Peer-reviewed Publications

Hall, Matthew E.K., Leigh, B. Tyler, & Solomon, Brittany C. 2026. “The Overlooked Threat of Democratic Neutrality in the USA.” Nature Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02430-7.

Hall, Matthew E.K., Leigh, B. Tyler, & Solomon, Brittany C. “From free speech advocates to critics: The Trump Administration’s new rhetoric promotes support for censorship among Trump voters.” (R&R at PNAS). Summary: Most Americans claim to support freedom of speech, including President Donald Trump who has portrayed himself as an ardent defender of this constitutional right. However, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump and members of his administration began to explicitly call for speech restrictions. In a preregistered survey experiment, we found that exposure to such unusually explicit anti-speech rhetoric increased Trump voters’ support for government censorship of outparty media and individuals but prompted backlash among non-Trump voters, increasing their support for protecting outparty speech. These findings highlight the influence of elite rhetoric on public support for even the most foundational—and popular—democratic norm, raising concerns about the resilience of American democracy in the face of explicitly illiberal elites.

Research in Progress

Leigh, B. Tyler. “Deviant Ideas on Social Media Undermine Public Tolerance for Political Expression” Summary: Using two survey experiments, I show that Americans believe deviant political ideas are able to influence other Americans’ thoughts and actions via social media. In response, Americans are less tolerant of political expression, both on social media and in general.

Leigh, B. Tyler, Hall, Matthew E.K. “Democratic Cynicism: A Latent Dimension of Public Support for Democracy.” Summary: Hundreds of measures of public support for democracy exist. We conduct a systematic literature review and identify 119 unique survey items. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses identify three latent dimensions underlying public support for democracy. One factor–cynicism towards majoritarian institutions, processes, and norms–has never been identified by prior work. We identify increases in democratic cynicism over the preceding decades and show that democratic cynicism predicts anti-democratic attitudes and behaviors.

Leigh, B. Tyler & Mutz, Diana C. “The Reliability of Survey-based Measures of Social Media Use.” Summary: Survey-based self-report measures of social media use are widely criticized compared to passive observation of social media use. We challenge this viewpoint by demonstrating high psychometric reliability and stability of self-reported social media use measures in a three-wave, longitudinal panel. These results indicate that for some research questions, especially those related to estimating population-level effects of social media use with longitudinal data, self-reported social media use measures can be a useful and reliable research tool.

Leigh, B. Tyler & Mutz, Diana C. “Social Media Use and Political Polarization: Results from a Multi-year Longitudinal Panel.” Summary: Numerous studies posit one or another mechanism through which social media may contribute to political polarization, often arriving at conflicting findings. We use five waves of longitudinal data from a probability sample of Americans to identify the population-level net effect of social media use on political polarization in America. We find that television consumption is a stronger predictor of population-level political polarization than social media use. On the whole, we find little evidence that social media drive political polarization in America.