Matthew Motta
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3582223 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Matthew Motta |
| NOMBRES | Matthew |
| APELLIDO | Motta |
| FIRMA | MOTTA M |
| AFILIACIONES | Oklahoma State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2824-6833 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 47 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 490 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 47 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2016 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
A Naturally-Occurring Experiment on the Electoral Impact of President Biden’s Decision to Exit the 2024 Presidential Race
We assess the impact of former President Joe Biden’s unprecedented decision to exit the 2024 Presidential race 2 months before election day by analyzing a naturally-occurring experiment surrounding the incumbent President’s decision to exit the 2024 race, a period in which we fielded the second wave (N Wave 2 = 831) of a nationally-representative panel study (N Wave 1 = 1400), with random invitation assignment (from the original response pool) th…
Assessing WHO’s influence
During a novel pandemic, significant uncertainty drives individuals to seek expert guidance on preventive measures such as vaccination. Yet, it remains poorly understood how people process information in a highly complex landscape of global health governance where multiple experts may offer competing, repetitive, or contradictory advice. This study investigates the influence of World Health Organization (WHO)’s endorsements of vaccines amidst thi…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
What Goes Down Must Come Up? Pandemic- Related Misinformation Search Behavior During an Unplanned Facebook Outage
Pundits and scholars alike suspect that Facebook plays a role in not only exposing Americans to misinformation, but also encouraging them to seek out misinformation from other sources. Whether or not Facebook is responsible for stimulating misinformation search beyond the social networking site, however, is an open question. If Facebook encourages misinformation search behavior, we might expect search volume on other websites to simultaneously de…
Anti-Scientific Americans
Anti-Scientific Americans offers new insights into the prevalence, origins, and policy consequences of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. It begins by conceptualizing anti-intellectualism as the dislike and distrust of scientists, academics, and other experts. It then brings together “micro-level” survey data spanning six decades, and aggregated “macro-level” data from hundreds of opinion polls dating back to the 1940s, to show that approximately o…
A Discussion of Adam Berinsky’s Political Rumors
Professional Partisans? Primary Care Physicians, State Governments, and Covid-19 Responsibility and Response
Emerging health crises challenge and overwhelm federal political systems (Greer et al. 2020, Global Public Health 15: 1413–6). Within the context of COVID-19, states and governors took charge in the absence of a coordinated federal response. The result was uneven policy responses and variance in health-related and economic outcomes. While existing research has explored public evaluations of state COVID-19 policies, we explore primary care physici…
A Call for Measuring Partisanship in US Public Health Research
Covid-19 Spillover Effects onto General Vaccine Attitudes
Even amid the unprecedented public health challenges attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, opposition to vaccinating against the novel coronavirus has been both prevalent and politically contentious in American public life. In this paper, we theorize that attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination might “spill over” to shape attitudes toward “postpandemic” vaccination programs and policy mandates for years to come. We find this to be the case using e…
Partisan schadenfreude and candidate cruelty
We establish the prevalence of partisan schadenfreude—that is, taking “joy in the suffering” of partisan others. Analyzing attitudes on health care, taxation, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic, we find that a sizable portion of the American mass public engages in partisan schadenfreude and that these attitudes are most expressed by those who are ideologically extreme. Additionally, we find that a sizable portion of the American public …
Which foreign vaccine should the government purchase in a pandemic? Evidence from a survey experiment in the United States
Our study advances previous work on vaccine country-of-origin effects by assessing its impact on policy preferences for procuring initial vaccines from overseas (as opposed to uptake intentions), identifying a mechanism by which vaccine favoritism occurs, and documenting that neither personal disease susceptibility nor vaccine quality fully mitigates country of origin effects. We conclude by discussing why the study of "vaccine diplomacy" ought t…
How pandemic-related changes in global attitudes toward the scientific community shape “post-pandemic” environmental opinion
Low public concern about anthropogenic climate change (ACC)—due in part to distrust in the scientific community—may decrease demand for policies aimed at mitigating its deleterious effects. Encouragingly, though, recent research finds that experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated trust in scientific expertise worldwide. We explore the possibility that positive attitudes toward the medical community are “spilling over” to increase ACC a…
Overconfident, resentful, and misinformed
Objective We examine the role of racial resentment in motivating Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs on racialized scientific issues. Methods We study survey data from the 2020 American National Election Study. We examine respondents’ endorsement of misinformation on different scientific issues and their reported confidence in these views. Results We find that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to hold c…
