Through surveys, quasi-experimental designs, government statistics, administrative records, text-as-data, and meta-analysis, I study how class shapes the politics of recognition and redistribution in wealthy, diverse democracies. Empirically, most of my work focuses on American elections and public opinion. I approach this agenda from several angles, asking how class structures identity politics, how immigrants are evaluated and incorporated, how place shapes public goods and political behavior, how voters respond to candidates and policies, and how political science can build more credible and cumulative evidence. Across these projects, I seek to document how individual agency acquires collective force: when views become votes, when symbolic commitments become policy demands, when group boundaries produce solidarity or backlash, and when findings travel across groups, places, and research designs.
Class and Identity Politics
Why has American politics become more fluent in the language of inclusion without becoming much more committed to material reform? This line of work examines the class foundations of contemporary identity politics. It begins with a central finding from the “Great Awokening”: recent racial liberalization among white liberals was driven disproportionately by the affluent and concentrated in visible forms of recognition rather than materially demanding policy commitments. I then follow the same recognition–redistribution tension across representation, political communication, and voter decision-making, asking how class shapes both the demand for and supply of recognition-centered politics. Together, these projects show how certain forms of inclusion become socially rewarded and electorally useful while remaining only weakly connected to redistribution.
Abstract:
Recent scholarship deems rising racial liberalism among white liberals a racial reckoning and "Great Awokening." I find that affluent white liberals led these changes. I develop a status-signaling account in which members of this group, embedded in politically homogeneous social environments, face competing reputational incentives and material constraints which lead them to express alignment with racial equality in principle but not policy. I leverage the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests as a focusing event when antiracist norms surged. Using regression-discontinuity-in-time and event-study designs on national public opinion surveys and local public meeting transcripts, I show that post-Floyd movement was concentrated among high-income white liberals, centered on symbolic engagement over policy commitments---whether universalistic or group-targeted---and short-lived. I present evidence consistent with this account: post-Floyd, an income gap emerges in implicit bias testing, a form of self-monitoring, but not in implicit bias scores, which are less amenable to impression management. These findings complicate narratives of racial progress and recast the "Great Awokening" as recognitional politics without commensurate redistribution, consistent with concerns about elite capture in identity politics.
"Recognition Without Redistribution: Symbolic Representation amid the 'Great Awokening'." In progress.
Abstract:
Over the last two decades, Democratic voters have grown increasingly favorable toward marginalized groups. This liberalization in racial attitudes has helped increase racial diversity among the country’s elected officials. In this paper, I demonstrate these trends are primarily driven by affluent Democrats, and argue the emphasis on candidate identity may serve as a substitute for actual policy change. Using Cooperative Election Study data on candidate approval from 2008–2024, local and national election returns, and a meta-reanalysis of 50 candidate-choice conjoint experiments, I show that affluent white Democrats have become markedly more supportive of non-white candidates and are willing to trade off some ideological alignment to elect them. Minority working-class Democrats, by contrast, prioritize ideologically congruent candidates from working-class backgrounds, regardless of racial identity. Consistent with this, conditioning on constituency demographics, non-white candidates perform best in affluent districts. This suggests symbolic representation can dampen distributive conflict.
"Do Americans Care More About Cultural over Economic Issues?" In progress.
Abstract:
American politics is often described as increasingly cultural. This paper shows that whether Americans care more about cultural or economic issues depends on what “care” means: economic issues continue to dominate stated national-problem salience, but cultural issue positions have become increasingly associated with vote choice and receive more weight in candidate-choice tradeoffs.
"Recognition Without Redistribution: Why Racial Equality Frames Resonate with White Liberals." In progress.
