Melissa R. Michelson

American public opinion tends to be sticky. Although the news cycle might temporarily affect the public zeitgeist about abortion, the death penalty, or gun control, public support or opposition on these issues has remained remarkably constant over decades. But there are notable exceptions, particularly with regard to polarizing issues that highlight identity politics. Over the past three decades, public support for same-sex marriage has risen from scarcely more than a tenth to a majority of the population. Why have people's minds changed so dramatically on this issue, and why so quickly? Listen, We Need to Talk tests a theory that when prominent people representing particular interest groups voice support for a culturally contentious issue, they sway the opinions of others who identify with the same group, even if the interest group and the issue at hand have no obvious connection. In fact this book shows that the more the message counters prevailing beliefs or attitudes of a particular identity group, the more persuasive it is. While previous studies of political attitude change have looked at the effects of message priming (who delivers a message) on issues directly related to particular identity groups, this study is unique in that it looks at how identity priming affects attitudes and behaviors toward an issue that is not central or directly related to the targeted group. The authors prove their theory through a series of random experiments testing the positive effects of identity-based messaging regarding same-sex marriage among fans of professional sports, religious groups, and ethnoracial (Black and Latino) groups.

How the Party at the Mailbox efforts in 2020-2024 led by Black Girls Vote used celebrations of community to increase voter turnout Black voters continue to transform America's electoral landscape and can play a powerful role in determining the outcome of elections. In Party at the Ballot Box, Melissa R. Michelson, Stephanie L. DeMora, and Sarah V. Hayes explore the impact of celebratory voter mobilization campaigns led by Black-led organizations on Black turnout, particularly as more states embrace voting-by-mail. Focusing on the Party at the Mailbox (PATM) initiative, coordinated by Black Girls Vote, Michelson, DeMora, and Hayes underscore what, exactly, motivates Black voters to show up to the polls. Using community-based informational and celebratory packages of materials, and with a mixed methods approach that includes randomized controlled trials, surveys, interviews, and focus groups, they show us how the PATM pilot increased Black turnout in Baltimore by double digits in the 2020 primaries. Despite voting by mail while sheltering in place, PATM made voters feel part of something bigger than themselves—that they were voting as a community. The successful pilot led to further PATM efforts in Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Richmond, and Philadelphia between November 2020 and November 2024. Ultimately, the authors argue that Black Americans vote as a celebration of community, and that cultivating that sense of community is an effective means of increasing Black voter turnout. With a foreword by Nykidra Robinson, founder of Black Girls Vote, Party at the Ballot Box provides insights into Black voter turnout and its larger implications.

How the Party at the Mailbox efforts in 2020-2024 led by Black Girls Vote used celebrations of community to increase voter turnout Black voters continue to transform America's electoral landscape and can play a powerful role in determining the outcome of elections. In Party at the Ballot Box, Melissa R. Michelson, Stephanie L. DeMora, and Sarah V. Hayes explore the impact of celebratory voter mobilization campaigns led by Black-led organizations on Black turnout, particularly as more states embrace voting-by-mail. Focusing on the Party at the Mailbox (PATM) initiative, coordinated by Black Girls Vote, Michelson, DeMora, and Hayes underscore what, exactly, motivates Black voters to show up to the polls. Using community-based informational and celebratory packages of materials, and with a mixed methods approach that includes randomized controlled trials, surveys, interviews, and focus groups, they show us how the PATM pilot increased Black turnout in Baltimore by double digits in the 2020 primaries. Despite voting by mail while sheltering in place, PATM made voters feel part of something bigger than themselves—that they were voting as a community. The successful pilot led to further PATM efforts in Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Richmond, and Philadelphia between November 2020 and November 2024. Ultimately, the authors argue that Black Americans vote as a celebration of community, and that cultivating that sense of community is an effective means of increasing Black voter turnout. With a foreword by Nykidra Robinson, founder of Black Girls Vote, Party at the Ballot Box provides insights into Black voter turnout and its larger implications.

