Mark Peffley, Professor

Mark Peffley

I received my Ph.D from the University of Minnesota. I study public opinion and political psychology, mostly in the U.S. but also in a comparative context. Currently, I’m involved in three projects: 1) Jon Hurwitz and I are completing a book, Justice in America: Why Black and Whites See Separate Realities, that examines the sources and political consequences of the huge gulf in the way Whites' and Blacks' view the fairness of the criminal justice system, based on a national survey funded by the NSF; 2) Michal Shamir, Marc Hutchison and I are studying how changing threats to Israeli security over the last 30 years influenced Israeli citizens' political tolerance for various domestic groups on the right and the left; and 3) I am exploring the impact of news coverage of welfare policy to explain why welfare reforms in the late 1990s failed to improve public support for welfare.

I also co-edit the journal, Political Behavior.

Areas of Specialization: Public opinion, mass media, racial attitudes and political tolerance

Selected Publications (see my Research Page)

Justice in America: Why Black and Whites See Separate Realities, (with Jon Hurwitz). Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press.

"Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America," (with Jon Hurwitz). American Journal of Political Science, 2007.

"Explaining the Great Racial Divide: Perceptions of Fairness in the U.S. Criminal Justice System," (with Jon Hurwitz). Journal of Politics, 2005.

"Playing the Race Card in the Post Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Code Words on Support for Punitive Crime Policy,"” (with Jon Hurwitz). Public Opinion Quarterly, 2005.

"Democratization and Political Tolerance in Seventeen Countries: A Multi-level Model of Democratic Learning,” (with Robert Rohrschneider). Political Research Quarterly, 56(3), 2003.