Abstract:
Why do white liberal Democrats prefer racial equality frames to universalistic alternatives? I argue that these frames can offer recognition without redistribution: visible egalitarian expression without commensurate material commitments. Among affluent white liberals embedded in politically homogeneous social and professional networks, racial equality frames can serve as status signals, publicly demonstrating anti-racist alignment in environments where such commitments are socially rewarded. I test this argument with two linked survey experiments and follow-up interviews with white liberal Democrats. The first experiment cross-randomizes information about the electoral costs and in-group approval of group-centered racial equality appeals. The second asks respondents to evaluate group-centered, race-and-class, and universalistic messages across immigration, housing, education, healthcare, and entrepreneurship. The design estimates baseline frame preferences and tests whether social and electoral incentives shift those preferences. Interviews examine how respondents explain their choices and understand the relationship between racial recognition, social expectations, and redistribution. The paper shows how the class politics of progressive communication can shape demand for symbolic racial appeals within the Democratic coalition.
"The Limited Appeal of Social Justice Lexicon." In progress.
Abstract:
In recent years, progressive social movements have placed significant emphasis on language and messaging strategies as a means to be inclusive of, build solidarity among, and empower marginalized populations. However, this terminology has often sparked backlash not only among conservatives but also among many liberals, including the very groups it seeks to represent. Drawing on messaging experiments, election polls from 2016–2024, and textual analyses of candidate platforms, speeches, and communications, this paper shows that terms such as “Latinx” and “BIPOC” and slogans like “Abolish ICE” or “Defund the Police” are unpopular not only among conservatives but also among the very constituencies they aim to represent. Yet they are popular among affluent liberals. Conditioning on constituency demographics, I find that candidates who use such language receive a modest electoral boost in affluent, white, Democratic-leaning districts, but consistent penalties elsewhere. These findings show that so-called “woke” language reflects the preferences of a distinct, privileged segment of the progressive coalition and that the supply of identity politics is tailored to the tastes of this group.
Immigration, Citizenship, and Inclusion
Immigration politics is often studied as a question of how native-born citizens evaluate newcomers. My work starts there but also asks what happens after immigrants become members of the polity. One set of projects examines how publics evaluate immigrants’ economic, cultural, humanitarian, and procedural characteristics, and whether information about undocumented immigrants’ economic contributions can increase support for reform. Another set of projects turns to immigrants themselves, asking how naturalized citizens sort into American party politics and how immigrants’ own immigration-policy views changed during the Trump era. Together, this work treats immigration not only as an object of public opinion, but as a process of political incorporation through which immigrants enter, navigate, and sometimes reinforce polarized democratic politics.
“Which Immigrants do Citizens Prefer? A Meta-Reanalysis of 100 Conjoint Experiments.” 2026. (with Taeku Lee, Mashail Malik, Reed Rasband, Marcel Roman, and Priyanka Sethy). Science Advances. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In the last decade, an important literature in the social sciences has examined public attitudes toward immigrants in host societies. In it, a prominent experimental method---the conjoint design, where participants are tasked with rating or choosing between randomized profiles---has been used reliably to understand how immigrant characteristics shape admission preferences. We collate replication datasets from 100 individual studies spanning 1,475,403 immigrant profiles with 26 randomized attributes evaluated by 142,817 survey respondents from 36 countries. Meta-analyses reinforce well-established findings: economic, cultural, humanitarian, and procedural factors all influence evaluations. Meta-reanalyses show that preferences are broadly similar across countries and demographic groups. However, they also reveal two additional patterns: economic considerations have become more influential over time, and evaluations of individual immigrants differ sharply depending on where people stand on the broader immigration debate. These findings shed light on ongoing debates and point to fruitful areas for future research.
“Perceived Economic Contributions Increase Positivity toward Undocumented Immigrants.” 2026. Public Opinion Quarterly. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
Undocumented immigrants contribute to the US economy by participating in the labor force, paying taxes, and starting businesses. They do so under constant fear of deportation and while being barred from government assistance programs. Nevertheless, misconceptions about how they affect the job market and public finance persist, exacerbating animus and hindering policy reforms. Across three survey experiments and three national samples of Americans, I assess two informational interventions to increase positivity toward this group: facts, which tackle misinformation, and narratives, which foster empathy. Both interventions yield positive results overall, with anecdotal accounts of "hard-working" undocumented immigrants proving most effective among those most negatively predisposed against them. The persuasive success of economic considerations in this domain has concrete implications for policymakers and advocates in their efforts to rally public support for immigration reform and against mass deportations. Further, these findings complicate motivated reasoning accounts and suggest belief updating is possible, provided information is tailored to the intended audience.