"Given the current sociopolitical climate, this reference provides much-needed information on the challenges the LGBTQ community faces today." – Choice This indispensable book debunks common myths and misconceptions about the LGBTQ community while providing accurate information about LGBTQ people, their successes and shared history, and the current challenges they face in American society. This book provides readers with a clear and unbiased understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ in the United States in the 2020s. Beginning with the origins of LGBTQ identity and history, the book addresses the current status of the LGBTQ community; gender expectations and performance in American culture; transgender and non-binary identity; behaviors and outcomes associated with LGBTQ people; and, finally, diversity within the community. Utilizing authoritative sources and lay-friendly definitions and explanations, this work punctures myths, misconceptions, and incorrect assumptions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expectations and norms. In addition, it provides an illuminating record of the history of discrimination and mistreatment to which LGBTQ people have historically been subjected in America. At a time when information itself is increasingly fraught in American political discourse, this book provides facts and context for the most important questions facing LGBTQ Americans, past, present, and future.

"Given the current sociopolitical climate, this reference provides much-needed informationon the challenges the LGBTQ community faces today." – ChoiceThis indispensable book debunks common myths and misconceptions about the LGBTQ community while providing accurate information about LGBTQ people, their successes and shared history, and the current challenges they face in American society. This book provides readers with a clear and unbiased understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ in the United States in the 2020s. Beginning with the origins of LGBTQ identity and history, the book addresses the current status of the LGBTQ community; gender expectations and performance in American culture; transgender and non-binary identity; behaviors and outcomes associated with LGBTQ people; and, finally, diversity within the community. Utilizing authoritative sources and lay-friendly definitions and explanations, this work punctures myths, misconceptions, and incorrect assumptions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expectations and norms. In addition, it provides an illuminating record of the history of discrimination and mistreatment to which LGBTQ people have historically been subjected in America. At a time when information itself is increasingly fraught in American political discourse, this book provides facts and context for the most important questions facing LGBTQ Americans, past, present, and future.

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consenting adults. However, support for transgender individuals lags far behind; a significant majority of Americans do not support the right of transgender people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, public spaces, health care, legal documents, and other areas. Much of this is due to deeply entrenched ideas about the definition of gender, perceptions that transgender people are not "real" or are suffering from mental illness, and fears that extending rights to transgender people will come at the expense of the rights of others. So how do you get people to rethink their prejudices? In this book, Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison examine what tactics are effective in changing public opinion regarding transgender people. The result is a new approach that they call Identity Reassurance Theory. The idea is that individuals need to feel confident in their own identity before they can embrace a stigmatized group like transgender people, and that support of members of an outgroup can be encouraged by affirming the self-esteem of those targeted for attitude change. Michelson and Harrison, through their experiments, show that the most effective messaging on transgender issues meets people where they are, acknowledges their discomfort without judgment or criticism, and helps them to think about transgender people and rights in a way that aligns with their view of themselves as moral human beings.

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consenting adults. However, support for transgender individuals lags far behind; a significant majority of Americans do not support the right of transgender people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, public spaces, health care, legal documents, and other areas. Much of this is due to deeply entrenched ideas about the definition of gender, perceptions that transgender people are not "real" or are suffering from mental illness, and fears that extending rights to transgender people will come at the expense of the rights of others. So how do you get people to rethink their prejudices? In this book, Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison examine what tactics are effective in changing public opinion regarding transgender people. The result is a new approach that they call Identity Reassurance Theory. The idea is that individuals need to feel confident in their own identity before they can embrace a stigmatized group like transgender people, and that support of members of an outgroup can be encouraged by affirming the self-esteem of those targeted for attitude change. Michelson and Harrison, through their experiments, show that the most effective messaging on transgender issues meets people where they are, acknowledges their discomfort without judgment or criticism, and helps them to think about transgender people and rights in a way that aligns with their view of themselves as moral human beings.

