About
Lynn Vavreck is a professor (by courtesy) at UCLA in the Department of Communication. Her work focuses on whether political messages affect election outcomes. She has written four books about campaigns, with her latest titled THE GAMBLE, which discusses the 2012 presidential election. Her research includes conducting advertising field experiments, running large panel surveys, and collecting passive-tracking data on people's media exposure. Vavreck has watched every presidential campaign ad ever made and read every stump speech given from 1952 to 2000. Her educational background includes a Ph.D., M.S., and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Rochester, as well as a B.S. in Political Science from Arizona State University.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Business
- Psychology
- Social psychology
- Advertising
- Social Science
- Computer Security
- Law
- Sociology
- Positive economics
- Biology
- Data science
- Economics
- Political economy
- Telecommunications
- Public relations
- Internet privacy
- Marketing
Selected publications
Harvard Dataverse · 2026-04-13
datasetOpen accessWe evaluate whether campaign advertisements that generate larger emotional reactions also generate larger persuasive effects in contemporary elections. We analyze 29 weeks of experiments conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, in which 48 authentic campaign ads were tested in real time, often within days of their debut. The ads and a placebo were randomly assigned to approximately 28,000 subjects. We find that campaign ads reliably move emotions, albeit in largely partisan ways, with comparatively muted reactions among independents. Critically, however, these emotional reactions do not predict the magnitude of an ad's effect on candidate favorability, vote intention, policy preferences, or turnout intention. Our results cast doubt on emotion-based accounts of advertising persuasion in polarized elections and caution practitioners against using self-reported emotional reactions as a measure of message effectiveness.
PNAS Nexus · 2025-06-01
articleOpen accessSenior authorGovernments try to promote prosocial behaviors like gun safety, environmental protection, opioid awareness, and during COVID-19 pandemic, behaviors like social distancing, masking, and vaccination. Democratic governments generally cannot force these behaviors on citizens; instead, they must persuade. Persuasive appeals mainly fall into three categories: endorsements (cues from leaders, experts, or celebrities), guidance and mandates (policies or practices issued by government), and information (the provision of facts and arguments about benefits). Using data from 10 experiments with 85,191 survey respondents conducted over a 2-year period during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assess the effectiveness of these three types of persuasive messages. We find that endorsements are variously polarizing depending on subjects' partisan orientation toward the endorser, counterproductive in general, or wholly ineffective. We find that guidance and information treatments-when they are effective at all-move people "in parallel," i.e. in the direction of information by similar amounts regardless of party affiliation.
JMIR Cancer · 2024-12-02
articleOpen accessBACKGROUND: Whether COVID-19 is associated with a change in risk perception about other health conditions is unknown. Because COVID-19 occurred during a breast cancer study, we evaluated the effect of COVID-19 risk perception on women's breast cancer risk perception. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the relationship between perceived risk of COVID-19 and change in perceived breast cancer risk. We hypothesized that women who perceived greater COVID-19 risk would evidence increased perceived breast cancer risk and this risk would relate to increased anxiety and missed cancer screening. METHODS: Women aged 40-74 years with no breast cancer history were enrolled in a US breast cancer prevention trial in outpatient settings. They had provided breast cancer risk perception and general anxiety before COVID-19. We performed a prospective observational study of the relationship between the perceived risk of COVID-19 and the change in perceived breast cancer risk compared to before the pandemic. Each woman was surveyed up to 4 times about COVID-19 and breast cancer risk perception, general anxiety, and missed medical care early in COVID-19 (May to December 2020). RESULTS: Among 13,002 women who completed a survey, compared to before COVID-19, anxiety was higher during COVID-19 (mean T score 53.5 vs 49.7 before COVID-19; difference 3.8, 95% CI 3.6-4.0; P<.001) and directly related to perceived COVID-19 risk. In survey wave 1, anxiety increased by 2.3 T score points for women with very low perceived COVID-19 risk and 5.2 points for those with moderately or very high perceived COVID-19 risk. Despite no overall difference in breast cancer risk perception (mean 32.5% vs 32.5% before COVID-19; difference 0.24, 95% CI -0.47 to 0.52; P=.93), there was a direct relationship between change in perceived breast cancer risk with COVID-19 risk perception, ranging in survey wave 4 from a 2.4% decrease in breast cancer risk perception for those with very low COVID-19 risk perception to a 3.4% increase for women with moderately to very high COVID-19 risk perception. This was not explained by the change in anxiety or missed cancer screening. After adjustment for age, race, education, and survey wave, compared to women with very low perceived COVID-19 risk, perceived breast cancer risk increased by 1.54% (95% CI 0.75%-2.33%; P<.001), 4.28% (95% CI 3.30%-5.25%; P<.001), and 3.67% (95% CI 1.94%-5.40%; P<.001) for women with moderately low, neither high nor low, and moderately or very high perceived COVID-19 risk, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Low perceived COVID-19 risk was associated with reduced perceived breast cancer risk, and higher levels of perceived COVID-19 risk were associated with increased perceived breast cancer risk. This natural experiment suggests that a threat such as COVID-19 may have implications beyond the pandemic. Preventive health behaviors related to perceived risk may need attention as COVID-19 becomes endemic.