“The Partisan-Ideological Sorting of New Americans” (with Marcel Roman). Revise and resubmit, Journal of Politics.
Abstract:
Despite extensive work on partisan-ideological sorting among the U.S. public, whether and how this process unfolds among immigrants remains unclear---a pressing gap as their share of the electorate continues to increase. We adjudicate between competing models of immigrant political assimilation and, building on evidence that naturalization causally increases political integration, hypothesize that gaining citizenship should motivate partisan-ideological sorting. We assemble a comprehensive corpus of 27 immigrant surveys (N = 75,411) and conduct meta-analyses showing that (1) sorting is more than double for naturalized immigrants (d = 0.38) relative to non-citizens (d = 0.17), (2) naturalized immigrants are nearly as sorted as U.S.-born whites, (3) the naturalization-sorting link is heterogeneous across ethno-racial groups, and (4) this link is associated with partisan identity conditional on ethno-racial group.
Abstract:
Does anti-immigrant backlash unite the people it targets? Using Cooperative Election Study data from 2010--2025, we track the pro-immigration attitudinal gradient, from third-generation US-born respondents to noncitizens, through Donald Trump's rise. The gradient contracted and remained smaller afterward; the fully adjusted 2010--2024 estimate is a 0.133-SD reduction from third-generation US-born respondents to noncitizens. Recurring items show why: third-generation respondents liberalized more, while naturalized citizens moved modestly toward restriction on conditional legalization. The contraction appears both on policies governing new immigration and on policies affecting immigrants already present, survives timing, measurement, composition, local-context, and unrelated-outcome checks, and is smaller among immigrants with longer residential tenure, homeownership, and higher income. Republican and conservative immigrants also shift less---not more---than simple cue-taking predicts. Backlash can make a category politically salient without making the people associated with it more politically aligned.
Place, Diversity, and Public Goods
When do group boundaries and local environments shape public opinion and political behavior? This line of work connects questions often studied separately: whether diversity erodes support for collective provision, whether outgroup bias affects attitudes toward public finance, whether local demographic change shapes participation, and whether place-based economic and demographic conditions explain backlash. Across these projects, I ask when group difference and local context meaningfully shape individuals—and when national politics, personal predispositions, and broader partisan conflict matter more.
“People not Places: Local Context Does not Predict Individual Preferences for Globalization” (with Stephen Ansolabehere). Forthcoming, PS: Political Science & Politics. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
A large literature in the social sciences attributes what it has termed a “globalization backlash” to local economic and demographic change. A central implication is that communities experiencing import competition, industrial decline, or immigration should exhibit more nationalist, populist, isolationist, protectionist, and xenophobic political attitudes. This paper evaluates the generalizability of this claim using nearly two decades of survey data from the Cooperative Election Study (2006–2024), covering more than 700,000 respondents and 345 policy-preference items on immigration, trade, international cooperation, and military intervention. We combine these data with a wide range of contextual indicators of trade penetration, local economic conditions, and demographic composition measured at multiple geographic levels. Across specifications leveraging within-place variation and extensive robustness checks, the associations between contextual indicators and globalization preferences are generally weak and inconsistent across outcomes and time. By contrast, in our data, individual-level political predispositions account for most of the variation in preferences. These findings suggest that commonly used contextual indicators are weak predictors of globalization attitudes and that the “backlash” reflects the politicization and polarization of existing divides rather than broad shifts in public opinion grounded in local change.
“Does Diversity Undermine Support for Redistribution?” (with Marcel Roman). Working paper.
