About

Matthew Tyler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University. He specializes in political methodology, with a focus on solving measurement and causal inference challenges in the study of partisan polarization. He is a principal investigator on a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant, which supports his work on developing statistical solutions for survey measurement errors, with applications to measuring support for political violence and conspiracy theories. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Stanford University in 2021 and holds bachelor’s degrees in Statistical Science and Mathematics from Duke University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Criminology
• Business
• Developmental psychology
• Public relations
• Psychiatry
• Advertising
• Media studies

Selected publications

• Learning to Dislike Your Opponents: Political Socialization in the Era of Polarization

  American Political Science Review · 2022 · 107 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Social psychology
  • Psychology

  Early socialization research dating to the 1960s showed that children could have a partisan identity without expressing polarized evaluations of political leaders and institutions. We provide an update to the socialization literature by showing that adolescents today are just as polarized as adults. We compare our findings to a landmark 1980 socialization study and show that distrust in the opposing party has risen sharply among adolescents. We go on to show that the onset of polarization in childhood is predicted by parental influence; adolescents who share their parents’ identity and whose parents are more polarized are apt to voice polarized views.

  PublisherDOI

• Current research overstates American support for political violence

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 205 citations

  • Political Science
  • Criminology
  • Political Science

  SignificanceRecent political events show that members of extreme political groups support partisan violence, and survey evidence supposedly shows widespread public support. We show, however, that, after accounting for survey-based measurement error, support for partisan violence is far more limited. Prior estimates overstate support for political violence because of random responding by disengaged respondents and because of a reliance on hypothetical questions about violence in general instead of questions on specific acts of political violence. These same issues also cause the magnitude of the relationship between previously identified correlates and partisan violence to be overstated. As policy makers consider interventions designed to dampen support for violence, our results provide critical information about the magnitude of the problem.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Partisan Enclaves and Information Bazaars: Mapping Selective Exposure to Online News

  The Journal of Politics · 2021 · 69 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Advertising

  Many now believe a segregated online news market has led to increased polarization in the United States. Indeed, experimental studies in political science and psychology show that partisans are more interested in reading attitude-reinforcing information. Yet, observational studies of web browsing behavior have thus far found limited differences between Democratic and Republican online news consumption. We present two new pieces of evidence showing how partisans selectively approach congenial news online. First, using a data set of web-browsing histories from the 2016 US general election (August–November 2016), we show that Democrats (Republicans) split their news consumption between left-leaning (right-leaning) sources and moderate/mainstream sources. Most partisan convergence occurs at portal sites—such as Yahoo and MSN—that specialize in nonnews and nonpolitical content. Second, using high-profile scandals from the 2016 election (Access Hollywood and the Comey letter), we show that partisans consume more news when an event benefits their preferred candidate.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christian Fong

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  64 shared

• Justin Grimmer

  10 shared

• Shanto Iyengar

  Stanford University

  6 shared

• Sean Westwood

  5 shared

• Clayton Nall

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  3 shared

• Christian Fong

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  3 shared

• Marita P. McCabe

  University of Pennsylvania

  2 shared

• David Mellor

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Stanford University

  2021

• BS, Statistical Science

  Duke University

  2015

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award

Similar researchers at Rice University

• Menachem Elimelechh-209
• Pulickel Ajayanh-204
• James Tourh-178
• Naomi J. Halash-173
• Frank Geurtsh-157