John Zaller, Ph.D.

UCLA

John Zaller is Professor of Political Science at UCLA. His first book,_ The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Towards Capitalism and Democracy_ (with Herbert McCloskey, 1984) explored the tensions in public opinion between the two most basic tenets of American ideology. _[In The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion](https://smile.amazon.com/Origins-Opinion-Cambridge-Political-Psychology/dp/0521407869/)_ (1992) he explored how political messages reach the public and influence its thinking. _[The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform](https://smile.amazon.com/Party-Decides-Presidential-Nominations-American-dp-0226112365/)_ (with Marty Cohen, David Karol and Hans Noel, 2008), argues that, contrary to the common view that the party reforms of the 1970s gave the voters more power, the most consequential contests remain the candidates’ fights for prominent endorsements and the support of various interest groups and party leaders. Among his other projects is “A Theory of Media Politics,” a widely-cited paper and book in progress that describes how the conflicting interests of reporters, politicians and citizens shape the political news. Other recent projects use simulation models to explore incumbency advantages in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and to determine the power of opinion surveys to identify the influence of media events on public sentiment. Professor Zaller teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in American politics, public opinion and statistical methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He served for eight years on the Board of Overseers of the biennial National Election Studies, and has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. [](https://smile.amazon.com/Origins-Opinion-Cambridge-Political-Psychology/dp/0521407869/) [](https://smile.amazon.com/Party-Decides-Presidential-Nominations-American-dp-0226112365/)