The Effects of Partisan Media in the Face of Global Pandemic
Some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic via vaccination to interrupt conventional partisan media effect processes. We test that possibility by bringing together sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports, and six original surveys (N = 6,499), in order to investigate (1) whether partisan news outlets covered COVID v…
The Great and Powerful Dr. Oz? Alternative Health Media Consumption and Vaccine Views in the United States
Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, until recently the host of a nationally syndicated U.S. television show, is among the media figures who have espoused health views unsanctioned by established medical authorities such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. In a large, probability-based national longitudinal study, we examine the prevalence and consequences of consuming alternative health media (…
Complementary or Competing Frames? The Impact of Economic and Public Health Messages on Covid-19 Attitudes
The American reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic is polarized, with conservatives often less willing to engage in risk-mitigation strategies such as mask-wearing and vaccination. COVID-19 narratives are also polarized, as some conservative elites focus on the economy over public health. In this registered report, we test whether combining economic and public health messages can persuade individuals to increase support for COVID-19 risk mitigation. …
The pre-political origins and policy consequences of environmental justice concern
While the effects of climate change will impact most Americans, they will likely have a disproportionate influence on the socioeconomic well-being of marginalized communities. Few researchers, however, have investigated public support for policies aimed at ameliorating climate-related disparities. Fewer still have considered how political and (critically) pre-political psychological dispositions might shape environmental justice concern (EJC) and…
When OK is Not OK
Are Americans aware and concerned about White nationalism in the U.S. Military? Our large and demographically representative survey suggests that while most Americans suspect at least some presence of White nationalism in the military, many do not view it as a serious problem; particularly self-identified conservatives and respondents who hold highly favorable views toward military service members. However, in a between-/within-subjects experimen…
Finding Dori
How do states differ in how difficult they make voter registration, and what effect does this have on voters? We propose and validate a new Difficulty of Registration Index (DORI) calculated via an item response theory (IRT) model of five key dimensions of registration (automaticity, portability, deadline, mode, and preregistration) for each state from 2004 to 2020. Since 2004, most states eased registration processes, with Democratic statehouses…
Human Values and Sophistication Interaction Theory
Investigating how historical legacies of militarized violence can motivate Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy
A Call to Arms for Climate Change? How Military Service Member Concern About Climate Change Can Inform Effective Climate Communication
Military service members are a highly trusted group – especially among ideological conservatives. Consequently, we devised an environmental communication strategy that attributes pro-climate messages to military service members, aimed at convincing conservative climate skeptics to express elevated concern. In a large survey experiment, we show that conservatives are more likely to express concern about climate change when framed as a national sec…
Understanding the climate responsibility associated with elections
Encouraging Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake Through Effective Health Communication
Context: Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic will require most Americans to vaccinate against the virus. Unfortunately, previous research suggests that many Americans plan to refuse a vaccine; thereby jeopardizing collective immunity. We investigate the effectiveness of three different health communication frames hypothesized to increase vaccine intention; emphasizing either 1) personal health risks, 2) economic costs, or 3) collective public health…
How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of Covid-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the U.S
We have yet to know the ultimate global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, we do know that delays, denials and misinformation about COVID-19 have exacerbated its spread and slowed pandemic response, particularly in the U.S. (e.g., Abutaleb et al., 2020
Correlates and disparities of intention to vaccinate against Covid-19
The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States
Recently, Americans have become increasingly likely to hold anti-intellectual attitudes (i.e., negative affect toward scientists and other experts). However, few have investigated the political implications of anti-intellectualism, and much empirical uncertainty surrounds whether or not these attitudes can be mitigated. Drawing on cross-sectional General Social Survey (GSS) data and a national election panel in 2016, I find that anti-intellectual…
Knowing less but presuming more
Parent psychology and the decision to delay childhood vaccination
Can a Covid-19 vaccine live up to Americans' expectations? A conjoint analysis of how vaccine characteristics influence vaccination intentions
Correcting Misperceptions about the MMR Vaccine
