Nicholas Valentino

Nicholas A. Valentino is the Donald R. Kinder Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Research Professor in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. He serves as a Principal Investigator of the American National Election Studies (ANES). His work employs experimental methods, surveys, and content analyses of political communication. The research has focused on the intersecting roles of racial attitudes and public emotions, especially the distinct power of anger versus fear. He has also written extensively on the causes and consequences of empathy for ethnic outgroups. Valentino specializes in political psychological approaches to understanding public opinion formation, socialization, information seeking, and electoral participation.

He was President of the International Society for Political Psychology from 2019-2020 and has served on the American National Election Studies Board since 2010.

His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Political Psychology, Political Communication, and Public Opinion Quarterly. He is a co-author (with Cigdem Sirin and Jose Villalobos) of Seeing Us in Them: Social Divisions and the Politics of Group Empathy. The book has won several awards, including the APSA Best Book, the David Sears Best Book in Political Psychology at ISPP, and the Robert Lane Best Book in the Political Psychology section of APSA. He also wrote Beyond Rationality: Behavioral Political Science in the 21st Century, coauthored with Alex Mintz and Carly Wayne.

Valentino is currently exploring the changing nature of racial rhetoric in America and around the world, and the ways empathy for outgroups can blunt dangerous overreactions to threats from globalization and multiculturalism.