Research Projects

In the J.A.G. Lab, we study Christian Nationalism through the lens of Social Dominance Theory (SDT). In SDT, beliefs, ideologies, and cultures are categorized as either hierarchy-enhancing (HE) or hierarchy-attenuating (HA). Building on scholarship showing how race moderates the effects of Christian Nationalism on symbolic ideology and attitudes toward racial justice, we inquire into how Christian Nationalism can be a more HA among White Americans To answer this, we plan to conduct a survey experiment this fall.

The literature in intraminority intergroup relations suggests that experience of disadvantage may lead to positive or negative intergroup relations. On the one hand, when the dimension of experience of a disadvantaged is different from that of another (e.g., race and gender), the former may have reduced support for the latter. On the other hand, when experiences share a dimension, the support is increased. Scholars have successfully reconciled dimensionally different experiences by framing them in such a way that they are shared. In this study, I attempt to extend this scholarship to transnational solidarity. My preliminary results provide evidence that the disadvantaged have reduced transnational solidarity for another. However, the results are nested on several assumptions and do not provide strong evidence for causality. As such, I plan to conduct a survey experiment, testing whether framing experience of a disadvantaged to make it shared will increase transnational solidarity. 

This research note was presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference 2025 in Chicago, IL in April 2025. In this study, we find that Mexicans with migration experience from the United States are 2.16 times more likely to own a gun in Mexico than if they do not have such an experience.