In this article, we consider whether personal relationships can affect the way that judges decide cases. To do so, we leverage the natural experiment of a child’s gender to identify the effect of having daughters on the votes of judges. Using new data on the family lives of U.S. Courts of Appeals judges, we find that, conditional on the number of children a judge has, judges with daughters consistently vote in a more feminist fashion on gender issues than judges who have only sons. This result survives a number of robustness tests and appears to be driven primarily by Republican judges. More broadly, this result demonstrates that personal experiences influence how judges make decisions, and this is the first article to show that empathy may indeed be a component in how judges decide cases.

But what makes this defense so popular? Why is there such an urge to bring up something as nondescript as having a friend?

A new study by Daniel Effron of the London Business School provides an answer. Effron found that threats to moral identity increase the degree to which people believe past actions have proven their morality. In other words, the threat of appearing racist leads people to overestimate how much their past non-racist actions—like making friends with somebody of another race—are indicative of their non-racist attitudes.

In one set of experiments, participants had the opportunity to make a non-racist choice—for example, reading about a theft and correctly identifying a White rather than Black suspect as the thief. Participants who made the non-racist choice then had to either anticipate a threatening situation (having to defend a statement that compared Blacks unfavorably to Whites) or a non-threatening situation (defending a statement unrelated to race.) Participants then rated how much their initial selection of the White suspect was diagnostic of their non-racist attitudes.

Compared to participants who did not have to face a threatening situation, participants who felt threatened believed their decision to finger the White suspect was significantly more indicative of non-racist attitudes. Threatened participants still believed in the increased importance of their decision even when told that 98% of participants had also chosen the White suspect as the thief.

Might the threatened participants be justified in their beliefs? Do others actually see a previous non-racist decision as meaningful?

Probably not. In follow up experiments outside observers did not believe that selecting the white suspect was a sign of non-racist attitudes. Furthermore, Effron found that overestimating your non-racist “credentials” (e.g. believing you’re not racist because you have a Black friend) is more likely than underestimating your credentials to be seen as a sign of prejudice.

Taken together, the results illuminate the psychological mechanisms behind one of the most popular rationalization of racism. Somebody feels their image of being racially tolerant is under threat, so they overestimate how much previous behavior—having a beer with a Black guy, for example—is a sign of their tolerance. But highlighting this behavior has the opposite of the intended effect because people see the overestimation of the behavior’s importance as a sign of prejudice.

The conclusion is nothing that society hasn’t already figured out. If you’re accused of any kind of inappropriate -ism, don’t defend yourself by citing a particular action or relationship. It’s understandable that doing so seems like the best solution, but it’s probably better to keep your mouth shut. Or at least be prepared to cite 50+ data points rather than the vague existence of “some” friends.
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Effron, D. (2014). Making Mountains of Morality From Molehills of Virtue: Threat Causes People to Overestimate Their Moral Credentials Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin DOI: 10.1177/0146167214533131

While the study has all the standard caveats that come will correlational research, the results paint a bleak picture:

Even after controlling for demographics, income, health, and behaviors like drug use or carrying a weapon, respondents who had any type of contact with the criminal justice system were 31 percent more likely than those who had no contact to not obtain medical care when they needed it. Even people who were merely stopped by police were 33 percent more likely to not seek medical care. 

[…]

The findings tell a convincing story about how fear of the criminal justice system can lead to negative health, financial, and educational outcomes. And because contact with the system is more frequent in low-income and minority communities, these negative outcomes ought to hit them disproportionately hard. A perfect storm of data collection and aggressive criminal justice policies can help to create a society that’s toxic for social mobility.

Go read the whole thing!

We identify the economic interests in the United States that have a partisan alignment. We disaggregate corporate and trade association political action committees by economic sector, using the most fine-grained classifications available. We then analyze the campaign contributions to House incumbents from each sector, controlling for the majority party, economic geography, committee membership, and electoral competition. We find wide variation in how economic sectors relate to the parties. More than one third have a clear party tilt, with far more leaning toward Republicans than to Democrats. The remainder have no discernible partisan preference, either giving without reference to party or opportunistically to the majority. Republican-leaning sectors concentrate in particular enterprises, especially natural resources extraction, while most professional service sectors are nonpartisan. Business is not a monolith, to be contrasted with “labor” or “ideological interest groups,” but embedded in economic sectors that are more or less politicized in partisan terms.