Abstract:
With rising income and wealth inequality, demand for redistribution might be expected to increase. However, public opinion on these issues has remained relatively stable in recent years. Concomitantly, the ethno-racial composition of the country has rapidly changed. Theories on ethnic diversity and racial threat predict such dynamics may reduce support for redistribution despite rising inequality, which would explain why support for redistribution remains stagnant in the U.S. We test these theories by pairing local demographic data with national public opinion surveys of nearly a million Americans, including 3 panels of individuals who were interviewed multiple times between 2010 and 2022. Changes in neighborhood demographics do not significantly influence fiscal and social policy preferences. We rule out several sources of heterogeneity, conduct various sensitivity analyses, and replicate our findings using survey experiments and perceived measures of demographic change. These null results clash with established findings on diversity, intergroup conflict, and public finance.
“Local Diversity and Political Participation” (with Zachary Hertz). In progress.
“Outgroup Bias and the Unacceptability of Tax Fraud.” 2024. (with Vincent Arel-Bundock, André Blais, Rita De La Feria, and Allison Harell). Political Studies Review. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In countries with well-developed welfare state systems, it is often claimed that racial or ethnic minorities impose a heavy burden on social assistance programs without contributing to public goods. In this study, we consider the attitudinal effects of anecdotal reports of tax cheating by minorities. We conduct survey experiments in France and the United States to assess if people react more harshly to tax fraud perpetrated by members of a minority rather than the majority group. We find no evidence that minority status affects judgments and perceptions about tax fraud, including among those on the right end of the political spectrum. Tax fraud is considered unacceptable regardless of the culprit's origin.
Understanding Voters
Why do voters support candidates, parties, and policies that do not align with their stated goals or material interests? Across projects on tax policy, corporate misconduct, candidate choice, public-health crises, incumbency, and political information, I study the gap between what voters want, what they reward, and what they end up getting from government. These papers ask when voters respond to self-interest and sociotropic considerations, when partisan or symbolic commitments matter more, and when information that should matter in principle fails to move opinion in practice.
“What Do We Learn From a Decade of Candidate Choice Conjoint Experiments? (with Alexander Coppock, Matthew Blyth, and Semra Sevi). Under review.
Abstract:
Taking stock of the lessons from the extensive body of candidate choice conjoint experiments requires synthesis and a broad view. Here we conduct a meta-reanalysis of 184 such studies conducted in 48 countries among 321,017 respondents who chose between hypothetical candidates in 1,576,945 pairs. The most important pattern we observe is that political attributes like policy positions and partisanship exert substantially larger effects than demographic attributes such as race, gender, age, and religion: this empirical result informs enduring theoretical debates regarding voter preferences over substantive and descriptive representation. This main finding is echoed in the persistent pattern that the effects of most attributes are smaller in the presence of policy information. Further, among US conjoints we show that cross-pressured voters choose political congruence over descriptive similarity, and, most strikingly, that when a shared party and shared policy positions are pitted against each other, voters side with policy: they choose a co-partisan who holds opposing positions less than half the time.
“Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime.” 2023. (with Simon St-Georges, Vincent Arel-Bundock, and André Blais). Political Research Quarterly. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies’ right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs
“Are Tax Cuts Supporters Self-Interested and/or Partisan? The Case of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” 2022. (with André Blais). American Politics Research.
Abstract:
In late 2017, the first unified Republican government in 10 years enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Why did so many citizens support a policy that primarily benefited people richer than them? The self-interest hypothesis holds that individuals act upon the position they occupy in the income distribution: richer (poorer) taxpayers should favor (oppose) regressive policy. Associations between income and policy preferences are often inconsistent, however, suggesting that many citizens fail to connect their self-interest to taxation. Indeed, political psychologists have shown compellingly that citizens can be guided by partisan considerations not necessarily aligned with their own interests. This article assesses public support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Using data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study as well as contemporaneous ANES and VOTER surveys to replicate our analyses, we show that self-interest and partisanship both come into play, but that partisanship matters more. Personal financial considerations, while less influential than party identification, are relevant for two groups of individuals: Republicans and the politically unsophisticated.
