Research

I study how political communication, elite strategy, and psychology shape (1) the dynamics of conflict escalation and deescalation and (2) public opinion on international cooperation and democracy, with a focus on East Asia, the United States, and their interactions.

Situated in the global context of rising misinformation on social media, my research unpacks how authoritarian actors use propaganda to distort public opinion and manipulate mass beliefs, with implications for political violence and authoritarian resilience. I also examine how great power competition between China and the United States constrains public support for international cooperation and under what conditions such constraints can be tamped down, shedding light on the interplay between domestic politics and international relations through the lens of political psychology. Concerned about the Taiwan Strait crisis and its implications for regional and international security, my ongoing projects combine behavioral frameworks with modern social science techniques to study deterrence.

Much of my research is driven by normative and policy concerns. To date, my research has been funded by the American Political Science Association, the Halle Institute for Global Research, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Stand Together Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Publications

• Wang, Hsu Yumin, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. Forthcoming. “Mimicking Democracy: The Legitimizing Role of Redistributionist Propaganda in Autocracies.” The Journal of Politics. [replication material]
  • Keywords: propaganda, redistribution, autocracy, democratic legitimacy, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    Autocrats often disseminate propaganda to boast about their redistributive efforts. Why is such propaganda so prevalent in autocracies? We propose a novel explanation: redistributionist propaganda helps autocrats fortify a façade of democracy. Our argument is premised on nuanced understandings of democracy among the masses: many citizens do not hold a strict, procedural view of democracy; instead, they often understand democracy through the lens of social equity. Exploiting such nuanced understandings of democracy, autocrats can deploy redistributionist propaganda to manipulate public opinion on how “equity-promoting”—and therefore how “democracy-promoting”—the regime is. To evaluate our argument, we first demonstrate with extensive cross-national survey data that perceived social equity strongly predicts perceived democratic legitimacy among global citizens. We then probe the causal effect of redistributionist propaganda by using a preregistered survey experiment that exploits real-world propaganda material in China. Consistent with our argument, respondents exposed to redistributionist propaganda evaluated China’s democracy more positively.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Weifang Xu. Forthcoming. “Do External Threats Increase Bipartisanship in the United States? An Experimental Test in the Shadow of China’s Rise.” Political Science Research and Methods. [replication material]
  • Keywords: external threat, polarization, elite cues, foreign policy, US-China relations, replication
  • Abstract:

    Do external threats increase American bipartisanship? While previous scholarship suggests they do, recent research argues that security threats from foreign adversaries may further polarize Americans amid hyperpartisanship, as information about external threats is often filtered through partisan lens. We subject these competing perspectives to an experimental test. Leveraging the Biden and Trump administrations’ similar characterization of the China threat, we exposed American respondents to real-world primes about security threats from China, while randomizing the messenger of such primes. Our preregistered experiment shows that the threat primes—regardless of the partisan identity of their messenger—boosted Democrats’ and Republicans’ support for assertive foreign policy in a largely parallel manner, thereby failing to reduce preference polarization. Importantly, there were no measurable changes across multiple indicators of affective polarization. These findings clarify the limits of external threats in uniting Americans, while also challenging recent perspectives that external threats—often colored by elite rhetoric—will further polarize the American public.
• Chu, Jonathan A., Scott Williamson, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2024. “People Consistently View Elections and Civil Liberties as Key Components of Democracy.” Science. [replication material]
  • Coverage: Cosmos, Phys.org, The Conversation, Veja
  • Keywords: understanding of democracy, liberal democracy, democratic legitimacy, comparative public opinion
  • Abstract:

