers face the difficult challenge of choosing a specific AI model, often without social science-specific guidance. To demonstrate the importance of this choice, we present an evaluation of the effect of alignment, or human-driven modification, on the ability of large language models (LLMs) to simulate the attitudes of human populati…
Changing stereotypes of partisans in the Trump Era
Stereotypes of the two parties play an important role in political cognition, and a range of recent studies have examined the content and effects of partisan stereotypes. However, little work has studied change in partisan stereotypes over time. We address this question by comparing data on stereotypes of partisans collected before and after the Trump presidency, a time when we might expect individuals' images of the two parties to undergo signif…
The Political Psychology of Cancel Culture
Cancel culture” has become a prominent phrase in US political commentary, with supporters and opponents relying on different value-based arguments to express their views. At the same time, these camps often fall along predictable partisan political lines. What, then, are the real motivations for promoting and opposing behaviors sometimes labeled as “canceling” in contemporary American politics? We explore this question through survey data from Pe…
Defending the Dog Whistle
Out of One, Many
We propose and explore the possibility that language models can be studied as effective proxies for specific human subpopulations in social science research. Practical and research applications of artificial intelligence tools have sometimes been limited by problematic biases (such as racism or sexism), which are often treated as uniform properties of the models. We show that the “algorithmic bias” within one such tool—the GPT-3 language model—is…
Perceptions of extremism among the American public and elected officials
Should You Stay Away from Strangers
Harmonious relationships between groups are critical for democracy, and intergroup contact presents an appealing way to encourage this harmony. However, what kinds of contact work best? Ethan Busby reviews existing studies of contact, propose a framework for studying the political consequences of contact, and discusses four experiments following these recommendations. These studies focus on equal status contact and rely on different samples and c…
One Nation, Two Realities
One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy." Congress & the Presidency, 48(2), pp. 278–279
Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric
The rhetoric of populist politicians is an important part of their appeal; however, little is known about how that rhetoric operates. Drawing on two large experiments conducted with American adults, we show that frames encouraging individuals to consider political problems in dispositional terms prompt populist expressions, while an encouragement to consider these same problems situationally does not. In our second experiment, we connect this fra…
Pigeonholing Partisans
Studying Framing Effects on Political Preferences
News items rarely stand by themselves. In order to grasp their meaning, news audiences need to interpret the news against a background of rich contextual knowledge, much of which is derived from previous news discourse. Accordingly, news frames can be understood as intertextual leads that guide audiences to contextualize events in specific ways, referring selectively to familiar entities and ideas and embedding present news items within the conte…
Football and Public Opinion
Do events irrelevant to politics, such as the weather and sporting events, affect political opinions? A growing experimental literature suggests that such events can matter. However, extant experimental evidence may over-state irrelevant event effects; this could occur if these studies happen to focus on particular scenarios where irrelevant event effects are likely to occur. One way to address this possibility is through replication, which is wh…
The Political Relevance of Irrelevant Events
Do events irrelevant to politics affect citizens' political opinions? A growing literature suggests that such events (e.g., athletic competitions, shark attacks) do in fact shape political preferences. We present an experiment that largely replicates a widely noted irrelevant event effect. Specifically, we find that the outcome of a sporting event (i.e., a football game) affects presidential approval and likely does so by affecting individuals' m…
Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric
The rhetoric of populist politicians is an important part of their appeal; however, little is known about how that rhetoric operates. Drawing on two large experiments conducted with American adults, we show that frames encouraging individuals to consider political problems in dispositional terms prompt populist expressions, while an encouragement to consider these same problems situationally does not. In our second experiment, we connect this fra…
Out of One, Many
We propose and explore the possibility that language models can be studied as effective proxies for specific human subpopulations in social science research. Practical and research applications of artificial intelligence tools have sometimes been limited by problematic biases (such as racism or sexism), which are often treated as uniform properties of the models. We show that the “algorithmic bias” within one such tool—the GPT-3 language model—is…
Pigeonholing Partisans
The Political Relevance of Irrelevant Events
Do events irrelevant to politics affect citizens' political opinions? A growing literature suggests that such events (e.g., athletic competitions, shark attacks) do in fact shape political preferences. We present an experiment that largely replicates a widely noted irrelevant event effect. Specifically, we find that the outcome of a sporting event (i.e., a football game) affects presidential approval and likely does so by affecting individuals' m…
Defending the Dog Whistle
Football and Public Opinion
Do events irrelevant to politics, such as the weather and sporting events, affect political opinions? A growing experimental literature suggests that such events can matter. However, extant experimental evidence may over-state irrelevant event effects; this could occur if these studies happen to focus on particular scenarios where irrelevant event effects are likely to occur. One way to address this possibility is through replication, which is wh…
Changing stereotypes of partisans in the Trump Era
Stereotypes of the two parties play an important role in political cognition, and a range of recent studies have examined the content and effects of partisan stereotypes. However, little work has studied change in partisan stereotypes over time. We address this question by comparing data on stereotypes of partisans collected before and after the Trump presidency, a time when we might expect individuals' images of the two parties to undergo signif…
