Douglas J Ahler
Biographic Data
| ID | 4386455 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Douglas J Ahler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Douglas J |
| FAMILY NAME | Ahler |
| SIGNATURE | AHLER D J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Florida State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7298-6233 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 462 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The micro-task market for lemons
While Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has reduced the cost of collecting original data, in 2018, researchers noted the potential existence of a large number of bad actors on the platform. To evaluate data quality on MTurk, we fielded three surveys between 2018 and 2020. While we find no evidence of a “bot epidemic,” significant portions of the data—between 25 and 35 percent—are of dubious quality. While the number of IP addresses that completed …
Typecast
Misinformation and Mass Audiences
The Group Theory of Parties
An emerging narrative contends that 2016 was significant for bridging identity politics and American party conflict. This narrative misses a fundamental truth: for ordinary Americans, partisan identity has always been grounded in their orientations toward groups in society. The group theory of parties holds that citizens evaluate political parties according to their social stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans, ultimately identifying (or not) …
The Parties in Our Heads
We document a large and consequential bias in how Americans perceive the major political parties: people tend to considerably overestimate the extent to which party supporters belong to party-stereotypical groups. For instance, people think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (vs. 6% in reality) and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (vs. 2% in reality). Experimental data suggest that these misperceptions are genuine and party specific, no…
The Delegate Paradox
Many argue for political reforms intended to resolve apparent disjunctures between politicians' ideologically polarized policy positions and citizens less-polarized policy preferences. Here we show such apparent disjunctures can arise even when politicians represent their constituencies well, and that resolving them would likely degrade political representation. These counterintuitive results arise from a paradox whereby polarized politicians can…
Face Value? Experimental Evidence that Candidate Appearance Influences Electoral Choice
Do Open Primaries Improve Representation? An Experimental Test of California's 2012 Top‐Two Primary
To improve representation and alleviate polarization among US lawmakers, many have promoted open primaries—allowing voters to choose candidates from any party—but the evidence that this reform works is mixed. To determine whether open primaries lead voters to choose ideologically proximate candidates, we conducted a statewide experiment just before California's 2012 primaries, the first conducted under a new top‐two format. We find that voters fa…
Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization
Mass media convey deep divisions among citizens despite scant evidence for such ideological polarization. Do ordinary citizens perceive themselves to be more extreme and divided than they actually are? If so, what are the ramifications of such misperception? A representative sample from California provides evidence that voters from both sides of the state’s political divide perceive both their liberal and conservative peers’ positions as more ext…
The Parties in Our Heads
We document a large and consequential bias in how Americans perceive the major political parties: people tend to considerably overestimate the extent to which party supporters belong to party-stereotypical groups. For instance, people think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (vs. 6% in reality) and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (vs. 2% in reality). Experimental data suggest that these misperceptions are genuine and party specific, no…
Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization
Mass media convey deep divisions among citizens despite scant evidence for such ideological polarization. Do ordinary citizens perceive themselves to be more extreme and divided than they actually are? If so, what are the ramifications of such misperception? A representative sample from California provides evidence that voters from both sides of the state’s political divide perceive both their liberal and conservative peers’ positions as more ext…
The Delegate Paradox
Many argue for political reforms intended to resolve apparent disjunctures between politicians' ideologically polarized policy positions and citizens less-polarized policy preferences. Here we show such apparent disjunctures can arise even when politicians represent their constituencies well, and that resolving them would likely degrade political representation. These counterintuitive results arise from a paradox whereby polarized politicians can…
Face Value? Experimental Evidence that Candidate Appearance Influences Electoral Choice
The micro-task market for lemons
While Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has reduced the cost of collecting original data, in 2018, researchers noted the potential existence of a large number of bad actors on the platform. To evaluate data quality on MTurk, we fielded three surveys between 2018 and 2020. While we find no evidence of a “bot epidemic,” significant portions of the data—between 25 and 35 percent—are of dubious quality. While the number of IP addresses that completed …
Do Open Primaries Improve Representation? An Experimental Test of California's 2012 Top‐Two Primary
To improve representation and alleviate polarization among US lawmakers, many have promoted open primaries—allowing voters to choose candidates from any party—but the evidence that this reform works is mixed. To determine whether open primaries lead voters to choose ideologically proximate candidates, we conducted a statewide experiment just before California's 2012 primaries, the first conducted under a new top‐two format. We find that voters fa…
Typecast
The Group Theory of Parties
An emerging narrative contends that 2016 was significant for bridging identity politics and American party conflict. This narrative misses a fundamental truth: for ordinary Americans, partisan identity has always been grounded in their orientations toward groups in society. The group theory of parties holds that citizens evaluate political parties according to their social stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans, ultimately identifying (or not) …
Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization
Mass media convey deep divisions among citizens despite scant evidence for such ideological polarization. Do ordinary citizens perceive themselves to be more extreme and divided than they actually are? If so, what are the ramifications of such misperception? A representative sample from California provides evidence that voters from both sides of the state’s political divide perceive both their liberal and conservative peers’ positions as more ext…
Do Open Primaries Improve Representation? An Experimental Test of California's 2012 Top‐Two Primary
To improve representation and alleviate polarization among US lawmakers, many have promoted open primaries—allowing voters to choose candidates from any party—but the evidence that this reform works is mixed. To determine whether open primaries lead voters to choose ideologically proximate candidates, we conducted a statewide experiment just before California's 2012 primaries, the first conducted under a new top‐two format. We find that voters fa…
Face Value? Experimental Evidence that Candidate Appearance Influences Electoral Choice
Misinformation and Mass Audiences
The Group Theory of Parties
An emerging narrative contends that 2016 was significant for bridging identity politics and American party conflict. This narrative misses a fundamental truth: for ordinary Americans, partisan identity has always been grounded in their orientations toward groups in society. The group theory of parties holds that citizens evaluate political parties according to their social stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans, ultimately identifying (or not) …
The Parties in Our Heads
We document a large and consequential bias in how Americans perceive the major political parties: people tend to considerably overestimate the extent to which party supporters belong to party-stereotypical groups. For instance, people think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (vs. 6% in reality) and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (vs. 2% in reality). Experimental data suggest that these misperceptions are genuine and party specific, no…
The Delegate Paradox
Many argue for political reforms intended to resolve apparent disjunctures between politicians' ideologically polarized policy positions and citizens less-polarized policy preferences. Here we show such apparent disjunctures can arise even when politicians represent their constituencies well, and that resolving them would likely degrade political representation. These counterintuitive results arise from a paradox whereby polarized politicians can…
Typecast
The micro-task market for lemons
While Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has reduced the cost of collecting original data, in 2018, researchers noted the potential existence of a large number of bad actors on the platform. To evaluate data quality on MTurk, we fielded three surveys between 2018 and 2020. While we find no evidence of a “bot epidemic,” significant portions of the data—between 25 and 35 percent—are of dubious quality. While the number of IP addresses that completed …
Political science (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Polarization (electrochemistry (5 works)