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Jon A. Krosnick is a professor of Political Science, Communication, and Psychology at Stanford University and director of the Political Psychology Research Group (PPRG) on campus. Additionally, he is a Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and a Social Sciences Senior Fellow at Woods Institute. One major focus of his research has been questionnaire design and survey research methods. Through his work Dr. Krosnick has become a world-recognized expert on the psychology of attitudes, voter choice behavior, and attitudes towards global warming. He was also a co-principal investigator of the American National Election Study, the nation's preeminent academic research project exploring voter decision-making and political campaign effects. Krosnick additionally consults for several organizations, has testified in court proceedings, and performs for the band Charged Particles as a jazz drummer.

Personal life
Krosnick was born in 1959 outside of Philadelphia to an opera-singer mother and a father who loved the opera. He got early into music, starting on the piano at age 6, going to a music camp at Interlochen at age 9, and being influenced by jazz drummer Peter Erskine there. He would continue playing percussion instruments from elementary school on, becoming a member of the contemporary electric jazz band, Charged Particles.

Krosnick went to Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, graduating from the school in 1976. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in 1980 with an B.A. in Psychology. He then received both an M.A.with honors and later a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Krosnick became a professor in the departments of psychology and political science at Ohio State University, Columbus, where he was a member of the OSU Political Psychology Program and co-directed the OSU Summer Institute in Political Psychology. In 2004, Krosnick became a professor at Stanford, where his wife, Cathy Heaney, also accepted a faculty position. He now lives in Portola Valley, next to Stanford.

Work
Krosnick's work focuses on the design and methodology of questionnaires and surveys, and he has served as a consultant to the government, academia and industry on these issues. He has also worked on the psychology of attitudes, researching how voters make up their minds and how campaigns influence them. He has conducted research into the survey results on American attitudes toward global warming, how negativity in campaigns affects turnout, ballot-order effect, how wording of an amendment matters, and analyzing polls on the public perception on global warming. He has also been an on-television commentator on election night.

Global warming
Krosnick has both conducted surveys and analyzed previous ones on global warming, some as part of his work at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. His survey found, in 2007, that most Americans accepted global warming, but by a two-thirds majority were not convinced significant efforts were needed to stop it. Krosnick's view was that scientists were finding this lack of public concern a problem. Krosnick considered the media providing equal coverage to both sides of the debate, not in proportion to how strongly the views were represented among experts, a prime reason for the public's disbelieving scientists were united on the issue. He has also analyzed a 2006 poll by ABC News, Time and Stanford, which showed the public has grown more concerned about global warming over the previous decade, with more than two thirds believing in unsettled weather patterns caused by human activity. Krosnick believes not acting now will cost the world more in the future.

Voter choice studies
For 30 years, Dr. Krosnick has studied how the American public's political attitudes are formed, how they change, and how they shape thinking and action. His studies in this area have lead to his work as the co-principal investigator of the 2011-2012 survey of the American National Election Studies, the leading academically-run survey of voters in the United States that precedes and follows every presidential election. His studies and publications explore the causes of people decisions about whether to vote, for whom to vote, whether to approve of the President’s performance, whether to take action to influence government policy-making on a specific issue, and much more.

For instance, one of his studies showed that candidates received an average of 2% more votes when their names were listed first on election ballots, and in some cases, candidates listed first on their ballots received as much as 6% more votes than when they were listed last. Krosnick cited this phenomenon as a result of primacy (the tendency to "grab" the first thing you see), a lack of information, and finally, ambivalence among Americans, which allows them to choose the first name on the ballot simply to move on with life.

Krosnick has also combined his studies in global warming and voter choice through two studies. The first was based data collected from randomly selected households before and after the 2008 Election. These surveys asked on voter's opinions on McCain and Obama's policies on climate change before the election, and then asked who they voted for after the election process. He then conducted a study based on climate change and the 2010 Congressional Election. The results of both of these studies implied that Democrats who vehemently pursued green goals garnered more votes than Democrats who remained silent, and that Republicans who took "not-green" positions won less than Republicans that stayed silent. The study reflects the growing concern over climate change in America and the ways those concerns affect political elections.

Political Psychology Research Group
The Political Psychology Research Group (PPRG) is a cross-disciplinary team of scholars who conduct empirical studies of the psychology of political behavior and studies seeking to optimize research methodology for studying political psychology under the direction of Jon Krosnick. The PPRG employs a wide range of research methods including surveys, experiments, and content analysis. The topics they study include Voting and Elections, Survey Research Methodology, Public Attitudes on Global Warming, Attitude Strength and Public Issues, and more. The group often conducts collaborative research studies with leading news media organizations, including ABC News, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine. Support for the group's work has come from U.S. Government agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics), private foundations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and Institutes at Stanford (e.g., the Woods Institute for the Environment).

Summer Institute in Political Psychology
The Summer Institute in Political Psychology (SIPP) is another program directed by Dr. Krosnick on Stanford’s campus that enters 60 graduate students, faculty members, and professionals into a three-week program that introduces and trains them in the field of political psychology. Participants are expected to attend lectures presented by world-renowned scholars on core topics and recent research developments in political psychology. They also receive instruction in important research methods such as survey research, laboratory experimentation, and content analysis, which they are then encouraged to use to develop their own research ideas. The curriculum is designed to produce researchers who will join an international network of scholars and do more and better work in political psychology as a result of their participation in the program.

Positions

 * Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of communication, political science, and  by courtesy, psychology, at Stanford
 * Director of the Political Psychology Research Group (PPRG) at Stanford
 * Director of the Summer Institute in Political Psychology at Stanford
 * Co-principal investigator of the American National Election Study
 * Associate Director, Institute for Research (2008) in the Social Sciences at Stanford.
 * Editorial Board Member: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1989-2000, 2006-2008), Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (1990-1994), Basic and Applied Social Psychology (1997-2003), Public Opinion Quarterly (1988-1991, 1994-2002), Media Psychology (2005), Sociological Methodology (2006-2008), Pathways (2008-present)

Awards and recognition

 * Bausch and Lomb Science Award, 1976.
 * National Institute of Mental Health Graduate Training Fellowship, 1982.
 * Phillip Brickman Memorial Prize for Research in Social Psychology, 1984.
 * Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the Best Paper Presented at the 1983 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 1984.
 * Elected Departmental Associate, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, recognizing outstanding academic achievement, 1984.
 * Invited Guest Editor, Social Cognition (Special issue on political psychology, Vol. 8, #1, May), 1990
 * Brittingham Visiting Scholar, University of Wisconsin, 1993.
 * Erik H. Erikson Early Career Award for Excellence and Creativity in the Field of Political Psychology, International Society of Political Psychology, 1995.
 * Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, 1996-1997.
 * Elected Fellow, American Psychological Association, 1998.
 * Elected Fellow, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 1998.
 * Elected Fellow, American Psychological Society, 1998.
 * Appointed University Fellow, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC, 2001.
 * Prize for the Best Paper Presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Section on Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior, 2003.
 * Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009.
 * Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2010.