    How do people around the world define democracy? Answering this question is critical as countries face democratic backsliding and authoritarian governments promote alternative notions of democracy. Indeed, some scholars argue that people from different backgrounds understand democracy differently. By contrast, we discovered very consistent views about what constitutes a “democratic” country from conjoint survey experiments conducted in Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Across countries (N = 6,150) and diverse subgroups within countries, people similarly emphasized free and fair elections and civil liberties as being the key determinants of democracy. Countries that produce desirable social and economic outcomes are also considered more democratic, but these and other factors exert a smaller and less consistent effect than elections and civil liberties.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Kai Quek. 2024. “Self-Reported Political Ideology.” Political Science Research and Methods. [replication material]
  • Coverage: Atlantic, Good Authority (editor’s commentary)
  • Keywords: ideology, liberal, conservative, measurement, political sophistication
  • Abstract:

    American politics scholarship has relied extensively on self-reported measures of ideology. We evaluate these widely used measures through an original national survey. Descriptively, we show that Americans’ understandings of “liberal” and “conservative” are weakly aligned with conventional definitions of these terms and that such understandings are heterogeneous across social groups, casting doubt on the construct validity and measurement equivalence of ideological self-placements. Experimentally, we randomly assign one of three measures of ideology to each respondent: (1) the standard ANES question, (2) a version that adds definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” and (3) a version that keeps these definitions but removes ideological labels from the question. We find that the third measure, which helps to isolate symbolic ideology from operational ideology, shifts self-reported ideology in important ways: Democrats become more conservative, and Republicans more liberal. These findings offer first-cut experimental evidence on the limitations of self-reported ideology as a measure of operational ideology, and contribute to ongoing debates about the use of ideological self-placements in American politics.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., Mengqiao Wang, and Kai Quek. 2024. “What Is a Patriot? A Cross-National Study in China and the United States.” Foreign Policy Analysis 20(2): orae007. [replication material, preprint]
  • Keywords: patriotism, nationalism, national identity, China and the United States, public opinion, foreign policy preferences
  • Abstract:

    Patriotism is a pervasive political force. However, not much is known about how people understand what it means to be “patriotic” in the first place. We conduct a cross-country study of mass understandings of patriotism. Through parallel national surveys in two global superpowers—China and the United States—we uncover the substantively different understandings of what it means to be “patriotic” between and within countries, and how the different understandings may map onto different policy preferences. In particular, while the literature draws a distinction between (benign) patriotism and (malign) nationalism, we find that most Chinese respondents—and about a third of American respondents—understand patriotism as nationalism. The nationalistic understanding of patriotism, in turn, corresponds to more hawkish foreign policy preferences. By unpacking folk intuitions about patriotism and mapping them onto existing scholarly debates, we bridge the distance between the academic literature and the mass political behavior it seeks to explain.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2024. “Can Conservatives Be Persuaded? Framing Effects on Support for Universal Basic Income in the US.” Political Behavior 46(1): 135–61. [replication material, slides]
  • Coverage: Fortune
  • Keywords: universal basic income, framing, conservative, welfare, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    Universal basic income (UBI) has been proposed as a policy response to technological advances and structural inequality. Yet, recent data show that most conservatives in Europe and the US are strongly opposed to the welfare proposal. Can framing UBI as a policy that conforms to their ideological predispositions overcome such opposition? Exploiting the compatibility of UBI with core conservative ideals such as individualism and laissez-faire government, I design an original survey experiment that randomly exposes respondents to one of two frames: (1) an equalizing-opportunity frame which emphasizes that UBI creates a level playing field and promotes self-responsibility, or (2) a limiting-government frame which highlights UBI as a policy that limits government and reduces bureaucracy. I find that American conservatives—identified by using 10 policy statements—remained strongly opposed to UBI even after they were presented with such frames. Analyses of open-ended responses, which show that how conservatives explained their opposition to UBI remained unchanged regardless of framing, reinforce this conclusion. Conservatives’ opposition to UBI remained rigid, even after the key components of UBI that fit the conservative ideology were accentuated. These results shed light on the political feasibility of framing UBI, and the rigidity of welfare attitudes among American conservatives.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2023. “Overestimation of the Level of Democracy among Citizens in Nondemocracies.” Comparative Political Studies 56(2): 228–66. [replication material, preprint]
  • Keywords: nondemocratic regimes, comparative public opinion, media control, democratic legitimacy, authoritarian resilience
  • Abstract:

