Timothy Ryan

Conditionally accepted at the APSR (w/ @scottclifford.bsky.social & @patrickpliu.bsky.social):

Why does political information so often change beliefs but NOT attitudes? We highlight the role of belief relevance, or the extent to which beliefs bear on attitudes.

Dear ANES community, the link below introduces our new Board of Advisors, led by Jamie Druckman. Jamie follows John Aldrich, who deftly chaired the Board for nearly 2 decades. This new group will guide us through the 2028 election cycle. Our deepest thanks to outgoing and incoming Board members!

After considerable discussion, my department is considering following the written portion with a short oral defense.

I didn't watch a moment of the State of the Union. Someone please tell me: is my understanding of public affairs impoverished?

I just hope both teams have fun.

Really surprised and disappointed at how few of my students showed up for my optional Zoom makeup class that happened today, a well-being day.

It could have been a three part crescendo from

UNC / Duke game
Superbowl
Logarithmic models with Professor Ryan

When are Explicit Racial Appeals Accepted? Examining the Role of Racial Status Threat - Political Behavior Evidence has emerged demonstrating that whites no longer reject negative, explicit racial appeals as they had in the past. This seeming reversal of the traditional logic of the powerlessness of explic...

Today seems like a nice day to re-up @leahchristiani.bsky.social 's excellent research on when white people approve of blatantly racist political messages. Not sure what made me think of it today, but anyway.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Donut Rule for inclement weather school closures: If the donut store nearest to the school is open, then the school should be open.

(Public schools in my area are closed for the third day running.)

Declaration of Independence: A Transcription Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling a...

For protecting [armed troops], by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.

www.archives.gov/founding-doc...

Near as I can tell, an ICE agent pulled the trigger for 2/3 of the deaths by gunfire in Minneapolis so far in 2026.

If the United States invades Greenland, would this be ethically better, worse, or the same as Russia invading the Ukraine? Why?

Can we please make it a rule, enforced at the submission stage, that if your experiment is pre-registered, you must include a link to the pre-registration or include the pre-registration in your appendix? Amazing to me how many manuscripts I review assert pre-registration, but don't show it to me.

Time for student subject pools to make a comeback! 🚀

Not great, Bob.

Careful, folks. ChatGPT appears to be daydreaming today.

It also seems basically what they tried to get Mike Pence to do on 1/6/21. Which was… problematic.

Don't mishear me! Senate malapportionment is bad. I'm just chewing over my thoughts on this particular mechanism for addressing it.

This is interesting. So the idea is that the presiding officer gets to decide the rules for tallying votes? This seems like a recipe for anarchy. E.g. the next VP could just change the rules back and now the Senate is just a proxy for the executive branch.

"Potential ethical conflicts" 🙇‍♂️

And the award for journalistic understatement of the year goes to…

It's as if we are living in a bizarro world where corruption was a virtue to be encouraged, like bravery and conscientiousness.

Something that the Santos commutation crystallizes for me is that Trump does not only *tolerate* corruption, such as when it serves his interests. (This would be bad enough.) He proactively rewards it, even when unrelated to his interests. (See also Eric Adams--a Democrat!)

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say

At Harvard, students can register for two classes that meet at the *same time* because classes are Important and we’re Very Serious about education.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...

My wife's roots are in Georgia. I've thought about how it's quite possible that one of her relatives killed one of mine, or vice-versa.

No doubt you've seen the movie Glory. (I rewatched it recently.)

Neat! Here is a history of my relative, written by someone in the National Archives, many years ago.

AI tools helped me finish a replica of the regimental flag that my 3x great grandfather fought (and died) under during the Civil War. It's based on a photo of the deteriorated flag that I got from the New Jersey State Museum.

I like how it came out! And what it symbolizes.

Yes. (See p. 8)

www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/...

Today's cute teaching example of the kind of policy that a federal bureaucrat would need to make: when a blind person hires someone to groom their seeing eye dog, is this a tax deductible medical expense? See below for the answer.

The Myth of the Campus Snowflake The students I encounter as a university president aren’t afraid of free speech—quite the contrary.

Nice mention of my Free Expression work, three paragraphs from the bottom.