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Hansford, Intawan, and Nicholson in PB

February 27, 2018

Prof. Tom Hansford, graduate student Chanita Intawan, and Prof. Stephen Nicholson's paper "Snap Judgment: Implicit Perceptions of a (Political) Court" has just been published in Political Behavior. Congratulations to all!

The paper develops a novel implicit measure of political perceptions of the Supreme Court. The measure, based off the implicit association test, allows the authors to test whether the Court is perceived as a political institution. They find that while the general public do perceive the Court as somewhat political, it is perceived as less political than Congress. The new measure is shown to help explain support for the Court as an institution (what the authors term "diffuse support") and support for particular Court decisions ("specific support").