Citations Needed: Links to Interesting Research - Page 2 - Politics and Society -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

Abstract

Donohue and Levitt (2001) presented evidence that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s played an important role in the crime drop of the 1990s. That paper concluded with a strong out-of-sample prediction regarding the next two decades: “When a steady state is reached roughly twenty years from now, the impact of abortion will be roughly twice as great as the impact felt so far. Our results suggest that all else equal, legalized abortion will account for persistent declines of 1 percent a year in crime over the next two decades.” Estimating parallel specifications to the original paper, but using the seventeen years of data generated after that paper was written, we find strong support for the prediction. The estimated coefficient on legalized abortion is actually larger in the latter period than it was in the initial dataset in almost all specifications. We estimate that crime fell roughly 20% between 1997 and 2014 due to legalized abortion. The cumulative impact of legalized abortion on crime is roughly 45%, accounting for a very substantial portion of the roughly 50-55% overall decline from the peak of crime in the early 1990s.

A rare example of social science research which makes a prediction about the future. An even rarer example of the prediction being correct? Pretty interesting article.

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05-23-2019 , 03:23 AM

#27

John21

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,558

http://escoladeredes.net/profiles/bl...nius-how-chaos
Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain

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The balance between phase-locking and instability within the brain has also been linked to intelligence - at least, to IQ. Last year, Robert Thatcher from the University of South Florida in Tampa made EEG measurements of 17 children, aged between 5 and 17 years, who also performed an IQ test.

The balance between stability and instability in the brain has been linked with intelligence, at least as measured by scores on an IQ test
He found that the length of time the children's brains spent in both the stable phase-locked states and the unstable phase-shifting states correlated with their IQ scores. For example, phase shifts typically last 55 milliseconds, but an additional 1 millisecond seemed to add as many as 20 points to the child's IQ. A shorter time in the stable phase-locked state also corresponded with greater intelligence - with a difference of 1 millisecond adding 4.6 IQ points to a child's score (NeuroImage, vol 42, p 1639).

Thatcher says this is because a longer phase shift allows the brain to recruit many more neurons for the problem at hand. "It's like casting a net and capturing as many neurons as possible at any one time," he says. The result is a greater overall processing power that contributes to higher intelligence.

Hovering on the edge of chaos provides brains with their amazing capacity to process information and rapidly adapt to our ever-changing environment, but what happens if we stray either side of the boundary? The most obvious assumption would be that all of us are a short step away from mental illness. Meyer-Lindenberg suggests that schizophrenia may be caused by parts of the brain straying away from the critical point. However, for now that is purely speculative.

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05-23-2019 , 01:29 PM

#28

Original Position

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 9,426

This article from Nature says that some behavioral economic "nudges" that have a positive effect in causing people to act in ways that lower their carbon footprint also lead to a decreased support for a carbon tax.

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"Nudging out support for a carbon tax":
A carbon tax is widely accepted as the most effective policy for curbing carbon emissions but is controversial because it imposes costs on consumers. An alternative, ‘nudge,’ approach promises smaller benefits but with much lower costs. However, nudges aimed at reducing carbon emissions could have a pernicious indirect effect if they offer the promise of a ‘quick fix’ and thereby undermine support for policies of greater impact. Across six experiments, including one conducted with individuals involved in policymaking, we show that introducing a green energy default nudge diminishes support for a carbon tax. We propose that nudges decrease support for substantive policies by providing false hope that problems can be tackled without imposing considerable costs. Consistent with this account, we show that by minimizing the perceived economic cost of the tax and disclosing the small impact of the nudge, eliminates crowding-out without diminishing support for the nudge.

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05-24-2019 , 04:49 PM

#29

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

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Originally Posted by Original Position

Pretty interesting. Along similar lines (re: the importance of framing)

Resolving the Progressive Paradox: Conservative Value Framing of Progressive Economic Policies Increases Candidate Support (full text)

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Abstract

While polls show progressive economic policies are popular, progressive candidates typically lose elections in the U.S. One explanation for this progressive paradox is that the opponents of progressive candidates often win through “symbolic politics,” successfully harnessing values and ideologies that receive broad support from the general public. Here we explore one solution to the progressive paradox, testing whether progressive candidates achieve greater support by framing their policy platforms in terms of values and ideologies that resonate beyond the progressive base. We tested this claim in two experiments (total N=4,138), including one pre-registered experiment conducted on a nationally representative sample. We found that a presidential candidate who framed his progressive economic platform to be consistent with more conservative value concerns like patriotism, family, and respect for tradition – as opposed to more liberal value concerns like equality and social justice – was supported significantly more by conservatives and, unexpectedly, by moderates as well. These effects were mediated by perceived value similarity with the candidate. Furthermore, a manipulation of how progressive the candidate’s platform was had weak and inconsistent effects, and did not interact with the framing of the platform. These findings indicate that in our experiments framing mattered more than policy, suggesting that moral reframing could be an effective alternative to policy centrism for candidates seeking broader support. Our results illustrate the important effects of value framing of economic policy, offering a solution to the longstanding puzzle regarding the gap between progressive policy and candidate support.

My wife's early research was all on issue framing in social movements, particularly in relation to movement success and cultural "resonance", a topic I continue to find fascinating.

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05-24-2019 , 05:21 PM

#30

aflametotheground

old hand

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1,851

I guess i will dump some quality on you guys just to give you a hint of whats going on.

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05-25-2019 , 11:36 AM

#31

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

I was perusing Quillette (Fly, feel free to make some kind of joke how bad Quillette is and stop reading here) and one of the articles was an opinion piece discussing effects of talking about white privilege.

