About Me
Hello! My name is Chano Arreguin, the proud son of Mexican immigrants born and raised in California's Central Valley. PhD in Political Science, Rice University (Dissertation defended, degree expected May, 2025). I completed a BA in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Research
My academic interests are understanding the sources and consequences of public opinion and how the masses can make competent political decisions. More specifically, I am interested in how expressive social or partisan identities interact with more instrumental policy desires in influencing political attitudes and behavior. My experimentalist approach specifies and tests key features in choice settings that may influence behavior. I am also interested in drawing links with the human evolutionary sciences whenever helpful in presenting a more comprehensive explanation of human behavior.
- American Politics
- Public Opinion
- Political Psychology
- Experimental Methods
- Evolutionary Social Science
Publications
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Arreguin, (2023) "Partisan niche construction: Out-party affect, geographic sorting, and mate selection." Politics and the Life Sciences.
Download Article
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Analysis Files
- Covered in PsyPost
Works in Progress (email for most recent draft)
- Arreguin, "The Conditionally Competent Voter: When Instrumental versus Expressive Motivations Influence Decision-Making"
- Arreguin, "The Contours of Preferences for Economic Policy Outcomes"
- Arreguin, "How Substantive Policy Outcomes Affect Partisan Animosity"
Voter competence -- the ability of voters to elect politicians into office who can effectively bring about desired or positive outcomes -- is subject to continual debate in political science. One camp argues that voters are largely ignorant of policy outcomes, showcasing when constituents are driven by their identity rooted in emotional attachments to social groups. This contrasts the "rational" view of democratic accountability, which presents evidence that policy issues and other objective outcomes drive voter behavior. I argue that both sources of motivation can coexist, and show how context determines which source ultimately influences decision-making. In contexts where there is greater attribution of policy outcomes that voter’s care about to incumbent actions, this component is weighed more heavily. In contexts where policy outcomes are "noisier," the identity component attains more weight in decision-making. I design a novel randomized controlled experiment and find evidence for the argument.
It is often an unquestioned assumption that partisans in the United States want different policy outcomes given their varying political preferences and choices. Whether rooted in values, a salient identity, interests, or elite rhetoric, opposing partisan preferences that lead to different political choices are implicitly linked to desires for distinct policy outcomes. An issue with this link is the fact that revealed preferences in political contexts are biased revelations of true preferences given strategic thinking. Additionally, direct connections between outcomes and future preferences are themselves difficult to draw since outcomes are generally noisy preventing a clear linkage. The resulting uncertainty complicates inference of true preferences from constituent retrospective updating given policy outcomes. I conduct a conjoint experiment to gauge the extent to which partisans prefer different outcomes, where revealed preference is directly coupled to policy outcomes. The results illustrate a nuanced picture of partisan preferences.
Out-partisan animosity in the United States has grown, yet its root causes remain challenging to disentangle even with experimental designs. One perspective provides evidence for a model where identity and partisan loyalty are the dominant forces driving animosity. An alternate view shows how such evidence could be observationally equivalent to a model where policy and substance were what truly mattered. In this study, I draw on a novel theoretical argument to design an experiment that isolates a unique effect of substance on animosity. Using a vignette-style design adapated from prior studies, I measure levels of animosity toward individuals whose partisanship and policy stances vary. I test whether animosity increases in conditions where elected officials are shown to have greater control over policy outcomes (low noise context), compared to conditions where they have less control (high noise context). The results indicate that policy disagreement in low noise contexts result in a unique increase in interpersonal animosity illustrating an effect solely attributable to substance.
Contact Me
Email: ca34@rice.edu
X/Twitter: @ChanoArreguin