Stouffer Professor: Dr. Mutz

Dr. Diana C. Mutz has been appointed the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication in the School of Arts and Sciences with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. She also serves as director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics (ISCAP) at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.  

Dr. Mutz joined the faculty this fall from Ohio State University, where she was a professor of political science and journalism and communication. She completed both her Ph.D. and M.A. at Stanford University after earning a B.S. with highest distinction at Northwestern University.  

A scholar of mass media and political behavior, Dr. Mutz specializes in public opinion, research design, and political psychology, and she has received numerous research grants to support her contributions to these fields. Her latest work focuses on the role of interpersonal communication and mass media in exposing citizens to political disagreement.

Most recently, Dr. Mutz was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to sponsor a five-year project entitled "TESS: Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences," which provides opportunities for methodological innovation and original data collection to faculty and graduate students across the social sciences. As the co-principal investigator of TESS, Dr. Mutz is responsible for overseeing this infrastructure project that aims to advance social science research by combining the advantages of survey and experimental methods through experimentation on representative national population samples.

In addition to writing several award-winning papers, her book Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes received the American Political Science Association's award for the best book in political psychology in 1999.  She co-edited the book Political Persuasion and Attitude Change and is the former editor of Political Behavior.  Dr. Mutz is an active member of several professional organizations, serving as vice-president of the elections, public opinion, and political behavior section of the American Political Science Association, as a council member of the Midwest Political Science Association, and on the board of overseers of the National Election Studies.  

Dr. Mutz named this chair in memory of political scientist Samuel A. Stouffer, a scholar who pioneered the study of political tolerance in the United States.  Dr. Stouffer is remembered as a proponent of social science research that addresses contemporary political concerns. He conducted his classic research on political tolerance in America during the height of the McCarthy era.

This chair was established through the generosity of Walter and Leonore Annenberg.  The Honorable Leonore Annenberg is an emeritus trustee, as was the late Ambassador Annenberg, who received Penn's Alumni Award of Merit in 1991. The Annenbergs endowed many chairs in SAS and have made countless contributions to Penn, including the founding of the Annenberg School in 1958.