    Overestimation of the level of democracy is prevalent among citizens in nondemocracies. Despite such prevalence, no research to date has systematically documented this phenomenon and examined its determinants. Yet given the renewed interest in the role of legitimacy in authoritarian survival, studying whether and why this phenomenon arises is important to our understanding of authoritarian resilience. I argue that, even in the absence of democratic institutions in nondemocracies, autocrats exercise media control in order to boost their democratic legitimacy. This façade of democracy, in turn, benefits their survival. Combining media freedom data with individual survey response data that include over 30,000 observations from 22 nondemocracies, I find that overestimation of the level of democracy is greater in countries with stronger media control. But highly educated citizens overestimate less. These findings shed light on media control as a strategy for authoritarian survival, and have important implications for modernization theory.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Kai Quek. 2022. “Relative Gains in the Shadow of a Trade War.” International Organization 76(3): 741–65. [replication material]
  • Keywords: relative gains, other-regarding preferences, trade, US-China relations, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    When do people care about relative gains in trade? Much of the international relations scholarship—and much of the political rhetoric on trade—would lead us to expect support for a trade policy that benefits ourselves more than it benefits others. Yet, a large interdisciplinary literature also points to the prevalence and importance of other-regarding preferences, rendering the conventional wisdom contestable. We investigate whether and how relative gains influence trade preferences through an original survey experiment in the midst of the China–US trade war. We find that in a win-win scenario, relative gains shape trade opinion: if both sides are gaining, people want to gain more than their foreign trade partner. However, these considerations are offset in a win-lose scenario where the other side is losing out. Relative-gains considerations causally affect opinion on trade, but not in a "beggar-thy-neighbor" or even a "beggar-thy-rival" situation. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of relative gains in international relations and provide the first experimental evidence that relative-gains considerations can be offset by other-regarding preferences in international trade.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2021. “Does Immigration Boost Public Euroscepticism in European Union Member States?” European Union Politics 22(4): 631–54. [replication material, preprint]
  • Coverage: European Politics and Policy
  • Keywords: European integration, Euroscepticism, immigration, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    A number of studies have established a strong link between anti-immigration and Eurosceptic attitudes. But does this relationship necessarily imply that more immigration would increase public Euroscepticism in member states of the European Union? I evaluate this question by analyzing immigration data and Eurobarometer survey data over the period 2009–2017. The analysis shows no evidence that individual levels of Euroscepticism increase with actual levels of immigration. This result suggests that a strong link between anti-immigration and Eurosceptic attitudes does not necessarily translate into a strong link between immigration levels and public Euroscepticism. Public Euroscepticism can still be low even if immigration levels are high.

Working Papers

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. “The Logic of Provocative Propaganda in the Shadow of Democratic Uprisings.”
  • Winner of 2024 Timothy E. Cook Best Graduate Student Paper Award
  • Abstract:

    In contemporary autocracies where democratic uprisings have gained momentum, a special form of propaganda exists: political messages that blatantly taunt or mock the opposition. Instead of diverting citizens’ attention away from opposition voices, such propaganda directs its rhetoric and public attention toward the antiregime movement. What is the political logic behind it? I argue that such propaganda aims to provoke and radicalize the opposition: by radicalizing protesters in social movements, autocrats can discredit regime opponents and dissuade others from joining forces with the opposition; thus, provocative propaganda can help delegitimize the opposition and impede democratic uprisings, benefiting authoritarian survival. I conduct a preregistered experiment in Hong Kong and find that regime opponents report higher levels of anger, disgust, and violence support upon randomized exposure to provocative propaganda, offering microfoundations for my theory. I provide additional qualitative evidence by tracing Hong Kong’s democratic uprising in 2019–20, illustrating the strategic timing of provocative propaganda.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. “Dynamic Democratic Backsliding.”
  • Abstract:

