At conference in Berkeley, QSS major presents research on social cues

At a political psychology conference held at the University of California, Berkeley, on August 30, 2017, Alexander Agadjanian `18 (QSS and Government double major) presented his paper, "Source Cue Effects and Policy Considerations in Transnational Opinion Formation.” This paper describes a survey experiment that Agadjanian fielded in Japan; the survey sought to measure the impact that the nascent Trump presidency might have on global public opinion toward the United States. Among other things, Agadjanian shows that attributing a United States policy message to Trump causes Japanese opinions of the United States to worsen relative to a message attributed to an anonymous Congressman.  However,  the hostility or friendliness of a policy message has a greater influence on Japanese reaction than the message’s source. Agadjanian was joined at the Berkeley conference by three other Dartmouth undergraduates, who presented a paper on media and false information.  All of these students have taken statistics and/or data visualization courses with QSS Steering Committee member Yusaku Horiuchi, who has advised the students on their projects and is co-authoring with them. The Department of Government at Dartmouth provided partial funding for the students to attend the conference.