Ithaca College

Matt Guardino, a lecturer in the Department of Politics, recently published a book chapter that explores how possessing varying levels of information affects people's attitudes toward obscure dimensions of the U.S. tax code. The chapter, co-authored with Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University, describes the results of an Internet-based survey experiment.

In the study, which was conducted through the National Science Foundation-funded Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, Mettler and Guardino show that offering specific information about certain tax breaks helps people to express opinions that are consistent with their material interests and social values. This research suggests that making basic information more widely available would result in more opposition to the growing "hidden welfare state," whose policies favor high-income Americans and which has been constructed over several decades with little public debate.

The chapter appears in Mettler's book The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy, which was recently published by University of Chicago Press. Guardino teaches News Media & U.S. Politics at Ithaca College. Mettler is Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions in Cornell's Department of Government.