    Democratic backsliding occurs over time, but the empirical study of how citizens respond to undemocratic politicians has been predominantly static. I formulate and test predictions about how different sequences of backsliding shape accountability. Using a preregistered experiment (N = 4,234) capturing the reality that democratic transgressions are committed by elected officials (not unelected candidates) over time, I find that a majority of American respondents—against the backdrop of partisan and policy interests—are willing to electorally remove the incumbent as episodes of democratic backsliding unfold. Moreover, incumbents who incrementally decrease the severity of democratic transgressions are more likely to be held accountable than those who incrementally increase the severity. By establishing a new experimental framework to study democratic backsliding, my dynamic approach not only paints a less pessimistic picture of Americans’ willingness to defend democracy than often suggested, but also demonstrates that sequence matters in shaping voter behavior amid incremental transgressions of democracy.
• Peskowitz, Zachary, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Measuring Preference Intensity: An Investigation into the Sensitivity of Quadratic Voting and an Application in State Politics.” [poster]
  • Second-round revise and resubmit at The Journal of Politics
  • Abstract:

    Measuring preference intensity is extraordinarily difficult. Quadratic voting for survey research (QVSR) measures individual preference intensity using an incentive-compatible approach. Because QVSR elicits preference intensity relative to a set of alternatives, one reasonable but untested concern is its sensitivity to the choice set of policy issues. We randomly assign choice sets of policy issues to respondents and measure their preference intensity. We show that measured levels of preference intensity are not sensitive to changes in policy bundles for a wide range of policies. Moreover, QVSR effectively tamps down individuals’ incentives to report extreme preferences compared to Likert measures. We then use our measures to examine how state-level preference intensity predicts actual policy outcomes, offering first-cut empirical evidence that preference intensity does not meaningfully shape policy congruence in the American states. We contribute to the methodological literature on measuring preference intensity and the substantive literature on policy representation in U.S. politics.
• Conklin, Matthew J., and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Perception, Misperception, and Crisis Deescalation: Cross-National Experiments in China and the United States.”
  • Abstract:

    How do perceptions about the power and aggressiveness of a peer competitor influence public bellicosity in a crisis scenario? Leveraging tensions around the Taiwan Strait as an empirical setting, we assess whether American and Chinese citizens adopt a more belligerent or conciliatory position in the conflict when presented with factual indicators that reveal different levels of economic power, military capability, or public hawkishness of the other side. Our dyadic experiments (N = 7,409) show that information that reduced respondents’ perceptions of the adversary’s economic or military power did not increase their preferences for conflict escalation, even amid a power transition. Importantly, information that tamped down respondents’ perceptions of adversary citizens’ hawkishness significantly increased public support for de-escalation in both countries. These findings challenge a dominant perspective that individuals locked in a bilateral conflict will be more emboldened to support aggressive actions against the adversary when its perceived power or resolve declines.
• Conklin, Matthew J., and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Hawks, Doves, and Rapprochement in the South China Sea: Evidence from Mirror Experiments in China and the United States.”
  • Abstract:

    Are hawks or doves better at making peace? Existing empirical scholarship has extensively examined how domestic audiences react to hawks and doves when they initiate rapprochement. Shifting the focus onto foreign audiences and using the South China Sea as an empirical context, we fielded mirror experiments in China (N = 3,005) and the United States (N = 2,995) to investigate how Chinese and American citizens respond to conciliatory gestures from the other side as its leader’s reputation varies. We uncover asymmetric public reactions to the olive branch: while Chinese doves were more likely to elicit Americans’ support for reciprocation than Chinese hawks, U.S. doves did not fare better than U.S. hawks among the Chinese public. These findings contribute to understanding how leader reputation shapes the prospect of rapprochement, suggesting that the impact of leader type on foreign public opinion can be sensitive to contextual factors.
• Chu, Jonathan A., Scott Williamson, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Are Citizens Willing to Trade Away Democracy for Desirable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Six Countries.”
  • Abstract:

