Tracking Americans’ Causal Beliefs about A.I. in the Workplace

Political scientist Beatrice Magistro argues that Americans’ mental models of artificial intelligence’s (AI) economic effects – whether they see AI as complementing or substituting workers, raising or lowering prices, increasing or reducing wages – will determine electoral coalitions and policy trajectories. Currently, no longitudinal dataset tracks how these workplace attitudes evolve. This project fills this gap by fielding four waves of a short (four-minute) survey through YouGov (2,000 per wave) over 18 months. In previous work, Magistro has identified four distinct belief types: Complementers (who view AI as enhancing human capabilities), Substituters (who see AI replacing workers), Skeptics (who lack decisive views), and Uncertains. She finds that these beliefs predict policy preferences, with Substituters favoring restrictive measures (automation taxes, immigration caps) while Complementers support adaptive policies (reskilling programs, wage insurance). By tracking belief evolution alongside real-world AI developments, the PI will document how mental models shift and whether belief-policy linkages remain stable. She will examine three questions: (1) How do mental models about AI’s economic effects (e.g., complementary vs. substitutionary) change over time as AI adoption and salience increase? (2) Do these shifts differ across partisan groups and exposure profiles (objective occupation-based exposure and subjective job risk)? (3) Do changes in the prevalence of belief types translate into corresponding changes in support for adaptive versus restrictive policies?