Dr Joseph Phillips

Joe received his PhD in Political Science from Pennsylvania State University in May 2021. In November 2020, he joined the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow.

Currently, Joe is working on a multi-year ERC-funded project with Dr Nikhil Sengupta that investigates the social, cognitive and motivational antecedents of political attitudes and their individual-level and system-level consequences.

Joe is interested in the antecedents and consequences of political polarization and misinformation for individuals and society. In one line of work, he investigates the development and stability of attitudes toward political outgroup members over the adult life-span. He is also interested in the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of animosity toward political outgroups.
In another line of work, Joe examines misinformation ecosystems. He approaches this topic both through large-scale content analysis of online information dissemination (especially on YouTube) as well as through survey experimental approaches.