    To what extent do citizens prioritize living in a democracy over other indicators of good governance or personal well-being? This question has become hotly contested as democracies come under pressure worldwide, yet comparative evidence remains scarce. We address this gap through cross-national conjoint experiments in which survey respondents choose between hypothetical countries that differ in terms of societal-level attributes (e.g., elections, health care) and individual-level outcomes that the respondent would experience (e.g., wealth, minority status). Citizens from Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States consistently prioritize living in a safe country with free and fair elections over other factors, including other components of democracy like civil liberties and checks and balances. Many people would forfeit democratic elections to avoid living in a dangerous society but not to obtain wealth and other goods. Electoral democracy is attractive globally but can be undermined by concerns about crime and safety.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Joseph Glasgow. “Racialized Misinformation, Factual Corrections, and Prejudicial Attitudes: The Cases of Welfare and Immigration.”
  • Abstract:

    Misunderstandings about marginalized social groups are widespread among the American public and can play an important role in shaping outgroup prejudice. Does correcting racialized misperceptions about marginalized groups mitigate prejudicial attitudes? To test the impact of factual corrections, we conduct three preregistered survey experiments in the US (N = 8,306). Study 1 and Study 2 draw on the case of welfare and inform respondents that the share of Black welfare recipients is lower than that of White recipients. Study 3 focuses on the case of immigration and informs respondents that immigrants’ crime rate is lower than natives’ crime rate. Across three well-powered experiments, we estimate substantively null effects of factual corrections on multiple measures of prejudice. Policy attitudes also did not change, although our information interventions significantly reduced misperceptions about Blacks and immigrants. These findings highlight the challenges of using corrective information to improve citizens’ attitudes toward minority groups.
• Lai, Ruilin, Eddy S. F. Yeung, and Matthew Gabel. “After Repression: The Impacts of Confession Propaganda upon Failed Uprisings.”
  • Abstract:

    In the aftermath of unsuccessful uprisings, many autocrats broadcast dissidents’ confessions to their wrongdoings. Despite the prevalence of confession propaganda in the authoritarian world, its influence on the mass public—the very audience exposed to such political messaging—remains undertheorized and untested in existing scholarship. We theorize the impacts of confession propaganda on different political camps and experimentally test the observable implications in an autocratizing Hong Kong, where the political divide between regime supporters and opponents has remained salient since the failed uprising and institutionalized repression in 2020. The findings from our preregistered experiment (N = 3,448) indicate that confession propaganda not only fails to appease the existing support base, but also triggers attitudinal backlash among moderates. However, it helps to deter dissent by inducing self-censorship among opponents. These results elucidate the toolkit and mechanism by which autocrats can stabilize their regime following large-scale repression of dissent.

Work in Progress

• Propaganda as Provocation: How Autocrats Use Political Rhetoric to Impede Democratic Uprisings (book project)
• Deescalating a Trade War: Strategies of Reciprocation amid US-China Great Power Competition (under advance contract with Cambridge University Press, Elements in International Relations Series)
• Empirical Study of Deterrence in the Context of Great Power Competition (multi-paper project with Renard Sexton, Hans Tung, and Hsu Yumin Wang)
• “Democratic Benchmarking: The Influence of Comparisons on Americans’ Assessments of Subnational Democracy” (with Jennifer Gandhi)
• “Foreign Meddling by Adverse Side-Taking’’ (with Burak Kazim Yilmaz)
• “Voice After Exit: Hong Kong Diaspora’s Transnational Mobilization and Community Building in Five Host Countries” (with Maggie Shum, Ka Ming Chan, Sanho Chung, Athena Tong, and Sam Yip)
• “White Identity, Psychological Wage, and the Racial Politics of Soaking the Rich” (with Hsu Yumin Wang)
• “Spillover Effects of Framing and Support for Universal Basic Income in the United States” (with Tim Schaitberger)

Null Results Reports / Dormant Papers

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2024. “Learning to Love Trade? The Impact of Positive Sociotropic Information on Public Support for International Trade.” [preanalysis plans]
• Wang, Hsu Yumin, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2022. “Attitudes toward Internal Migrants and Support for Redistribution: Evidence from Shanghai.” [replication material, preanalysis plan]