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Thomas Craemer

Assistant Professor

Thomas Craemer joined the Department of Public Policy Faculty in the fall of 2005. He teaches graduate courses in the Masters of Survey Research program (MSR), including Principles and Methods of Survey Research, Questionnaire Writing and Design, Public Opinion and Attitude Formation as well as statistics. His academic training is in the fields of political science and political psychology. While pursuing his degree he worked at the Stony Brook University’s Center for Survey Research. His research focuses on American race relations and he is especially interested in psychological mechanisms that may help to enhance minority representation. In a system based on majority decision making it is always possible that the majority may permanently exclude a minority group, as was the case during the era of legal segregation in the South. Professor Craemer investigates the possibility that conscious as well as non-conscious feelings of closeness may allow members of the majority to identify with the political goals of minority groups. Due to the politically sensitive nature of survey questions regarding racial attitudes, Craemer employs reaction time based measures of non‑conscious racial attitudes. He has recently completed a nationally representative telephone survey in combination with an on-line reaction time study measuring non-conscious racial attitudes over the internet. The results suggest that non-conscious feelings of closeness play a powerful role in motivating people to support otherwise unpopular race-related policies such as slavery reparations and affirmative action. This research project was supported by a Large Faculty Grant from the University of Connecticut. Based on these results he has submitted a manuscript entitled “Implicit Closeness to Blacks and Support for Slavery Reparations” to the American Journal of Political Science.

Professor Craemer has a forthcoming article in the journal Political Psychology entitled “Nonconscious Feelings of Closeness toward African Americans and Support for Pro-Black Policies” and has recently published an article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol 614, No. 1, pp. 6-14) entitled “An Evolutionary Model of Racial Attitude Formation: Socially Shared And Idiosyncratic Racial Attitudes.” He frequently presents his research results at national and international conferences of the American Political Science Association, the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the International Society of Political Psychology, and others.

While attending the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in New Orleans in January 2007, Craemer was shocked at the level of destruction in many parts of the city outside the tourist center even one and a half years after Hurricane Katrina. He returned to New Orleans in March 2007 with a group of 55 UConn undergraduate students to volunteer in removing debris from a senior citizens home. In May 2007 he accompanied a group of 15 DPP graduate students to volunteer for home reconstruction through Habitat for Humanity in the Upper 9th Ward. The group is planning their next relief and reconstruction trip for May 2008.

Professor Craemer earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stony Brook University in 2005. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tuebingen in his native Germany. Previously he earned two Masters of Political Science, one from Stony Brook University and one from the University of Tuebingen. He relocated to the United States in 2000. His dissertations are entitled Bridges over Troubled Waters. Racial Solidarity across the Color Line? (2005) and Ursprung Sozialen Altruismus'  (2001, Engl.: Origin of Social Altruism).