This paper examines the relationship between legal access to the birth control pill and female poverty. We rely on exogenous cross-state variation in the year in which oral contraception became legally available to young, single women. Using census data from 1960 to 1990, we find that having legal access to the birth control pill by age 20 significantly reduces the probability that a woman is subsequently in poverty. We estimate that early legal access to oral contraception reduces female poverty by 0.5 percentage points, even when controlling for completed education, employment status, and household composition.

A second analysis with less robust controls found that access to the pill reduced poverty rates by one full percentage point. Given that the mean poverty rate for women over the relevant time period was 10%-15%, the findings suggest that access to the pill led to a 3 to 10 percent reduction in the female poverty rate. According to Browne and LaLumia, the low end of their estimated impact is equivalent to about a 1 percentage point decrease a state’s unemployment rate.

But wait, there’s more! The results also supported previous findings that suggest access to birth control leads to a statistically significant reduction in the chances a woman will get divorced.

So there you have it. Poverty reduction and strong marriages. The pill is everything a social conservative could ever want.
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Browne, S., & LaLumia, S. (2014). The Effects of Contraception on Female Poverty Journal of Policy Analysis and Management DOI: 10.1002/pam.21761

While certain people may be predisposed to believing in certain kinds of conspiracy theories, there are surely short-term contextual factors that influence whether somebody is likely clear out their living room in order to build a giant cork-board with pieces of yarn connecting various photos and documents. According to a new study by a group of researchers from the University of Amsterdam, one of these factors is the feeling of ambivalence. The reasoning is that feeling conflicted about something is unpleasant. We then attempt to compensate by seeking out order, and that can lead us to find meaning or purpose in ambiguity.

Ambivalence is a presumably unpleasant experience, and coming to terms with it is an intricate part of human existence. It is argued that ambivalent attitude holders cope with their ambivalence through compensatory perceptions of order. We first show that ambivalence leads to an increase in (visual) perceptions of order (Study 1). In Study 2 we conceptually replicate this finding by showing that ambivalence also increases belief in conspiracy theories, a cognitive form of order perception. Furthermore, this effect is mediated by the negative emotions that are elicited by ambivalence. In Study 3 we show that increased need for order is driving these effects: Affirmations of order cancel out the effect of as well as societal implications are discussed.

In the headline-grabbing 2^nd experiment participants wrote about a subject they were either ambivalent or univalent about. They were then told to imagine themselves in two ambiguous scenarios. In the first, they hold a job that involves tracking office email use, and the day before unexpectedly getting turned down for a promotion they notice an increase in the number of emails between their boss and the co-worker who sits next to them. In the second scenario, they notice owners of rival businesses leaving a bed and breakfast together. Later, all the businesses increase their prices, leading to higher profits. Participants are told that they own stock in these businesses, and so unlike in the first scenario, the potential collusion benefits them.

The key finding is that participants who wrote about conflicted or ambivalent feelings were more likely to believe that other people’s actions (the co-worker emails and the B&B meeting) were connected to their personal outcomes (not getting a promotion and earning investment profits.) To say that ambivalence therefore increases beliefs in conspiracy theories as they are colloquially defined may overstate things a tad, but it’s fair to conclude that ambivalence at least increases our attribution of outcomes to specific actions and motivations.

More broadly, the study highlights an important point about the necessity of groups and polarization. Having such a nuanced understanding of something that you’re genuinely conflicted about it is great in the abstract. If all of our politicians understood both sides of a policy well enough to feel genuine discomfort we’d probably have much better public policy.

But in practice a nuanced understanding can feel terrible. You see the drawbacks to both sides of the issue. You become marginally more unsure of yourself and your beliefs, and you become driven to find order in places where it might not exist. And so it can feel better to convince yourself that the world exists in black and white. If taxes always hurt economic growth, you don’t have to worry about people without health insurance because raising taxes to expand healthcare has no chance of raising well-being.

The motivation to find order in ambiguity is one striking consequence of ambivalence. But if you examine human beliefs and behavior the need to avoid conflicting feelings may frequently come into play.
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van Harreveld, F., Rutjens, B., Schneider, I., Nohlen, H., & Keskinis, K. (2014). In Doubt and Disorderly: Ambivalence Promotes Compensatory Perceptions of Order. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General DOI: 10.1037/a0036099

One unexplored aspect of DST is how it might influence voting behavior. Before 2007, the clocks were turned back during the last weekend in October, which means that when November started on a Monday, elections took place only 2 days after the time change (rather than 9 days after.) Since 2007, clocks have been turned back during the first weekend in November, which means that elections now take place 2 days after the time change except when November starts on a Monday (in those cases the election takes place 5 days before DST.)

The question then, is whether voting behavior differs when elections are held two days after the clock change. One theory is that DST decreases voter turnout. The reasoning is that people are more likely to engage in activities when it’s light outside, and turning back the clock decreases evening sunlight. On the other hand, DST also gives people an extra hour to sleep or fulfill other responsibilities. As a result, it may create more free time or raise energy levels on the following Tuesday, and that could increase voter turnout.

So, does DST help or hurt voter turnout?

A new study by Iowa State’s Robert Urbatsch provides an answer. Urbatsch examined three different sets of data with the potential to illuminate differences between post-DST and non-post-DST elections. First, because only certain counties in Indiana observe DST, Urbatsch compared turnout among counties that did and did not have a 25-hour Sunday immediately before an election. Second, Urbatch examined a variety of states and compared turnout in years that election day occurred immediately after DST and years in which it did not. Finally, Urbatch examined voter-level data from the American National Election Study (ANES) survey to see whether individual voting behavior was different when the clocks were turned back two days prior to the election.

All three data sources suggest that turning back the clock for DST increases voter turnout. The Indiana data suggests DST results in a 2.5 percentage point increase in voter turnout, an effect that’s approximately equivalent to increasing the over-65 population by 5 percentage points. Data from individual states suggests that the increase in turnout could be as high as 4.5 percentage points, and data from the ANES suggests DST increases the odds an individual will vote by about 2 percentage points. Furthermore, according to the ANES surveys this effect is almost entirely restricted to people who are not habitual voters.

Given that more turnout generally benefits Democrats, and that non-habitual voters are particularly likely to lean left, the study is reason for Democrats to support the continuation of DST. In fact, 2010 was a rare occasion in which the election did not follow DST, and at the margin that may have contributed to the sweeping Republican victory. (And thus begins the talking point of DST being a liberal conspiracy.)

More broadly, if one extra hour two days before an election can increase turnout, it implies that proposals to extend voting hours or make election day a national holiday could have a large impact on voter turnout. If we want more people to vote, it’s probably a good idea to give them the time to do it.
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Urbatsch, R. (2014). Time Regulations as Electoral Policy American Politics Research DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14523034

Why do rich men keep revealing themselves to be inept at using the English language to communicate their ideas—however outrageous? Attempts to explain their zealous defenses of the one-percent generally involve phrases like “limited view of reality” or “social bubble,” but perhaps the most interesting explanation comes from psychological research on the theory of needs-based reconciliation…

The theory posits that perpetrators and victims each desires a different basic psychological need—perpetrators want social acceptance, victims to feel empowered—and reconciliation will be most likely when each is fulfilled…

It’s not a stretch to map these findings onto the American social system…

Read the whole thing!

The second article takes a look at new research on mental accounting, and specifically how it might be relevant to tax policy.

The imagined origin of the money influenced how participants chose to spend it. As predicted, participants were less likely to spend the inheritance money on either purchase. Participants who did choose to spend the inheritance money were less likely to spend it on the resort compared to money from the other accounts…

Even if individuals draw some emotional benefit by saving inheritance money, from a social standpoint it’s better if people—and wealthy people in particular—spend their money on durable goods or semi-risky investments…

It seems that the tendency to save inheritance money is another reason to support a higher estate tax. If mental accounting is preventing inheritance money from being spent in the most efficient way, that strengthens the case for raising estate tax revenues to fund welfare programs (and if you lean right and cringe at that word choice, just replace “welfare programs” with “other tax breaks for the wealthy that are more stimulative.”)

Once again, read the whole thing!

Studies have shown that same-sex marriage (SSM) ballot measures affected voter turnout and primed voters in a manner that aided the Republican Party in 2004. However, if attitude strength plays a role in these spillover effects, then recent increases in the intensity of support for SSM on the left may have eroded—or even reversed—the pro-Republican electoral boost of these measures. Using individual- and county-level data, I demonstrate that more recent votes on SSM have mobilized more pro-Obama SSM supporters than pro-Republican social conservatives. These findings are important for understanding how ballot measures may potentially affect candidate elections.