Mark Brandt studies a bunch of things. He’s an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. These days, he’s been exploring how we can think about belief systems as a network of interconnected opinions. Using mathematical simulations that specify how people’s opinions can be connected, Mark and his team have been able to establish a core model that explains a bunch of findings from political psychology.

Mark also co-organizes a free online seminar, the Minority Politics Online Seminar Series (MPOSS). Check it out for a bunch of great presentations by researchers who are studying a range of important topics.

A few things that come up in our conversation:

We focus on a recent summary of the idea that networks can help explain belief systems (Brandt & Sleegers, 2021)
Using network analysis, we can identify which opinions are central to a belief system (Brandt et al., 2019)
It is difficult to quantify an individual person’s network of opinions (Brandt & Morgan, 2022; Brandt, 2022)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/belief-systems-with-mark-brandt/

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