Many Americans endorse misinformation about vaccine safety. This is problematic because those who do are more likely to resist evidence-based policies, such as mandatory vaccination for school attendance. Although many have attempted to correct misinformation about vaccines, few attempts have been successful. This study uses psychological correlates of vaccine misinformation acceptance to develop a novel misinformation correction strategy by tail…
Republicans, Not Democrats, Are More Likely to Endorse Anti-Vaccine Misinformation
Vaccine safety skeptics are often thought to be more likely to self-identify as Democrats (vs. Independents or Republicans). Recent studies, however, suggest that childhood vaccine misinformation is either more common among Republicans, or is uninfluenced by partisan identification (PID). Uncertainty about the partisan underpinnings of vaccine misinformation acceptance is important, as it could complicate efforts to pursue pro-vaccine health poli…
Encouraging Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake Through Effective Health Communication
Context: Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic will require most Americans to vaccinate against the virus. Unfortunately, previous research suggests that many Americans plan to refuse a vaccine; thereby jeopardizing collective immunity. We investigate the effectiveness of three different health communication frames hypothesized to increase vaccine intention; emphasizing either 1) personal health risks, 2) economic costs, or 3) collective public health…
Human Values and Sophistication Interaction Theory
President Obama on the ballot
The Polarizing Effect of the March for Science on Attitudes toward Scientists
Americans’ attitudes toward scientists have become more negative in recent years. Although researchers have considered several individual-level factors that might explain this change, little attention has been given to the political actions of scientists themselves. This article considers how March for Science rallies that took place across the United States in late April 2017 influenced Americans’ attitudes toward scientists and the research the…
Partisan schadenfreude and candidate cruelty
We establish the prevalence of partisan schadenfreude—that is, taking “joy in the suffering” of partisan others. Analyzing attitudes on health care, taxation, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic, we find that a sizable portion of the American mass public engages in partisan schadenfreude and that these attitudes are most expressed by those who are ideologically extreme. Additionally, we find that a sizable portion of the American public …
Identifying the prevalence, correlates, and policy consequences of anti-vaccine social identity
Scholarly and journalistic profiles of anti-vaxxers – i.e., individuals who are active in efforts to oppose widespread vaccination – suggest that some Americans may identify with the “anti-vaccine” label in order to fulfill social goals (e.g., a sense of belonging in a broader community). This is potentially problematic, as anti-vaxx social identification (AVSID) could imply increased receptivity to vaccine misinformation, and resistance to evide…
Looking for Answers
Internet surveys are cost-effective and convenient, but give respondents the opportunity to search the Web for answers to factual questions. Surprisingly, few have investigated the quality of political knowledge data collected in crowd-sourced Internet samples. Using a novel technique to identify individual “cheaters” across six data sets—collected on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (professionalized paid “workers”) and SurveyMonkey (less-professionaliz…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
The Effects of Partisan Media in the Face of Global Pandemic
Some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic via vaccination to interrupt conventional partisan media effect processes. We test that possibility by bringing together sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports, and six original surveys (N = 6,499), in order to investigate (1) whether partisan news outlets covered COVID v…
Gay” or “Homosexual”? The Implications of Social Category Labels for the Structure of Mass Attitudes
Multiple identity and identification terms are used in social science research on sexuality, including clinical terms such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual” and more colloquial terms such as “gay” and “straight.” In this article, we show that far from being synonyms, these terms have consequences for attitudes about gay and lesbian rights. We begin by providing a historical overview of the terms “homosexual” and “gay and lesbian,” showing the di…
Investigating how historical legacies of militarized violence can motivate Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy
The Ideational Foundations of Symbolic Ideology
Theories of symbolic ideology view it as an affective orientation untouched by ideational content. Drawing on Shalom Schwartz's theory of basic human values, we propose that four bedrock values—universalism, openness to change, conservation, and self‐enhancement—shape symbolic ideology. We explore whether politically sophisticated and unsophisticated individuals ground symbolic ideological identities in cognitive values to a comparable degree. Us…
Covid-19 Spillover Effects onto General Vaccine Attitudes
Even amid the unprecedented public health challenges attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, opposition to vaccinating against the novel coronavirus has been both prevalent and politically contentious in American public life. In this paper, we theorize that attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination might “spill over” to shape attitudes toward “postpandemic” vaccination programs and policy mandates for years to come. We find this to be the case using e…
