David Wilson
David C. Wilson, Ph.D is Dean of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Wilson is a political psychologist specializing in the use of survey-based experiments to study political behavior and policy preferences. His scholarship focuses on the psychology of political opinion about policies, contentious social issues, and political figures. He is drawn to investigate justice-related biases in political preferences created by judgements of others.
He is the author of 2022 book, Racial Resentment in the Political Mind (University of Chicago Press), and his scholarship can be found in a variety of research outlets, including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Du Bois Review, Psychological Sciences, and Journal of Applied Psychology. In 2022, he co-edited Public Opinion Quarterly's special issue on "Race, Justice, and Public Opinion."
Prior to UC Berkeley, Dean Wilson served as a Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Associate Dean of the Social Sciences, at the University of Delaware. He also served as a statistical researcher at the Gallup Polling Organization in Washington, DC. H earned a BA (government) from Western Kentucky University, and an MPA (policy analysis) and PhD (political science), from Michigan State University.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“Stop the Steal”: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Race & Political Trust: Justice as a Unifying Influence on Political Trust in Daedelus.
CURRENT PROJECTS
* Political Psychology of American Democracy (PPAD) Public Opinion Survey (funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) - this is a three-wave (within-subjects design, N=3,000) public opinion study tracking Americans’ attitudes, beliefs and values, and opinions about the psychological boundaries of what constitutes “We the People.” Ipsos will undertake the data collection side.
* Measurement of African American Racial Resentment toward Whites - this is a project curating studies theorizing, measuring, and analyzing Black racial resentment.
* Harvard Voting Rights Reform and Political Behavior - this is a collaborative project with scholars at Harvard Law School to examine the effectiveness of voting rights laws and policy reforms.