“Did Exposure to COVID-19 Affect Vote Choice in the 2020 Presidential Election?” 2021. (with Semra Sevi). Research & Politics. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
An important body of literature shows that citizens evaluate elected officials based on their past performance. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the conventional wisdom in both media and academic discourse was that Donald Trump would have been a two-term president absent an unprecedented, global force majeure. In this research note, we address a simple question: did exposure to COVID-19 impact vote choice in the 2020 presidential election? Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, we find that Trump’s vote share decreased because of COVID-19. However, there is no evidence suggesting that Joe Biden loses the election when no voter reports exposure to coronavirus cases and deaths. These negligible effects are found at both the national and state levels, and are robust to an exhaustive set of confounders across model specifications.
“Logarithmic versus Linear Visualizations of COVID-19 do not Affect Support for Confinement.” 2020. (with Semra Sevi, Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski, Emmanuel Heisbourg, Paola Vegas, Maxime Coulumbe, Vincent Arel-Bundock, Peter J. Loewen, and André Blais). Canadian Journal of Political Science. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and it quickly spread to many countries. By March 2020, the virus had triggered a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). In response to this crisis, governments have implemented unprecedented public health measures. The success of these policies will largely depend on the public's willingness to comply with new rules. A key factor in citizens’ willingness to comply is their understanding of the data that motivate government action. In this study, we examine how different ways of presenting these data visually can affect citizen's perceptions, attitudes and support for public policy.
Canadian Politics
Canada has been central to my intellectual formation and remains an important comparative setting for my research. Many questions that animate American politics—about race, immigration, identity, redistribution, representation, and electoral accountability—take different forms in a federal, multilingual, multicultural, and settler-colonial democracy. My Canadian projects use this setting to study how demands for repair are received, how boundaries of national belonging are drawn, how demographic change shapes attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples, and how voters respond to candidates and electoral timing. In doing so, this work asks which theories travel beyond the U.S. context, which need to be revised, and what these comparisons reveal about Canadian politics itself.
“From Recognition to Repair: Increasing Support for Reconciliation in a Settler Colonial Society” (with Andreea Zota and Jo-Anne Wemmers). Under review.
Abstract:
Historical injustice against marginalized groups creates a persistent democratic challenge: publics may acknowledge harm while resisting reparative measures. Can communication strategies bridge this gap? We study this question in the context of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada. In a preregistered survey experiment with 3,017 non-Indigenous adults, we compare statistical and narrative interventions conveying parallel information about contemporary inequalities linked to past harms. We find that symbolic recognition is substantially more popular than materially, politically, or behaviorally demanding forms of repair. Statistical information is especially effective for recognition and advocacy, whereas narratives more strongly reduce resentment toward Indigenous Peoples and increase support for reparative policies. Combining formats produces diminishing returns, suggesting that more information is not always more persuasive. Focus groups help explain why: statistics make inequality legible but abstract, whereas narratives make harm concrete without automatically translating emotion into support for more demanding repair. Together, the findings show that recognition and repair are distinct dimensions of reconciliation and that different communication strategies are effective for each.
“Who Counts as Truly of the Nation? Subnational Identity Threat and Immigrant Inclusion in Québec.” Working paper.
Abstract:
Are Québec’s recent secularism and language laws rooted in prejudice? The question divides those who view these measures as necessary for protecting Québec’s identity and those who see discrimination. Beneath this debate lies a civic-ethnic divide: public secularism and proficiency in the common language versus ascriptive markers of ancestry and creed. This study tests these logics directly with a conjoint experiment, comparing francophone Québécois and Anglophone Canadians. Results show francophones place especially strong weight on public use of French and nativity, and penalize minority religious affiliation and visible symbols. Anglophones display the same qualitative pattern but weaker language- and nativity-linked effects. The contrast is thus one of intensity, not kind: both publics blend civic and ascriptive criteria when judging national belonging. These findings refine accounts of Québec nationalism and illuminate how populations within one country prioritize language, origin, and religion when defining who counts as a real member of the nation.