Balancing Large Language Model Alignment and Algorithmic Fidelity in Social Science Research
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize social science research. However, researchers face the difficult challenge of choosing a specific AI model, often without social science-specific guidance. To demonstrate the importance of this choice, we present an evaluation of the effect of alignment, or human-driven modification, on the ability of large language models (LLMs) to simulate the attitudes of human populati…
Perceptions of extremism among the American public and elected officials
Do They Even Care? Empirical Evidence for the Importance of Listening in Democracy
The Political Psychology of Cancel Culture
Cancel culture” has become a prominent phrase in US political commentary, with supporters and opponents relying on different value-based arguments to express their views. At the same time, these camps often fall along predictable partisan political lines. What, then, are the real motivations for promoting and opposing behaviors sometimes labeled as “canceling” in contemporary American politics? We explore this question through survey data from Pe…
Football and Public Opinion
Do events irrelevant to politics, such as the weather and sporting events, affect political opinions? A growing experimental literature suggests that such events can matter. However, extant experimental evidence may over-state irrelevant event effects; this could occur if these studies happen to focus on particular scenarios where irrelevant event effects are likely to occur. One way to address this possibility is through replication, which is wh…
The Political Relevance of Irrelevant Events
Do events irrelevant to politics affect citizens' political opinions? A growing literature suggests that such events (e.g., athletic competitions, shark attacks) do in fact shape political preferences. We present an experiment that largely replicates a widely noted irrelevant event effect. Specifically, we find that the outcome of a sporting event (i.e., a football game) affects presidential approval and likely does so by affecting individuals' m…
Studying Framing Effects on Political Preferences
News items rarely stand by themselves. In order to grasp their meaning, news audiences need to interpret the news against a background of rich contextual knowledge, much of which is derived from previous news discourse. Accordingly, news frames can be understood as intertextual leads that guide audiences to contextualize events in specific ways, referring selectively to familiar entities and ideas and embedding present news items within the conte…
Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric
The rhetoric of populist politicians is an important part of their appeal; however, little is known about how that rhetoric operates. Drawing on two large experiments conducted with American adults, we show that frames encouraging individuals to consider political problems in dispositional terms prompt populist expressions, while an encouragement to consider these same problems situationally does not. In our second experiment, we connect this fra…
Pigeonholing Partisans
Should You Stay Away from Strangers
Harmonious relationships between groups are critical for democracy, and intergroup contact presents an appealing way to encourage this harmony. However, what kinds of contact work best? Ethan Busby reviews existing studies of contact, propose a framework for studying the political consequences of contact, and discusses four experiments following these recommendations. These studies focus on equal status contact and rely on different samples and c…
One Nation, Two Realities
One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy." Congress & the Presidency, 48(2), pp. 278–279
Perceptions of extremism among the American public and elected officials
Defending the Dog Whistle
Out of One, Many
We propose and explore the possibility that language models can be studied as effective proxies for specific human subpopulations in social science research. Practical and research applications of artificial intelligence tools have sometimes been limited by problematic biases (such as racism or sexism), which are often treated as uniform properties of the models. We show that the “algorithmic bias” within one such tool—the GPT-3 language model—is…
Changing stereotypes of partisans in the Trump Era
Stereotypes of the two parties play an important role in political cognition, and a range of recent studies have examined the content and effects of partisan stereotypes. However, little work has studied change in partisan stereotypes over time. We address this question by comparing data on stereotypes of partisans collected before and after the Trump presidency, a time when we might expect individuals' images of the two parties to undergo signif…
The Political Psychology of Cancel Culture
Cancel culture” has become a prominent phrase in US political commentary, with supporters and opponents relying on different value-based arguments to express their views. At the same time, these camps often fall along predictable partisan political lines. What, then, are the real motivations for promoting and opposing behaviors sometimes labeled as “canceling” in contemporary American politics? We explore this question through survey data from Pe…
Handbook of Innovations in Political Psychology
Speaking populism
Debates on the nature and causes of populism persist in the public and among academics. We test two contemporary theories of populism – issue-based and ideational – by exploring their implications for the expression of populist rhetoric among citizens. In a large scale, cross-national experiment ( N ~ 18,000), we prompt the expression of populism through an elaboration task exploring the causes and solutions to current policy problems. The task f…
Do They Even Care? Empirical Evidence for the Importance of Listening in Democracy
Unheard Voices
All citizens are not listened to equally, despite the importance of responsiveness and listening to different theories of democracy. We take an intersectional approach to make several novel predictions about how citizens’ identities, the topic of constituent messages, and the identities of elected officials combine to influence responsiveness. These theories lead us to expect (and empirically confirm) that Black men in particular - more than othe…
Balancing Large Language Model Alignment and Algorithmic Fidelity in Social Science Research
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize social science research. However, researchers face the difficult challenge of choosing a specific AI model, often without social science-specific guidance. To demonstrate the importance of this choice, we present an evaluation of the effect of alignment, or human-driven modification, on the ability of large language models (LLMs) to simulate the attitudes of human populati…
Looking Under the Hood
Politics (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Political economy (5 works)