Robin Bayes
Biographic Data
| ID | 3979201 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin Bayes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin |
| FAMILY NAME | Bayes |
| SIGNATURE | BAYES R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8795-8451 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Seeing the same evidence differently: Biased assimilation and moral conviction in public evaluations of scientific expertise
Particularly in democracies like the United States, the effective use of expertise to inform better policy decisions depends on public buy‐in. One barrier to this is biased assimilation, wherein individuals evaluate expert‐based knowledge, and the experts who promote it, differently based on alignment with their existing policy attitudes. While biased assimilation effects are well‐established, less is known about whether attitude‐level attributes…
Responsibility Attribution for Supreme Court Decision-Making: Politicization, Partisanship, and Dobbs
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ambiguous institutional position—insulated from external pressures yet retaining important linkages with elected officials—complicates how the public assigns responsibility for its decisions. Using a survey experiment that shows respondents information about Dobbs , we explore how messages that politicize or depoliticize the Court affect responsibility attribution for Court decisions. We find that politicizing the Court i…
A matter of right or wrong: Divisive attributes of moralized science and technology attitudes
In recent years, scholars have theorized that one factor enflaming public divides over science and technology is moralization: an individual’s perception that their position on an issue is rooted in fundamental moral right and wrong. In this article, I provide evidence for this proposition across five pre-registered hypotheses about the divisive attributes of moralized attitudes in the context of science and technology. Using public opinion data …
A Research Agenda for Climate Change Communication and Public Opinion: The Role of Scientific Consensus Messaging and Beyond
That climate change has been accelerated by human activity is supported by a near-universal consensus of climate scientists. In this paper, we review many of the studies that have been done on the impact of communicating the scientific consensus to the general public. We discuss ongoing debates about these studies, but more importantly, we highlight complementary areas that we believe should define future research. We emphasize how a focus on pro…
A motivational systems approach to investigating opinions on climate change
Understanding how people form opinions about climate change has proven to be challenging. One of the most common approaches to studying climate change beliefs is to assume people employ motivated reasoning. We first detail how scholars in this area have applied motivated reasoning perspectives, identifying a variety of different judgment goals on which they have focused. We next argue that existing findings fail to conclusively show motivated rea…
Moral Convictions and Threats to Science
When science is marshaled to support one side or another in policy debates, people can react to that information differently depending on whether it supports their own position. They tend to find fault in unfavorable information and accept favorable information less critically. This may especially be the case when individuals' positions are held with moral conviction-that is, when their position is not only their preferred position, but when it i…
Studying Science Inequities: How to Use Surveys to Study Diverse Populations
Scholars have long documented unequal access to the benefits of science among different groups in the United States. Particular populations, such as low-income, non-white people, and Indigenous people, fare worse when it comes to health care, infectious diseases, climate change, and access to technology. These types of inequities can be partially addressed with targeted interventions aimed at facilitating access to scientific information. Doing s…
When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning
It is commonly assumed that the effectiveness of political messages depends on people's motivations. Yet, studies of politically motivated reasoning typically only consider what partisans generally might want to believe and do not separately examine the different types of motives that likely underlie these wants. The present research explores the roles of distinct types of motives in politically motivated thinking and identifies the conditions un…
When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning
It is commonly assumed that the effectiveness of political messages depends on people's motivations. Yet, studies of politically motivated reasoning typically only consider what partisans generally might want to believe and do not separately examine the different types of motives that likely underlie these wants. The present research explores the roles of distinct types of motives in politically motivated thinking and identifies the conditions un…
Studying Science Inequities: How to Use Surveys to Study Diverse Populations
Scholars have long documented unequal access to the benefits of science among different groups in the United States. Particular populations, such as low-income, non-white people, and Indigenous people, fare worse when it comes to health care, infectious diseases, climate change, and access to technology. These types of inequities can be partially addressed with targeted interventions aimed at facilitating access to scientific information. Doing s…
Moral Convictions and Threats to Science
When science is marshaled to support one side or another in policy debates, people can react to that information differently depending on whether it supports their own position. They tend to find fault in unfavorable information and accept favorable information less critically. This may especially be the case when individuals' positions are held with moral conviction-that is, when their position is not only their preferred position, but when it i…
When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning
It is commonly assumed that the effectiveness of political messages depends on people's motivations. Yet, studies of politically motivated reasoning typically only consider what partisans generally might want to believe and do not separately examine the different types of motives that likely underlie these wants. The present research explores the roles of distinct types of motives in politically motivated thinking and identifies the conditions un…
A motivational systems approach to investigating opinions on climate change
Understanding how people form opinions about climate change has proven to be challenging. One of the most common approaches to studying climate change beliefs is to assume people employ motivated reasoning. We first detail how scholars in this area have applied motivated reasoning perspectives, identifying a variety of different judgment goals on which they have focused. We next argue that existing findings fail to conclusively show motivated rea…
Moral Convictions and Threats to Science
When science is marshaled to support one side or another in policy debates, people can react to that information differently depending on whether it supports their own position. They tend to find fault in unfavorable information and accept favorable information less critically. This may especially be the case when individuals' positions are held with moral conviction-that is, when their position is not only their preferred position, but when it i…
Studying Science Inequities: How to Use Surveys to Study Diverse Populations
Scholars have long documented unequal access to the benefits of science among different groups in the United States. Particular populations, such as low-income, non-white people, and Indigenous people, fare worse when it comes to health care, infectious diseases, climate change, and access to technology. These types of inequities can be partially addressed with targeted interventions aimed at facilitating access to scientific information. Doing s…
A Research Agenda for Climate Change Communication and Public Opinion: The Role of Scientific Consensus Messaging and Beyond
That climate change has been accelerated by human activity is supported by a near-universal consensus of climate scientists. In this paper, we review many of the studies that have been done on the impact of communicating the scientific consensus to the general public. We discuss ongoing debates about these studies, but more importantly, we highlight complementary areas that we believe should define future research. We emphasize how a focus on pro…
A matter of right or wrong: Divisive attributes of moralized science and technology attitudes
In recent years, scholars have theorized that one factor enflaming public divides over science and technology is moralization: an individual’s perception that their position on an issue is rooted in fundamental moral right and wrong. In this article, I provide evidence for this proposition across five pre-registered hypotheses about the divisive attributes of moralized attitudes in the context of science and technology. Using public opinion data …
Seeing the same evidence differently: Biased assimilation and moral conviction in public evaluations of scientific expertise
Particularly in democracies like the United States, the effective use of expertise to inform better policy decisions depends on public buy‐in. One barrier to this is biased assimilation, wherein individuals evaluate expert‐based knowledge, and the experts who promote it, differently based on alignment with their existing policy attitudes. While biased assimilation effects are well‐established, less is known about whether attitude‐level attributes…
Responsibility Attribution for Supreme Court Decision-Making: Politicization, Partisanship, and Dobbs
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ambiguous institutional position—insulated from external pressures yet retaining important linkages with elected officials—complicates how the public assigns responsibility for its decisions. Using a survey experiment that shows respondents information about Dobbs , we explore how messages that politicize or depoliticize the Court affect responsibility attribution for Court decisions. We find that politicizing the Court i…
Climate Change Communication and Perception (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Ecology (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (3 works) · Public relations (3 works) · Biology (2 works)