About
John G. Bullock is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. His research focuses on political psychology, public opinion, and methodological issues in political science. He teaches courses including Introduction to American Politics (undergraduate lecture), Political Behavior (graduate seminar), Political Psychology (undergraduate lecture), Public Opinion and Representation in the United States (undergraduate seminar), and Quantitative Causal Inference (graduate seminar).
Dr. Bullock's research interests span several interconnected domains:
- Political Psychology: Examining how partisanship affects factual beliefs and political decision-making
- Public Opinion: Studying political knowledge measurement, the influence of elite cues, and attitudes toward redistribution
- Methodology: Developing rigorous approaches to mediation analysis, survey design, and causal inference
- Political Behavior: Investigating how voters process information and respond to party cues
His publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on methodological rigor, particularly in survey design and causal inference. Bullock has made significant contributions to understanding partisan bias in factual beliefs (showing such differences may be more illusory than real), the measurement of political knowledge (demonstrating how response options affect knowledge estimates), and the challenges of mediation analysis (arguing conventional approaches are fundamentally flawed). His recent work has expanded to examine leadership competence in government, particularly through his analysis of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Bullock maintains an active scholarly presence through his personal website and GitHub profile, where he shares academic tools including R packages and LaTeX classes. His work appears consistently in top political science journals including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and British Journal of Political Science.
