The Role of Familiarity in Democratic Representation: A Field Experiment on Constituent Attitudes toward Members of Congress∗

It is well-known that most citizens are unfamiliar with their member of Congress, but the import of this fact for democratic representation is largely unknown. Powerful theories suggest both that familiarity breeds contempt and that constituents like their member more the more they know about them. Much of the evidence that would settle this theoretical conflict is lacking, however, because the very observations we need to assess the relationship between familiarity and attitudes are often missing, and non-randomly so. To resolve the long-standing debate over this question, we conducted a field experiment that gave constituents the chance to interact directly with their member of Congress. Relative to a control group, we find that respondents who were exposed to their member were both more likely to offer a substantive response on attitude items (as opposed to “don’t know”), and were more likely to report a more positive attitude as a result of enhanced familiarity. This effect is especially pronounced among co-partisans, but even among opposite-partisans familiarity did not breed contempt. These findings demonstrate the importance of familiarity in legislative approval and that such familiarity can be enhanced through online interactions.