Vincent Hutchings
University of Michigan
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Primary Section: 53, Social and Political Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2022)
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Biosketch
Vincent Hutchings is the Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and a Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research. In 2020, he was also appointed as a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Hutchings conducts research and teaches courses in Black politics, American public opinion and voting behavior, and racial attitudes. In 2003, he published a book entitled Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability, from Princeton University Press. His research has primarily focused on the ways in which political campaigns and the media frame information about racial issues in order to activate and make politically relevant the voters' sympathies and/or antipathies for particular racial groups. Professor Hutchings has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. He was one of the Principal Investigators of the American National Election Study from 2010-2017. In 2012, Professor Hutchings was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
Research Interests
Vincent Hutchings' research has generally focused on the following areas: the political representation of African American interests in Congress, political information levels in the mass public, the antecedents and effects of racial attitudes on public opinion, and campaign strategies that activate and mobilize racial bias. In the area of congressional representation, Hutchings and his collaborators have explored the circumstances that prompt legislators to be responsive to the interests of Black constituents. With political information, he has examined when ordinary citizens become motivated to acquire policy-relevant information. His collaborative work on racial attitudes has explored the nature of racial prejudice, demonstrating that it is driven in part by anxieties among dominant groups about losing their relative advantages in society. The work that Hutchings and his co-authors have done on race-based campaign appeals has shown that subtle and not-so-subtle messages can activate latent racial biases among some segments of the electorate.