“Threatened Reactions to Indigenous Population Growth” (with Andreea Zota). In progress.
“Reassessing Local Candidate Effects.” 2022. (with Semra Sevi and André Blais). Canadian Journal of Political Science. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In a seminal article published in 2003, Blais et al. demonstrated that local candidates mattered for about 5 per cent of voters in the 2000 Canadian federal election. This study's reliance on a single election raises external validity concerns. We replicate Blais et al.'s original analyses on four elections from 2000 to 2008 using a decade's worth of data from the Canadian Election Study. The local candidate effect first uncovered by Blais et al. is not specific to a single election. Local candidates are a decisive consideration for about 5 to 8 per cent of voters outside Quebec and for about 2 to 5 per cent of voters in Quebec.
“Do Incumbents Gain from Calling a Snap Election?” 2023. (with Semra Sevi and Ruth Dassonneville). Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
In many countries the incumbent party is free to call an early election. This gives them an advantage over opposition parties. But this decision can also backfire. In the present paper, we examine voters’ reactions to a snap election held despite a fixed election date, resistance by opposition parties, and a global pandemic. We conduct a survey experiment during the 2021 Canadian federal election campaign to assess whether voters are influenced by information about the fixed election law and the argument that the election call was opportunistic and unnecessary. While some respondents, particularly partisans of the Liberal Party, the incumbent party, moderately respond in a negative way to new information, our treatments overall do little to influence views about the snap election. However, negative attitudes toward the election call are a decisive consideration for many voters, inflicting an electoral cost to the Liberal Party which likely deprived it from a legislative majority.
Methods and Metascience
Some of my work steps back from substantive debates to ask what kind of evidence political science can build on. My coauthored article on statistical power shows that many quantitative political science studies are poorly equipped to detect plausible effects, leaving published literatures more uncertain than conventional evidence reviews often suggest. I have also participated in a large collaborative project on analytical robustness, which examines how reasonable analytic choices can lead researchers to different conclusions from the same data. Together, this work reflects my broader commitment to credible and cumulative political science, and it informs how I think about research design, replication, robustness, and generalizability across my substantive projects.
“Quantitative Political Science Research is Greatly Underpowered.” 2025. (with Vincent Arel-Bundock, Ryan Briggs, Hristos Doucouliagos, and T.D. Stanley). Journal of Politics. [Replication materials]
Abstract:
The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles. Using generous assumptions, we find that the median analysis has about 10% power and that only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with some being characterized by high power, but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the statistical power of political science research.
“Investigating the Analytical Robustness of the Social and Behavioural Sciences.” 2026. (with Balazs Aczel, Barnabas Szaszi, Harry T. Clelland, Marton Kovacs, Hannah Schulz-Kümpel, Felix Holzmeister, Gustav Nilsonne, Sabine Hoffmann, Livia Kósa, Zoltán Torma, Brian Nosek, and 477 others). Nature.
Abstract:
The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts’ choices. To explore this question, we took a sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018 in criminology, demography, economics and finance, management, marketing and organisational behaviour, political science, psychology, and sociology. For one claim of each study, at least five re-analysts were invited to independently re-analyze the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the re-analyses was assessed in peer evaluations and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. Only 31% of the independent re-analyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of +/- 0.05 Cohen’s d) as the original report. Even with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator did not go above 56%. Regarding the conclusions drawn, only 34% of the studies remained analytically robust, meaning that all re-analysts reported evidence for the originally reported claim. Using a more liberal definition of robustness produced comparable result (39% when >80% re-analysis agreement with the original conclusion defined analytical robustness). This explorative study suggests that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research cannot be assumed to be robust to alternative — similarly justifiable — analyses. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.