Bio
Chagai M. Weiss is a postdoctoral fellow at the Conflict and Polarization Lab at Stanford University. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2022 after spending two years as a Middle East Initiative predoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Chagai's core interest is in examining how institutions and the people within them shape intergroup relations in divided societies. He is also working on several projects examining the effects of scalable interventions for prejudice reduction, the electoral effects of conflict, the institutional origins of partisan polarization, and experimental methods. His research has been published or is forthcoming in Cambridge University Press, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and other journals.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4311-9672All Publications
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Female Representation and Legitimacy: Evidence from a Harmonized Experiment in Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
2023
View details for DOI 10.1017/S0003055423000357
View details for Web of Science ID 000977316000001
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Educating for inclusion: Diversity education programs can reduce prejudice toward outgroups in Israel.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2023; 120 (16): e2218621120
Abstract
Intergroup prejudice is pervasive in many contexts worldwide, leading to discrimination and conflict. Existing research suggests that prejudice is acquired at an early age and that durably improving intergroup relations is extremely challenging, often requiring intense interventions. Building on existing research in social psychology and inspired by the Israeli TV series "You Can't Ask That," which depicts charismatic children from minority groups broaching sensitive topics at the core of intergroup relations, we develop a month-long diversity education program. Our program exposed students to the TV series and facilitated follow-up classroom discussions in which students constructively addressed various sensitive topics at the core of intergroup relations and learned about intergroup similarities, intragroup heterogeneity, and the value of taking others' perspectives. Through two field experiments implemented in Israeli schools, we show that integrating our intervention into school curricula improved Jewish students' attitudes toward minorities and increased some pro-diversity behavior up to 13 wk posttreatment. We further provide suggestive evidence that the intervention was effective by encouraging students to take their outgroups' perspectives and address an element of scalability by delegating implementation responsibilities to classroom teachers in our second study. Our findings suggest that theoretically informed intensive education programs are a promising route to reducing prejudice at a young age.
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2218621120
View details for PubMedID 37040414
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Beliefs about minority representation in policing and support for diversification.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2022; 119 (52): e2213986119
Abstract
Diversification of police forces is widely promoted as a reform for reducing racial disparities in police-civilian interactions and increasing police legitimacy. Despite these potential benefits, nearly every municipal police department in the United States remains predominately White and male. Here, we investigate whether the scale and persistence of minority underrepresentation in policing might partly be explained by a lack of support for diversification among voters and current police officers. Across two studies (N = 2, 661) sampling the US adult population and residents from a city with one of the least representative police forces in the country, individuals significantly overestimate officer diversity at both the local and national levels. We find that correcting these biased beliefs with accurate information reduces trust in police and increases support for hiring new officers from underrepresented groups. In the municipal sample, these corrections also cause an increase in residents' willingness to vote for reforms to diversify their majority White police department. Additional paired decision-making experiments (N = 1, 663) conducted on these residents and current police officers demonstrate that both prefer hiring new officers from currently underrepresented groups, independent of civil service exam performance and other hiring criteria. Overall, these results suggest that attitudes among voters and police officers are unlikely to pose a major barrier to diversity reforms.
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2213986119
View details for PubMedID 36538484
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War-Time Military Service Can Affect Partisan Preferences
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES
2022
View details for DOI 10.1177/00104140221141837
View details for Web of Science ID 000889602500001
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Atypical violence and conflict dynamics: evidence from Jerusalem
POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND METHODS
2022
View details for DOI 10.1017/psrm.2022.39
View details for Web of Science ID 000858621000001
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Interstate Conflict Can Reduce Support for Incumbents: Evidence from the Israeli Electorate and the Yom Kippur War
JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
2023; 67 (2-3): 326-348
View details for DOI 10.1177/00220027221114086
View details for Web of Science ID 000823178900001
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How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
2022
View details for DOI 10.1111/ajps.12718
View details for Web of Science ID 000820269100001
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Abstraction and Detail in Experimental Design
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
2023; 67 (4): 979-995
View details for DOI 10.1111/ajps.12710
View details for Web of Science ID 000803686200001