Bonilla Promoted to Associate Professor
Northwestern University’s Tabitha Bonilla, a political scientist who studies how communication influences public support for policies, has been promoted to associate professor of human development and social policy at the School of Education and Social Policy.
Bonilla’s work centers on electoral psychology but also investigates public opinion in other areas. In addition to studying political communication, attitudes, and behavior, she examines race, gender, and intersectionality across many controversial subjects, including gun control, human trafficking, and immigration.
Her new book, The Importance of Campaign Promises, examines candidate speech and uses surveys to explain how voters respond to pledges by politicians and the nuanced nature of promises. Rather than looking at whether promises are kept, the book explores the purpose of promises, what they signal, and how they affect the way voters make decisions.
“Promises tend to polarize voter opinions of candidates, attracting similarly-positioned voters and strongly repelling voters who disagree with a candidate's position,” she says. “In addition, voters perceive promise breakers as less honest and less likely to follow through than candidates who more weakly took the same position.”
Another ongoing body of work examines what happens when politicians play off a voter’s ethnicity. Voters can view a promise of “supporting the community” as pandering and prefer the candidate only when they show they are committed to the issues affecting the community, according to an experiment looking at appeals directed to African American and Latino voters.
One of her newest studies, published in the Journal of Politics, compares the reaction of white and Black Americans to white, Black and Muslim candidates. The study, “How Source Cues Shape Evaluations of Group-Based Derogatory Political Messages” found that both Black and white Americans punish white candidates who diminish Blacks or Muslims. But Black audiences are more likely to punish derogation than White audiences and recognize derogating speech as inappropriate.
The results suggest that “research must take the uneven socialization of white and Black Americans into account and consider how norms of racial equality matter for evaluations of political rhetoric and outcomes,” she wrote.
Taking Research into the Classroom
Bonilla, a fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research, has also designed and taught several new innovative classes. In one, based in part on her research on public opinion and human trafficking published in the Journal of Public Policy, students explored how the media and anti-trafficking organizations perpetuate a narrow definition of trafficking – the sexual exploitation of foreign women – and how this affects support for anti-trafficking policy and strategic responses.
Other related research, published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science, has explored whether the problem of human trafficking, a bipartisan issue, can help bridge the political divide by generating more positive feelings among those who oppose more open immigration policies.
“We found we can help shift attitudes on immigration when people are asked to reconcile that closing borders contributes to an environment where trafficking is easier---so if we want to combat trafficking, we have to reassess immigration policies,” she said.
Another new undergraduate class explored how viewing identities as "intersectional" can shift our understanding of policy. The seminar-style course, called “Intersectionality, Policy, and Measurement” was made possible by Bonilla’s 2020 Daniel I. Linzer Grant for Innovation in Diversity and Equity, an award given to help fund innovative faculty projects related to improving diversity and inclusivity at Northwestern.
The course was framed around Kimberlé Crenshaw's term “intersectionality” which describes how marginalization can occur when multiple distinct identities overlap. Black women, for example, experience both racism and sexism that is expressed differently than either the racism experienced by Black men or the sexism experienced by white women.
“Mounting research underscores how important it is to think about identity more comprehensively and completely,” Bonilla says.
Born and raised in Montana–the fourth oldest in a family of 11 children–Bonilla was selected for the Minority Introduction to Engineering, and Science (MITES) program, a rigorous six-week residential summer program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that introduces promising high school seniors from diverse backgrounds to engineering and science.
She graduated from MIT with degrees in political science and biology and earned her doctorate from Stanford University. Before coming to SESP, she worked as a research assistant professor at the Institute for Policy Research. She has also been a post-doctoral scholar and teaching fellow at the University of Southern California.
Bonilla won the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship, which encourages and supports recruiting, retaining, and promoting Latina/o political scientists and research on Latino politics in the United States.
Bonilla is also contributing advice to female graduate students in Navigating Graduate School and Beyond, a forthcoming volume for those interested in pursuing graduate education in political science.