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Faculty Member, Ray Block and Graduate Students, Kayla Kahn and Michael Burnham Get Article Published

Faculty Member, Ray Block and Graduate Students, Kayla Kahn and Michael Burnham Get Article Published

 

Congratulations to Ray Block, Brown-McCourtney Career Development Professor in the McCourtney Institute and Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies and graduate students, Kayla Khan and Mike Burnham in PLSC, along with Rachel Peng in CAS, Jeremy Seeman in STAT, and Christopher Seto in SOC.  Their article (“Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines”) was recently published in Social Science and Medicine! 

The article studies risk assessment and response that is important for understanding human behavior. The divisive context surrounding the coronavirus pandemic inspired their exploration of risk perceptions and the polarization of mitigation practices (i.e., the degree to which the behaviors of people on the political “Left” diverge from those on the “Right”). Specifically, they investigate the extent to which the political polarization of willingness to comply with mitigation behaviors changes with risk perceptions.