Research
Dissertation
My dissertation, The Impact of Threat and Anxiety on Latino Political Behavior, examines how anxiety shapes political behavior among Latinos in the United States. Using survey experiments and observational data, I find that anxiety felt on behalf of one's group operates differently than anxiety felt at the individual level: while individual anxiety can be demobilizing, group-based anxiety increases non-electoral, pro-group political participation, particularly among people with weaker pan-ethnic identification. Among highly identified individuals, I find a ceiling effect, suggesting that additional group-based anxiety does little to further mobilize participation once group commitment is already strong. These findings challenge the assumption that anxiety is uniformly demobilizing, showing instead that marginalized communities can channel collective emotion into sustained political engagement under certain conditions.
I am currently extending this work in a solo-authored paper, "A Different Feeling: How Collective Emotions Drive Political Engagement Among Racially Stigmatized People," which received an Honorable Mention for Best Paper in Latina/o Politics from the WPSA Committee on the Status of Latinas/os in the Profession.
Emotions, Threat, and Politics
Expanding from my dissertation work, another area of research I hope to explore is expanding our understanding, as a discipline, of the role of emotions in the political behavior of marginalized communities. A large majority of the literature looks primarily at the negative impacts of threat. The ways in which threat mobilizes or demobilizes or negatively impacts intraminority coalition building. Beyond my dissertation work, my broader research agenda aims to investigate the positive emotions at play. That is, how do hope, optimism, pride, or even group-based love impact how members of marginalized groups respond to threat? I believe part of what drives responses to discriminatory contexts and/or rhetoric is not just negative emotions (i.e anger or anxiety) but a sense of love we feel for our group.
Gender, Masculinity, and Politics
A second area of research I am developing examines how perceived threats to social status shape political attitudes and behavior among men. In a collaborative project with Bianca Vicuña and Tye Rush (UC Davis), "Manly Politics: How Women's Candidacy Threatens Some Men's Perceived Position as the Representatives of Politics," we build on the social identity approach to argue that men who believe men are inherently better political leaders become less supportive of women candidates when confronted with evidence of women's rising political representation. We theorize that this backlash is facilitated by a heightened anxiety that men will no longer be seen as the default representatives of political leadership, and we are developing a survey experiment to test this argument.
Building on this project, I am also interested in extending the study of masculinity and perceived status threat to incel communities and their political attitudes. Existing scholarship on incels has largely focused on online communities and self-identified group members. My work takes a different approach, asking how a broader ideology of male disenfranchisement, one not confined to explicitly incel-identified spaces, shapes political attitudes, electoral behavior, and support for political violence. I am particularly interested in the role that loneliness and technology-mediated diffusion play in spreading this ideology beyond niche online subcultures. This project sits at the intersection of political psychology, gender and politics, and the study of political extremism.
Published Work
1. Alegre, Claudia. Cobian, Jessica. Pérez, Efrén. 2023. “Xenophobia”. Encyclopedia of Political Sociology.
2. Barreto, Matt. Alegre, Claudia. Bailey, Isaiah. Davis, Alexandria. Ferrer, Joshua. Nguy, Joyce. Palmisano, Christopher and Robertson, Crystal. 2023. "Black Lives Matter and the Racialized Support for the January 6th Insurrection." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
3. Robertson, Crystal. Davis, Alexandria. Nguy, Joyce. Alegre, Claudia. Comandur, Samyu. Frasure, Lorrie. 2025. “Views on Men Behaving Badly: Male Public Opinion and the 2021 Capitol Insurrection”. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.
4. Laurison, Daniel. Broun, Rachel. Diaz, Kelly. Alegre, Claudia. Orr, Lydia. Rastogi, Ankit. 2025. ‘'It's Like a Disconnection’ – Declining Support for Democrats Among Poor and Working-Class Black and Latine People”. Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Manuscripts in Progress
1. Alegre, Claudia. "A Different Feeling: How Collective Emotions Drive Political Engagement Among Racially Stigmatized People.” Working Paper.
2. Vicuña, Bianca. Alegre, Claudia. Rush, Tye. "Manly Politics: How Women's Candidacy Threatens Some Men's Perceived Position as the Representatives of Politics." Working Paper.