Christina Farhart

Education & Professional History

Colorado State University, MA; University of Minnesota, MA; PhD

Christina Farhart completed her PhD at the University of Minnesota in August 2017 in the fields of American politics and political methodology, with a minor in political psychology. She holds a BA in Political Science and Psychology, as well as an MA in Political Science from Colorado State University and an MA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. Prior to her graduate work at the University of Minnesota, she worked for the National Science Foundation in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences and as a grant coordinator for the American Educational Research Association. Professor Farhart’s research interests are anchored in political participation and civic engagement, utilizing theories from political science, psychology, and mass communication. Her dissertation work focuses on political disaffection and learned helplessness in contemporary political contexts related to conventional and unconventional political behavior, as well as consequential political attitudes and beliefs. Her research also includes the use of alternative methodologies to study electoral behavior and political attitudes, e.g., implicit candidate evaluations and better-informed models to explain political participation and voter turnout. Beyond her dissertation work, she and her coauthors are studying the political and psychological explanations for conspiracy beliefs and political misinformation.

My research interests are anchored in political participation and civic engagement, utilizing theories from political science, psychology, and mass communication to gain greater understanding of the ways in which individuals become, stay, choose not to, or are prevented from being involved in the political realm, anchored on concepts of learned helplessness.  My dissertation focused on the role of contextual factors, such as political polarization and income inequality on disaffection generally, and learned helplessness specifically, and the way context impacts conventional and unconventional political participation.

Additionally, my research agenda includes exploration into the use of alternative methodologies for the study of electoral behavior and political attitudes, such as implicit candidate evaluations and trait associations, as well as, better-informed models explaining political participation and voter turnout. Further, I am working with coauthors to examine political motivated reasoning connected to conspiracy beliefs and the consequences of political misinformation.

Courses Taught This Year

• POSC 400: Integrative Exercise (Spring 2020)
• POSC 210: Misinformation, Political Rumors, and Conspiracy Theories (Spring 2020)
• POSC 302: Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations* (Spring 2020)
• Off-campus Fall 2020, Winter 2021, and Spring 2021

Farhart, Christina E. 2021. “Conspiracy Theory Belief and Conspiratorial Thinking.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology, eds. Danny Osborne and Chris Sibley. (In Press). Cambridge University Press.

Farhart, Christina E., Joanne M. Miller, and Kyle L. Saunders. 2021. “Conspiracy Stress or Relief? Learned Helplessness and Conspiratorial Thinking.” In The Politics of Truth, eds. Elizabeth Suhay and David Barker, p. 1-38. Oxford University Press.

Lyons, Benjamin A.,  Farhart, Christina E., Michael P. Hall, John Kotcher, Matthew Levendusky, Joanne M. Miller, Brendan Nyhan, Kaitlin T. Rami, Jason Reifler, Kyle L. Saunders, Rasmus Skytte, and Xiaoquan Zhao. 2021. “Self-Affirmation and Identity-Driven Political Behavior: An Oversold Solution?” Journal of Experimental Political Science. 1-16. doi:10.1017/XPS.2020.46

Cassese, Erin, Christina E. Farhart, and Joanne M. Miller. 2020. “Gender Differences in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Beliefs.” Politics & Gender. 16(4), 1009-1018. doi:10.1017/S1743923X20000409.

Chen, Phillip G., and Christina E. Farhart. 2020. “Gender, Benevolent Sexism, and Public Health Compliance.” Politics & Gender. 16(4), 1036-1043. doi:10.1017/S1743923X20000495.

Motta, Matt, Dominik Stecula, and Christina E. Farhart. 2020. “How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of COVID-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the U.S.” Canadian Journal of Political Science as part of the Cambridge Coronavirus Collection. DOI: 10.1017/S0008423920000396

Vitriol, Joseph A., Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz, and Christina E. Farhart. 2018. “Implicit candidate traits in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Replicating a dual-process model of candidate evaluations.” Electoral Studies, 54: 261-268.

Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander, Joseph A. Vitriol, and Christina E. Farhart. 2017 “Implicit candidate trait perceptions in political campaigns.” Political Psychology, 39: 177-195.

Sheagley, Geoffrey, Phillip G. Chen, and Christina E. Farhart. 2017. “Racial Resentment, Hurricane Sandy, and the Spillover of Racial Attitudes into Evaluations of Government Organizations.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 17: 105-131.

Miller, Joanne M., Kyle L. Saunders, and Christina E. Farhart. 2016. “Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust.” American Journal of Political Science, 60(4): 824-844. *An earlier version of this paper was awarded the Paul Lazarsfeld Award, which recognizes the best paper on political communication selected for the previous year’s (2014) Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. *Also included in virtual issue as a highly cited AJPS article via https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15405907/homepage/vimostrecent

 Chen, Philip G., Jacob Appleby, Eugene Borgida Timothy H. Callaghan, Pierce Ekstrom, Christina E. Farhart, Elizabeth Housholder, Hannah Kim, Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz, Howard Lavine, Matthew D. Luttig, Ruchika Mohanty, Aaron Rosenthal, Geoff Sheagley, Brianna A. Smith, Joseph A. Vitriol, and Allison Williams. 2014. “The Minnesota Multi-Investigator 2012 Presidential Election Panel Study,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 14: 78-104.