This study adds to the analogic perspective-taking literature by examining whether an online perspective-taking intervention affects both antisemitic attitudes and behaviors – in particular, engagement with antisemitic websites. Subjects who were randomly assigned to the treatment viewed a 90-s video of a college student describing an experience with antisemitism and reflected on its similarity to their own experiences. In a survey, treated subjects reported greater feelings of sympathy (+29 p.p.), more positive feelings toward Jews, a greater sense that Jews are discriminated against, and more support for policy solutions (+2–4 p.p.). However, these effects did not persist after 14 days. Examining our subjects’ web browsing data, we find a 5% reduction in time spent viewing antisemitic content during the posttreatment period and some limited, suggestive evidence of effects on the number of site visits. These findings provide the first evidence that perspective-taking interventions may affect online browsing behavior.

In the final two months of the 2020 US election, we conducted eight panel experiments to evaluate the immediate and medium-term effects of misinformation and factual corrections. Our results corroborate four sets of existing findings: fact-checks reliably improve factual accuracy, while misinformation degrades it; effects of fact-checks on belief accuracy endure, though they fade with time; effects on attitudes are minuscule; and there are important partisan asymmetries. We also offer one new empirical finding suggesting that effect heterogeneities by personality type and cognitive style may reflect attention paid to treatments. Our study confirms that the fundamental push and pull of misinformation and factual corrections on political beliefs holds even in electoral settings as saturated with mistruths as the 2020 US election.

The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. By Paul M. Kellstedt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 155p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

The literature on race and public opinion has been dominated by the debate between those who emphasize the continuing role of prejudice or racial resentment and those who emphasize the role of other values and ideologies, such as limited government or individualism, in explaining sources of individual-level support and opposition to current race policy. Thus, it is refreshing to find a book like The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, which looks at racial attitudes from a different perspective. In the tradition of Howard Schuman and his colleagues in Racial Attitudes in America (1997), Paul Kellstedt demonstrates and explains variation in the American public's racial policy preferences over the last half of the twentieth-century. Kellstedt draws on the existing opinion and media effects literature to develop a theory that can explain how the public as a whole evolves on matters of race. This book's most valuable contribution comes from the specific attention he gives to media framing. Many researchers suggest a role for media coverage in the development and trajectory of racial policy preferences over this period, yet little empirical work examines this relationship. Using an innovative approach, the author provides convincing evidence that media coverage “is an important part of a system of influences that determine public opinion on race in America” (p. 134).

Freedom of expression is celebrated as one of the glories of the American political system. But does all speech deserve immunity? In particular, should speech designed to vilify or degrade on the basis of race be protected? Opinions on racist speech are complicated because they must accommodate two fundamental democratic principles that operate at cross purposes: freedom of expression, which implies support for racist speech, and racial equality, which implies the opposite. Using data from the 1990 General Social Survey, we examine how Americans resolve this conflict. Our major finding is that the principle of free expression dominates the principle of racial equality. What contemporary legal scholars regard as a hard case entailing a collision of democratic principles, ordinary Americans seem to interpret as a straightforward application of just a single principle. This result mirrors and perhaps reflects a nearly century-long and mostly lop-sided debate favouring free speech among American elites.