How Internet Access Drives Global Vaccine Skepticism
Counterintuitively, wealthier countries tend to be more vaccine skeptical than poorer countries. One possible explanation—the Online Accessibility hypothesis—posits that internet access facilitates the spread of antivaccine misinformation, particularly for those lower in scientific and medical expert trust. Another explanation—the Out of Sight hypothesis—is that some citizens in richer countries fail to consider the risks of vaccine-preventable d…
A Call for Measuring Partisanship in US Public Health Research
Overconfident, resentful, and misinformed
Objective We examine the role of racial resentment in motivating Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs on racialized scientific issues. Methods We study survey data from the 2020 American National Election Study. We examine respondents’ endorsement of misinformation on different scientific issues and their reported confidence in these views. Results We find that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to hold c…
Which foreign vaccine should the government purchase in a pandemic? Evidence from a survey experiment in the United States
Our study advances previous work on vaccine country-of-origin effects by assessing its impact on policy preferences for procuring initial vaccines from overseas (as opposed to uptake intentions), identifying a mechanism by which vaccine favoritism occurs, and documenting that neither personal disease susceptibility nor vaccine quality fully mitigates country of origin effects. We conclude by discussing why the study of "vaccine diplomacy" ought t…
What do interviewer intelligence ratings actually measure
Political scientists interested in studying the political implications of citizens’ cognitive abilities often turn to readily available “intelligence ratings” in the American National Election Studies (ANES). These ratings are generally thought to represent respondents’ cognitive abilities, albeit imperfectly. I hypothesize that these ratings do not reflect more-objective tests of cognitive ability, and instead better capture considerations relat…
Looking for Answers
Internet surveys are cost-effective and convenient, but give respondents the opportunity to search the Web for answers to factual questions. Surprisingly, few have investigated the quality of political knowledge data collected in crowd-sourced Internet samples. Using a novel technique to identify individual “cheaters” across six data sets—collected on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (professionalized paid “workers”) and SurveyMonkey (less-professionaliz…
President Obama on the ballot
The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States
Recently, Americans have become increasingly likely to hold anti-intellectual attitudes (i.e., negative affect toward scientists and other experts). However, few have investigated the political implications of anti-intellectualism, and much empirical uncertainty surrounds whether or not these attitudes can be mitigated. Drawing on cross-sectional General Social Survey (GSS) data and a national election panel in 2016, I find that anti-intellectual…
Gay” or “Homosexual”? The Implications of Social Category Labels for the Structure of Mass Attitudes
Multiple identity and identification terms are used in social science research on sexuality, including clinical terms such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual” and more colloquial terms such as “gay” and “straight.” In this article, we show that far from being synonyms, these terms have consequences for attitudes about gay and lesbian rights. We begin by providing a historical overview of the terms “homosexual” and “gay and lesbian,” showing the di…
The Polarizing Effect of the March for Science on Attitudes toward Scientists
Americans’ attitudes toward scientists have become more negative in recent years. Although researchers have considered several individual-level factors that might explain this change, little attention has been given to the political actions of scientists themselves. This article considers how March for Science rallies that took place across the United States in late April 2017 influenced Americans’ attitudes toward scientists and the research the…
Knowing less but presuming more
Explaining science funding attitudes in the United States
While most Americans recognize the importance of funding scientific research, many are satisfied with status quo funding, and only a minority see a need for increased federal support. This poses a potential challenge to scientists’ abilities to address complex policy problems, like climate change. Previous correlational research suggests that public opposition to science funding is (at least in part) the result of low levels of knowledge about th…
Quaking in their boots? Inaccurate perceptions of seismic hazard and public policy inaction
Few Americans demand that their local policy-makers take action to address the effects of large earthquakes, even in ‘high-risk’ areas. This poses an important political problem. If policy-makers do not perceive a mandate to prepare for catastrophe, certain areas of the country may be vulnerable to loss of life and economic productivity. Why do Americans not demand more from their policy-makers? We propose a simple answer – many Americans do not …
Reducing the Administrative Demands of the Science Curiosity Scale
Science curious people—those who enjoy consuming science-related information—are less likely to hold politically polarized views about contentious science. Consequently, science curiosity is of great interest to scholars across the social sciences. However, measuring science curiosity via the science curiosity scale (SCS) is time intensive; potentially impeding its widespread usage. We present two new methods for reducing SCS administration time.…
Parent psychology and the decision to delay childhood vaccination