Perceptions of COVID-19 Risk: How Did People Adapt to the Novel Risk?
Medical Decision Making · 2024-01-13 · 7 citations
articleOpen accessBACKGROUND: There is limited understanding of how risk perceptions changed as the US population gained experience with COVID-19. The objectives were to examine risk perceptions and determine the factors associated with risk perceptions and how these changed over the first 18 mo of the pandemic. METHODS: Seven cross-sectional online surveys were fielded between May 2020 and October 2021. The study included a population-weighted sample of 138,303 US adults drawn from a market research platform, with an average 68% cooperation rate. Respondents' risk perception of developing COVID in the next 30 days was assessed at each time point. We examined relationships between 30-day risk perceptions and various factors (including sociodemographic features, health, COVID-19 experience, political affiliation, and psychological variables). RESULTS: COVID risk perceptions were stable across the 2020 surveys and showed a significant decrease in the 2021 surveys. Several factors, including older age, worse health, high COVID worry, in-person employment type, higher income, Democratic political party affiliation (the relatively more liberal party in the United States), low tolerance of uncertainty, and high anxiety were strongly associated with higher 30-d risk perceptions in 2020. One notable change occurred in 2021, in that younger adults (aged 18-29 y) had significantly higher 30-d risk perceptions than older adults did (aged 65 y and older) after vaccination. Initial differences in perception by political party attenuated over time. Higher 30-d risk perceptions were significantly associated with engaging in preventive behaviors. LIMITATIONS: Cross-sectional samples, risk perception item focused on incidence not severity. CONCLUSIONS: COVID risk perceptions decreased over time. Understanding the longitudinal pattern of risk perceptions and the factors associated with 30-d risk perceptions over time provides valuable insights to guide public health communication campaigns. HIGHLIGHTS: The study assessed COVID-19 risk perceptions at 7 time points over 18 mo of the pandemic in large samples of US adults.Risk perceptions were fairly stable until the introduction of vaccines in early 2021, at which point they showed a marked reduction.Higher COVID-19 30-d risk perceptions were significantly associated with the preventive behaviors of masking, limiting social contact, avoiding restaurants, and not entertaining visitors at home.
2024-02-16
reportOpen accessSenior authorIn response to the COVID-19 public health crisis in 2020, PCORI launched an initiative to enhance existing research projects so that they could offer findings related to COVID-19.The initiative funded this study and others. How can people use the results?Doctors can use the results when considering how people's beliefs about risk affect their care.To learn more about this project, visit www.pcori.org/Esserman244.
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2023-09-07
book-chapterSenior authorPrinceton University Press eBooks · 2023-09-07
book-chapterSenior authorPrinceton University Press eBooks · 2023-09-07
book-chapterSenior authorHow Voters Choose Candidates in Presidential Primaries
2023-01-01
otherSenior authorPrinceton University Press eBooks · 2023-09-07
book-chapterSenior author
Frequent coauthors
- 45 shared
John Sides
- 28 shared
Seth J. Hill
Center for the Study of Democracy
- 25 shared
Karen Sepucha
Massachusetts General Hospital
- 23 shared
Alexander Coppock
Yale University
- 23 shared
Ryan Baxter-King
University of California, Los Angeles
- 21 shared
Chris Tausanovitch
- 18 shared
Michael Tesler
University of California, Irvine
- 16 shared
Arash Naeim
UCLA Medical Center
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Lynn Vavreck
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup