Contact Information
702 South Wright Street
Biography
My focus is on understanding and addressing the way certainty drives our tendency to judge harshly, demonize, and dismiss people who disagree. As well as understanding how we got to this point.
We often think of this as a problem of political polarization, a lack of civil discourse, or a lack of viewpoint diversity. Where those are actually the downstream effects of a fundamental problem in how we think.
My work includes:
Research Interests
Viewpoint diversity
Political polarization
Education
Courses Taught
SOC 230, Sociology of Political Polarization: Bigots and Snowflakes
SOC 163, Social Problems
SOC 280, Introduction to Social Statistics
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Sociology
Affiliate, Center for Social & Behavioral Science
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Redstone, I., & Villasenor, J. (2020). Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190078065.001.0001
Recent Publications
Redstone, I. (2025). Democracy and the problem of certainty. Theory and Society, 54(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-025-09592-9
Redstone, I. (2025). Response to Commentaries. Theory and Society, 54(1), 51-55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-025-09600-y
Redstone, I. (2024). The Certainty Trap: Why We Need to Question Ourselves More — and How We Can Judge Others Less. Pitchstone Publishing.
Akresh, I. R., & Massey, D. S. (2023). Duration of Residence Measurement. In Selected Topics in Migration Studies (pp. 205-206). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19631-7_35
Clark, C. J., Graso, M., Redstone, I., & Tetlock, P. E. (2023). Harm Hypervigilance in Public Reactions to Scientific Evidence. Psychological Science, 34(7), 834-848. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231168777