BY

I would like to thank the following people for being there along the long road called graduate school. Without them, I would have long been swallowed by one of this road’s many potholes. First, I’d like to thank my committee members – Marco Yzer, Kathryn Pearson, and Paul Goren – for their continuous support and feedback from the time this dissertation was in its very early stages to its completion. Marco is not only a great scholar and mentor but his family has become my family away from home. I will miss them. Kathryn always took the time to read chapter drafts and give extensive feedback but was also always ready to talk about grad school, career options, and life more generally. Paul’s meticulousness and calmness are the best ingredients for a better dissertation. The community of grad students and professors affiliated with the Center for the Study of Political Psychology offered a place to test my dissertation ideas. Support from the center allowed me to hire Laurel Volmer to do content analysis and I’d like to thank her for her thorough work and spending many hours of her summer on my dissertation. Before I entered graduate school, my advisor told me Minnesota graduate students i