Department of Political Science

Political Science
1414 Social Sciences Building
267 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: 612-624-4144
Fax: 612-626-7599
E-mail: polisci@umn.edu

Paul Goren

pgoren@umn.edu
Social Sciences 1439
612-626-7489

Paul Goren is an associate professor of political science and serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Political Psychology Ph.D. Minor. He is also a core member of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology. He joined Minnesota in the fall of 2006, after having taught previously at Arizona State University and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. His research interests center on the role citizens play in the American political system, specifically, whether politically unsophisticated citizens are capable of grounding their political choices in broader beliefs and values; the extent to which policy attitudes shape voter choice in U.S. presidential elections; the impact partisan bias has on political perception, judgment and behavior; the extent to which racial prejudice and stereotypes shape political attitudes and behavior; and the stability of political attitudes, beliefs, and identities. He teaches courses on public opinion, voting behavior, political psychology, political parties, basic probability and statistics, and econometrics.

Currently, he is working on a book entitled On Voter Competence (under contract with Oxford University Press: Series in Political Psychology). To date, the study of policy voting has been dominated by two questions. First, to what extent do liberal-conservative orientations shape voter choice? Second, to what extent do issue preferences guide voter choice? According to the sophistication interaction model that dominates the study of electoral behavior and political psychology, the propensity to vote on the basis of liberal-conservative attitudes and issues preferences–the first two faces of policy voting–is conditional on political sophistication. This in turn implies that the sophisticated approximate the standards of citizen competence more closely than the unsophisticated. This view is correct as far as it goes, but it ignores the possibility that a third face of policy voting exists. The central argument in my book is that political sophistication matters far less for political choice than typically supposed. My key theoretical claims are that (1) economic welfare, moral traditionalism, and hawk-dove orientations serve as the central policy attitudes in the belief systems of all citizens and (2) these principles shape the presidential vote to a comparable degree for citizens across the sophistication spectrum. These principles represent domain specific beliefs about what government should do in the major policy areas that define the American political agenda, and thus, are broader than preferences on specific issues. Moreover, because they are easy to develop and maintain, they come to shape voter choice for the sophisticated and unsophisticated alike. My analysis of opinion data covering the 1984-2008 presidential elections and data from two national surveys I conducted in 2007 and 2008 supports these claims. Put simply, the American voter policy votes to a much greater extent than currently recognized.

In his spare time , Professor Goren can be found squatting and deadlifting; deconstructing Lost; grooving to the sweet sounds of the Acid Mothers Temple Underground; and, most importantly, having fun with his family.

Links

Click here for a copy of his vita

Click here for information regarding the Political Psychology Minor

Click here for information regarding the Center for the Study of Political Psychology

Areas of Specialization

  • American Government and Politics
  • Public Opinion
  • Voting Behavior
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Culture
  • Political Parties
  • Applied Statistics

Educational Background

  • Ph. D., Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, 1998
  • M. A., Political Science, University of Pittsburgh , 1994
  • B. S., Industrial Management with University Honors, Carnegie Mellon University , 1989

Recent Publications

Replication Files

Courses Taught

  • 3766: Political Psychology of Mass Behavior
  • 4767: Public Opinion and Voting Behavior
  • 8123: Introduction to Quantitative Political Analysis
  • 8302: Public Opinion and Political Participation
  • 8360: Campaigns, Elections, and Voters