Brian Guay

Biography

Brian Guay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 2021 and was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT from 2021-2023.

Research

Brian’s research is at the intersection of political psychology, public opinion, and methodology, with a specific focus on political misinformation, polarization, and social media. His research agenda centers on questions related to the origins and consequences of misinformation: what are the cognitive foundations of misinformation, what are its implications for an increasingly polarized political environment, and how can we slow its spread? In addressing these questions, he draws from theories of social and cognitive psychology and uses a wide range of methods, including surveys, field experiments, and natural language processing. His work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

Guay, B., Berinsky, A., Pennycook, G., & Rand., D. (2023)“How To Think About Whether Misinformation Interventions Work." Nature Human Behavior.

Combs, A., Tierney, G., Guay, B., Merhout, F., Bail, C., Hillygus, D.S., Volfovsky, A. (2023). “Reducing political polarization in the United States with a mobile chat platform.” Nature Human Behavior

Guay, B. & Johnston, C. (2022). “Ideological Asymmetries and the Determinants of Politically Motivated Reasoning." American Journal of Political Science.

 Guay, B. & Lopez, J. (2021). “Partisan Bias in Bipartisan Places? A Field Experiment Measuring Attitudes Toward the Presidential Alert." Public Opinion Quarterly.

Valentino, N., Zirkhov, K., Hillygus, D.S., & Guay, B. (2020). “The Political Consequences of Personality Biases in Online Panel Surveys." Public Opinion Quarterly.

 Bail, C., Guay, B., Maloney, E., Combs, A., Hillygus, D.S., Merhout, F., Freelon, D., & Volfovsky, A. (2020). “Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s Impact on the Political Attitudes and Behaviors of American Twitter Users in Late 2017." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Teaching

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