Michelle Yang

Michelle Yang is a fourth-year Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and Public Affairs double major. Her thesis focuses on evaluating the prevalent belief in election denialism. Specifically, she seeks to understand if partisanship has become so severe that it has become reality-defying, or are people using the opportunity to answer this question to cheer for their party. Michelle’s study centers on understanding whether partisanship actually distorts voters’ perception of reality, and the conditions under which partisans willingly accept and endorse misinformation in favor of increasing their party’s chances of winning the election. Specifically, using a survey experiment, she employs accuracy incentives as the motivating factor to differentiate genuine differences of opinion from insincere party cheerleading, while building a utility-maximizing framework to identify the costs and benefits associated with supporting false party positions.