Diana Mutz

Diana C. Mutz, Ph.D.

Diana Mutz
  • Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication
  • Director, Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics

Diana Mutz studies political communication, political psychology, and public opinion. Her research focuses on how the American mass public relates to the political world, and how people form opinions on issues and candidates.

Diana C. Mutz is the Samuel A. Stouffer Chair in Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and also serves as Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics.

In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She also received a 2017 Carnegie Fellowship and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue research on globalization and public opinion. In 2011, she received the Lifetime Career Achievement Award in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association. She was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.

In addition to many journal articles, Mutz is the author of Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a book awarded the Robert Lane Prize for the Best Book in Political Psychology by the American Political Science Association, and the 2004 Doris Graber Prize for Most Influential Book on Political Communication published in the last ten years. In 2006, she published Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2006) which was awarded the 2007 Goldsmith Prize by Harvard University and the Robert Lane Prize for the Best Book in Political Psychology by the American Political Science Association. Most recently it received the Best Book Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Her 2015 book, In Your Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media (Princeton University Press, 2015), was awarded the David Sears Best Book Award by the International Society for Political Psychology, as well as the Doris Graber Prize by the APSA Political Communication section. She has a new book coming out in July 2021 from Princeton University Press entitled, Winners and Losers: The Psychology of Foreign Trade.

Mutz served as founding co-PI of Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), an interdisciplinary infrastructure project that continues to promote methodological innovation across the social sciences. For creating and implementing this ongoing project, Mutz and co-PI Skip Lupia received the Warren Mitofsky Innovators Award in 2007. She subsequently wrote Population-Based Survey Experiments (Princeton University Press, 2011) which offers the first book on this method, drawing examples from across the social sciences.

Before coming to Penn, Mutz taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Ohio State University.

Education

  • B.S., Northwestern University, 1984
  • A.M., Stanford University, 1985
  • Ph.D., Stanford University, 1988

Selected Publications

“Improving Experimental Treatments in Political Science” in Advances in Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

“The Progress and Pitfalls of Using Survey Experiments in Political Science” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press, 2020.

“The Dynamics of Electoral Integrity: A Three-Election Panel Study.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 2019.

“Attitudes Toward Economic Inequality: The Illusory Agreement.” Political Science Research and Methods, 2018.

“Response to Morgan: On the Role of Status Threat and Material Interests in the 2016 Election.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 2018.

“Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote.” PNAS, 2018.

“The Real Reason Liberals Drink Lattes.” PS: Political Science and Politics, 2018.

“Changing Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage: A Three-Wave Panel Study.” Political Behavior, 2018.

“The Perils of Balance Testing in Experimental Design: Messy Analyses of Clean Data.” The American Statistician, 2017.

“Measuring Trust in the Press in a Changing Media Environment.” Communication Methods and Measures, 2017.

“The Impact of In-group Favoritism on Trade Preferences.” International Organization, 2017.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Donald.” PS: Political Science and Politics, 2016.

“Effects of the Great Recession on American Attitudes Toward Trade.” British Journal of Political Science, 2016.

In-Your-Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media. Princeton University Press, 2015.

“Standards for Experimental Research: Encouraging a Better Understanding of Experimental Methods.” Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2015.

The Obama Effect: How the 2008 Campaign Changed White Racial Attitudes. Russell Sage Foundation, 2014.

“Revisiting the Effects of Case Reports in the News.” Political Communication, 2014.

“Men, Women, Trade, and Free Markets.” International Studies Quarterly, 2014.

“US versus Them: Mass Attitudes toward Offshore Outsourcing.” World Politics, 2013.

“Reflections on Hearing the Other Side, in Theory and in Practice.” Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 2013.

“All Virtue Is Relative: A Response to Prior.” Political Communication, 2013.

“Televised Exposure to Politics: New Measures for a Fragmented Media Environment.” American Journal of Political Science, 2013.

“The Great Divide: Campaign Media in the American Mind.” Dædalus, 2012.

“The Friendly Media Phenomenon: A Cross-National Analysis of Cross-Cutting Exposure.” Political Communication, 2011.

“Communication and Public Opinion: Plus Ça Change?” Public Opinion Quarterly, 2011.

Population-Based Survey Experiments. Princeton University Press, 2011.

“Not Necessarily the News: Does Fictional Television Influence Real-World Policy Preferences?” Mass Communication and Society, 2010.

“The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign.” Political Science and Politics, 2010.

“Support for Free Trade: Self-Interest, Sociotropic Politics, and Out-Group Anxiety.” International Organization, 2009.

“Online Groups and Political Discourse: Do Online Discussion Spaces Facilitate Exposure to Political Disagreement?” Journal of Communication, 2009.

“Effects of 'In-Your-Face' Television Discourse on Perceptions of a Legitimate Opposition.” The American Political Science Review, 2007.

Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

“The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust.” The American Political Science Review, 2005.

Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Political Persuasion and Attitude Change. University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Courses