Research

I study how voters and political elites interact in representative democracies, with a focus on the causes and consequences of inequalities among social groups — by partisanship, gender, age, and migration status. My work combines survey experiments, administrative and electoral data, and computational measurement (including image-based measures of candidate appearance). A full list of publications is on the Publications page.

Elections, Voting, and Heuristics

How do voters decide under limited information, and what low-information cues move outcomes? This strand examines the opportunity costs of voting and election-day weather, ballot-order and nonpartisan-election heuristics, incumbency, and candidate appearance. Representative work: “The Liberals Should Pray for Rain” (Political Science, 2019); “Making Sense of Heuristics Choice in Nonpartisan Elections” (Political Behavior, 2024).

Political Representation and Polarization

I study affective polarization in Korea — distinguishing actual from perceived polarization and tracking it longitudinally — and the descriptive representation of women and its effect on participation. Representative work: “Between Misperception and Exaggeration: A Longitudinal Analysis of Affective Polarization” (한국정치학회보, 2024); “Revisiting Candidate Gender Effects” (Politics & Gender, forthcoming).

Economic Inequality and Political Attitudes

This strand asks how wealth inequality shapes perceptions of mobility, well-being, and political behavior. Representative work: “Stuck in an Unequal Society: Wealth Inequality and Pessimistic Prospects on Future Social Mobility” (Social Forces, 2024); “Envy and Pride: How Economic Inequality Deepens Happiness Inequality” (Social Indicators Research, 2020).

Intergroup Politics: Immigration and North Korea

I examine attitudes toward out-groups — immigrants and North Korean refugees — and the long-run political legacies of conflict. Representative work: “Inequality and Attitudes toward Immigration: the Native-Immigrant Gap” (Australian Journal of Political Science, 2020); “Unexplored Consequences of Violence against Civilians during the Korean War” (Journal of East Asian Studies, 2017).

Politics of Face

A current agenda uses candidate images and computational methods to study how facial cues — smiles, gender typicality — relate to perceived competence and electoral outcomes. Representative work: “Smile to Win: How do Candidates’ Smiles Affect Election Outcomes?” (한국정치학회보, 2022); “Politics of Face: Gender Typicality, Perceived Competence and Electoral Viability” (working paper).