Political Scientists
Candidates with STEM backgrounds ran for Congress in record numbers in 2018. Understanding who participates in this form of “mobilized science,” and whether they are successful, is important because these candidates may campaign—and ultimately take action—to advance science-informed policies. However, whereas there is ample journalistic coverage of individual candidates, few scholars have studied them collectively. I constructed a novel dataset t…
Changing Minds or Changing Samples? Disentangling Microlevel Stability and Macrolevel Growth in Anthropogenic Climate Change Beliefs
Over the past decade, Americans have become increasingly likely to believe that climate change is anthropogenic, or caused by human activities (e.g., Funk & Kennedy, 2019; Gallup, 2019; Leiserowitz et al., 2019). For example, recent Gallup surveys find that while just 50% of Americans expressed belief in anthropogenic climate change (ACC) in March 2010, that number had grown by 16 percentage points (to 66%) by the end of the decade (March 2019). …
How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of Covid-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the U.S
We have yet to know the ultimate global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, we do know that delays, denials and misinformation about COVID-19 have exacerbated its spread and slowed pandemic response, particularly in the U.S. (e.g., Abutaleb et al., 2020
The Ideational Foundations of Symbolic Ideology
Theories of symbolic ideology view it as an affective orientation untouched by ideational content. Drawing on Shalom Schwartz's theory of basic human values, we propose that four bedrock values—universalism, openness to change, conservation, and self‐enhancement—shape symbolic ideology. We explore whether politically sophisticated and unsophisticated individuals ground symbolic ideological identities in cognitive values to a comparable degree. Us…
Applications & critical reflections on the VanmaN taxonomy
A Call to Arms for Climate Change? How Military Service Member Concern About Climate Change Can Inform Effective Climate Communication
Military service members are a highly trusted group – especially among ideological conservatives. Consequently, we devised an environmental communication strategy that attributes pro-climate messages to military service members, aimed at convincing conservative climate skeptics to express elevated concern. In a large survey experiment, we show that conservatives are more likely to express concern about climate change when framed as a national sec…
Understanding the climate responsibility associated with elections
Encouraging Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake Through Effective Health Communication
Context: Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic will require most Americans to vaccinate against the virus. Unfortunately, previous research suggests that many Americans plan to refuse a vaccine; thereby jeopardizing collective immunity. We investigate the effectiveness of three different health communication frames hypothesized to increase vaccine intention; emphasizing either 1) personal health risks, 2) economic costs, or 3) collective public health…
Identifying the prevalence, correlates, and policy consequences of anti-vaccine social identity
Scholarly and journalistic profiles of anti-vaxxers – i.e., individuals who are active in efforts to oppose widespread vaccination – suggest that some Americans may identify with the “anti-vaccine” label in order to fulfill social goals (e.g., a sense of belonging in a broader community). This is potentially problematic, as anti-vaxx social identification (AVSID) could imply increased receptivity to vaccine misinformation, and resistance to evide…
How Internet Access Drives Global Vaccine Skepticism
Counterintuitively, wealthier countries tend to be more vaccine skeptical than poorer countries. One possible explanation—the Online Accessibility hypothesis—posits that internet access facilitates the spread of antivaccine misinformation, particularly for those lower in scientific and medical expert trust. Another explanation—the Out of Sight hypothesis—is that some citizens in richer countries fail to consider the risks of vaccine-preventable d…
Correcting Misperceptions about the MMR Vaccine
Many Americans endorse misinformation about vaccine safety. This is problematic because those who do are more likely to resist evidence-based policies, such as mandatory vaccination for school attendance. Although many have attempted to correct misinformation about vaccines, few attempts have been successful. This study uses psychological correlates of vaccine misinformation acceptance to develop a novel misinformation correction strategy by tail…
Republicans, Not Democrats, Are More Likely to Endorse Anti-Vaccine Misinformation
Vaccine safety skeptics are often thought to be more likely to self-identify as Democrats (vs. Independents or Republicans). Recent studies, however, suggest that childhood vaccine misinformation is either more common among Republicans, or is uninfluenced by partisan identification (PID). Uncertainty about the partisan underpinnings of vaccine misinformation acceptance is important, as it could complicate efforts to pursue pro-vaccine health poli…
Can a Covid-19 vaccine live up to Americans' expectations? A conjoint analysis of how vaccine characteristics influence vaccination intentions
Correlates and disparities of intention to vaccinate against Covid-19
Political science (39 obras) · Psychology (33 obras) · Law (26 obras) · Politics (26 obras) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (23 obras) · Medicine (21 obras) · Social Psychology (17 obras) · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy (17 obras) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (16 obras) · Law (16 obras)