An implicit bias against women as leaders means that many are reluctant to vote for women candidates.

With Hillary Clinton in striking distance of the presidency and Janet Yellen in charge of the Federal Reserve, some might be tempted to say that sexism in the American political landscape is over. In new research, Cecilia Hyunjung Mo finds that among voters, sexism is alive and well, in the form of implicit bias against female candidates. She writes that despite people’s statements of equality, many still have difficulty associating women with leadership attributes, and are therefore less likely to vote for women during elections

Determining false positives requires considering the totality of evidence

WORD COUNT: 498 Fowler and Montagnes (henceforth FM) independently replicate one finding in Healy, Malhotra, and Mo (henceforth HMM) that college football wins increase incumbent vote share (1, 2). While we interpret this result as evidence of irrelevant events impacting voters' decisions, which is consistent with established theory in the psychological and decision sciences literatures, FM conclude that chance is responsible. False positives can occur. Consequently, we performed several tests to address that possibility, but FM surprisingly ignore these analyses. While replication and re-analysis are important to scientific discovery, one cannot selectively consider pieces of evidence when evaluating past research. Our consideration of the totality of evidence (the full results in HMM and the new results in FM) leads us to conclude that college football games influence elections. Point 1: FM entirely ignore the most important analyses of the football data in HMM, the ones utilizing betting spreads to isolate surprise outcomes. The finding reported in the abstract of HMM (a 1.61 percentage point effect) comes from analyses comparing the actual outcomes of the games to what was projected beforehand by betting markets. This creates a quasi-experiment that isolates the surprise component of game outcomes. These "surprise wins" identify variation that has nothing to do with how good a team is in a given year altogether. This is the same approach use

Replication Data for "When Do the Advantaged See the Disadvantages of Others? A Quasi-Experimental Study of National Service"

Supporting files to replicate results in "When Do the Advantaged See the Disadvantages of Others? A Quasi-Experimental Study of National Service

Does relative deprivation condition the effects of social protection programs on political support? Experimental evidence from Pakistan

Could perceived relative economic standing affect citizens’ support for political leaders and institutions? We explore this question by examining Pakistan's national unconditional cash transfer program, the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). Leveraging a regression discontinuity approach using BISP's administrative data and an original survey experiment, we find that perceptions of relative deprivation color citizen reactions to social protection. When citizens do not feel relatively deprived, receiving cash transfers has little sustained effect on individuals’ reported level of support for their political system and its leaders. However, when citizens feel relatively worse off, those receiving cash transfers become more politically satisfied while those denied transfers become more politically disgruntled. Moreover, the magnitude of the reduction in political support among non-beneficiaries is larger than the magnitude of the increase in political support among beneficiaries. This has important implications for our understanding of the political ramifications of rising perceived inequality

Replication Data for: Bridging the Partisan Divide on Immigration Policy Attitudes Through A Bipartisan Issue Area: The Case of Human Trafficking

To date, while there is a rich literature describing the determinants of anti-immigrant sentiment, researchers have not identified a mechanism to reduce antipathy towards immigrants. In fact, extant research has shown that efforts to induce positive attitudes toward immigrants often backfire. What if a bridging frame strategy were employed? Can a bipartisan issue area in which there is general support act as a bridging frame to elicit more positive sentiment toward immigration among those who oppose more open immigration policies? We explore this question by conducting two survey experiments in which we manipulate whether immigration is linked with the bipartisan issue area of human trafficking. We find that in forcing individuals to reconcile the fact that a widely accepted issue position of combating trafficking also requires a reassessment in immigration policies, we can positively shift attitudes on immigration

Reducing Vulnerability to Human Trafficking: An Experimental Intervention Using Anti-Trafficking Campaigns to Change Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices in Nepal

Prepared for USAID, Humanity United, the US Department of Labor, and Terre des Hommes, March 2016

Irrelevant events affect voters\u27 evaluations of government performance

Does information irrelevant to government performance affect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters’ retrospective assessments of candidates’ performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games, we demonstrate these effects by using the betting market\u27s estimate of a team\u27s probability of winning the game before it occurs to isolate the surprise component of game outcomes. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey that we conducted during the 2009 NCAA men\u27s college basketball tournament, where we find that surprising wins and losses affect presidential approval. An experiment embedded within the survey also indicates that personal well-being may influence voting decisions on a subconscious level. We find that making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions. These findings underscore the subtle power of irrelevant events in shaping important real-world decisions and suggest ways in which decision making can be improved

Social Exclusion and Political Identity: The Case of Asian American Partisanship

Replication data for "Social Exclusion and Political Identity: The Case of Asian American Partisanship.