Clergy are pillars of local religious communities, and Roman Catholic priests are perhaps the quintessential examples of pastors functioning as political elites. The political science literature demonstrates that priests (indeed, clergy more generally) are well-positioned to influence the faithful, even if this influence is somewhat inconsistent. At their core, priests are opinion leaders and representatives of their church to both the faithful and their local communities. But exactly how Catholic priests determine the political acts and attitudes associated with their elite role remains a puzzle. We suggest it is the product of an interactive institutional, social, and psychological milieu, the complexity of which has not been fully assessed in the extant literature. Though some might prefer to think of priests as profiles in courage operating above the political fray, the institutional and personal realities of priest life often forces them to deal with the political realm. In doing so, priests are variably responsive to different principals, or reference groups, that represent specific dimensions of their professional context. Drawing on a series of randomized experiments on samples of Roman Catholic priests in the US and Ireland, we find that priests cognitively draw on varying professional and personal cues in responding to their employer’s institutional preferences. Furthermore, how priests represent their church's political preferences to parishioners appears to be a matter of individual-level discretion.

American public opinion tends to be sticky. Although the news cycle might temporarily affect the public zeitgeist about abortion, the death penalty, or gun control, public support or opposition on these issues has remained remarkably constant over decades. But there are notable exceptions, particularly with regard to polarizing issues that highlight identity politics. Over the past three decades, public support for same-sex marriage has risen from scarcely more than a tenth to a majority of the population. Why have people's minds changed so dramatically on this issue, and why so quickly? Listen, We Need to Talk tests a theory that when prominent people representing particular interest groups voice support for a culturally contentious issue, they sway the opinions of others who identify with the same group, even if the interest group and the issue at hand have no obvious connection. In fact this book shows that the more the message counters prevailing beliefs or attitudes of a particular identity group, the more persuasive it is. While previous studies of political attitude change have looked at the effects of message priming (who delivers a message) on issues directly related to particular identity groups, this study is unique in that it looks at how identity priming affects attitudes and behaviors toward an issue that is not central or directly related to the targeted group. The authors prove their theory through a series of random experiments testing the positive effects of identity-based messaging regarding same-sex marriage among fans of professional sports, religious groups, and ethnoracial (Black and Latino) groups.

In 2012, President Obama deferred the deportation of qualified undocumented youth with his policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals forever changing the lives of the approximately five million DREAMers currently in the United States. Formerly illegal, a generation of Latino youth have begun to build new lives based on their newfound legitimacy. In this book, the first to examine the lives of DREAMers in the wake of Obama s deferred action policy, the authors relay the real-life stories of more than 100 DREAMers from four states. They assess the life circumstances in which undocumented Latino youth find themselves, the racializing effects generated by current immigration public discourse, and the permanent impact of this policy environment on DREAMers in America."

In 2012, President Obama deferred the deportation of qualified undocumented youth with his policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals forever changing the lives of the approximately five million DREAMers currently in the United States. Formerly illegal, a generation of Latino youth have begun to build new lives based on their newfound legitimacy. In this book, the first to examine the lives of DREAMers in the wake of Obama s deferred action policy, the authors relay the real-life stories of more than 100 DREAMers from four states. They assess the life circumstances in which undocumented Latino youth find themselves, the racializing effects generated by current immigration public discourse, and the permanent impact of this policy environment on DREAMers in America."

Which get-out-the-vote efforts actually succeed in ethnoracial communities—and why? Analyzing the results from hundreds of original experiments, the authors of this book offer a persuasive new theory to explain why some methods work while others don’t. Exploring and comparing a wide variety of efforts targeting ethnoracial voters, Lisa García Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson present a new theoretical frame—the Social Cognition Model of voting, based on an individual’s sense of civic identity—for understanding get-out-the-vote effectiveness. Their book will serve as a useful guide for political practitioners, for it offers concrete strategies to employ in developing future mobilization efforts.