Justin Thorpe is the 2024 recipient of the Erika Fairchild Award for Outstanding Paper. His paper, “Affective Polarization and Party Identity,” researched the relationship between affective polarization and party identity by testing polarization against priming positive and negative opinions of congruent and opposing party identities.
“My research has been a positive experience and has had a major impact on my education. This hands-on experience forced me to learn the ‘science’ part of political science at a significantly deeper level than in any of my previous classes,” Thorpe said.
Department Chair, Professor Michael Struett, announced Thorpe’s award at the spring 2024 commencement ceremony. Thorpe’s research was guided by his faculty mentor, Assistant Teaching Professor Zlatin Mitkov, Ph.D., through the political science honors program courses (PS 490H/492H) and funded in part by the John W. Pope grant for undergraduate research awarded by the Free and Open Societies Project in the School of Public and International Affairs.
“Working with Dr. Mitkov has been an incredible experience. He has been an excellent guide for me during the research process, from brainstorming and the literature review to traveling to Vancouver for an academic conference.” Thorpe explained. “Between IRB review and developing a strong theoretical framework, he has given me a strong push into steps of the process that I had not at all considered before beginning the research.”
Political Science department faculty often work with students on individual research projects. “Working with Justin provided me with an opportunity to mentor and share knowledge often not explored during standard courses,” Dr. Mitkov said. “Justin’s research examined the relationship between party identity and partisan polarization, closely following previous research while using substantial original data collection.” he added. “The study suggests that positive inter-partisan messaging could potentially decrease polarization, although implementing such strategies in the current political climate presents challenges to anyone brave enough to try. While not a definitive solution, these findings take us one step closer to understanding and addressing the current political polarization in the country.”
Thorpe’s advice for current students considering an independent research project: “While deciding on an overall research topic to focus on, cast a wide net and read the abstracts of as many previous research articles as possible. You will find topics that interest you that you may have never heard of and this early literature review will set you up nicely for when the research actually begins.”
A double major, Thorpe graduated with cum laude honors in May with bachelor’s degrees in both political science and history.
The Erika Fairchild Award is awarded annually to the graduating senior who has written the best research paper during the academic year. Fairchild was a professor of political science at North Carolina State University, where she was also the Associate Dean of the College of Humanities.