In other threads/forums it was a common complaint of mine that it was not apparent to me that talk about white privilege (or other recent SJW focused social engineering initiatives such as bias training) accomplishes anything productive, and indeed was likely to have negative consequences, and was self-serving to the people who seem to talk about it the most (generally wealthy, educated, white liberals).

Anyways, here is a study indicating that a negative effect is a decrease of empathy by socially liberal whites towards poor whites, with no positive benefits indicated.

Complex intersections of race and class: Among social liberals, learning about White privilege reduces sympathy, increases blame, and decreases external attributions for White people struggling with poverty.
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Cooley, Erin,Brown-Iannuzzi, Jazmin L.,Lei, Ryan F.,Cipolli III, William
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Apr 29 , 2019, No Pagination Specified
White privilege lessons are sometimes used to increase awareness of racism. However, little research has investigated the consequences of these lessons. Across 2 studies (N = 1,189), we hypothesized that White privilege lessons may both highlight structural privilege based on race, and simultaneously decrease sympathy for other challenges some White people endure (e.g., poverty)—especially among social liberals who may be particularly receptive to structural explanations of inequality. Indeed, both studies revealed that while social liberals were overall more sympathetic to poor people than social conservatives, reading about White privilege decreased their sympathy for a poor White (vs. Black) person. Moreover, these shifts in sympathy were associated with greater punishment/blame and fewer external attributions for a poor White person’s plight. We conclude that, among social liberals, White privilege lessons may increase beliefs that poor White people have failed to take advantage of their racial privilege—leading to negative social evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

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05-25-2019 , 05:49 PM

#32

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kelhus999

In other threads/forums it was a common complaint of mine that it was not apparent to me that talk about white privilege (or other recent SJW focused social engineering initiatives such as bias training) accomplishes anything productive, and indeed was likely to have negative consequences, and was self-serving to the people who seem to talk about it the most (generally wealthy, educated, white liberals).

Anyways, here is a study indicating that a negative effect is a decrease of empathy by socially liberal whites towards poor whites, with no positive benefits indicated.

I think I read the abstract for this somewhere, although I haven't read the article. My view is that the concept of privilege (in general, not just "white privilege"; and tied to the concept of intersectionality) is useful -- intellectually at least -- but it doesn't surprise me if it's not the best framing for political movements.

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05-26-2019 , 12:50 AM

#33

John21

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Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,558

Quote:

Originally Posted by well named

Sure, it's a useful concept. But like someone once said, "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."

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06-07-2019 , 11:54 AM

#34

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Dynamic Racial Triangulation: Examining the Racial Order using Two Experiments on Discrimination among Millennials

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Abstract

Millennials are shaping up to be the most racially/ethnically diverse and most educated generation in the history of the U.S., leading many to suggest they are “post-racial.” Yet, racial inequality persists throughout society. Given these facts, what model most accurately depicts the coming racial order of the U.S.? We examine the structure of the racial order in two parts. First, we conduct a correspondence audit by sending over 4,500 emails of inquiry to “roommate wanted” advertisements and measuring response rates to uncover patterns of racial/ethnic and immigrant generational status discrimination. Next, we investigate the mechanisms behind these patterns using a survey experiment. We find consistent discrimination against African Americans, Latinas, and East Asians and some bias against South Asians. Discrimination against Asians is erased and attenuated against Latinas when our immigrant generational signal indicates “Americanization.” Furthermore, we find that while all non-Americanized racial/ethnic minority groups face some level of cultural exclusion, only African Americans also face discrimination due to negative valorization perceptions. Additional evidence suggests that Millennials are prone to social desirability bias. We suggest that rather than conform to any existing racial theory, Millennials enact an emerging racial order rooted in what we call dynamic racial triangulation.

There's a few things I think are pretty interesting in this study.

The first is the way they conceptualize the "racial order" along different dimensions, labeled as "valorization" and "cultural inclusion"

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According to this theory, racial domination unfolds along two main dimensions: valorization (superior/inferior) and cultural inclusion (insider/outsider). American racism has long marked blacks as inferior relative to whites, yet still accords them “insider” status as Americans. Simultaneously, Asian Americans are seen as highly capable, driven, and successful, but marked as “perpetual foreigners” who can never be “truly” American regardless of their nativity, immigration status, education, or English proficiency.

This distinction provides an interesting way of interpreting the data from the audit study they performed, involving measuring response rates to roommate applications where the names of the applicants are designed to signal the race of the applicant as well as some sense of how "Americanized" (culturally assimilated) they are:

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Between June 2013 and August 2014, we conducted a correspondence audit to examine how race, ethnicity, and immigrant generational status influence finding a roommate on Craigslist. A correspondence audit is a field experiment that matches two or more individuals to test the isolated effects of variations in signaled characteristics – often race and gender – in processes involving correspondence or online communication (Gaddis 2018b). In recent years, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have implemented creative and influential correspondence audits to examine several domains including housing and employment applications, appointment scheduling, internet marketplace and sharing economy transactions, and communication with information brokers....

To conduct this experiment, we first created fictitious room-seekers with names that signaled different racial/ethnic/immigrant generational status characteristics. We then sampled “roommate wanted” advertisements from Craigslist and responded via email to over 1,500 ads in three major U.S. metropolitan areas: Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. We monitored response rates by room-seekers’ signaled racial/ethnic/immigrant generational status characteristics and recorded information on the advertisements and any responses we received.

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The difference in response rates between typical latina/chinese names and Americanized versions illustrateds the importance of the dimension of "cultural inclusion".

A potential weakness of this approach is that they have no way of doing something similar with the stereotypically black names they use, but the point they make (relying on other research) is that those names are not perceived as being less "American" in the way that a Chinese name is considered less American, but racial stereotypes (negative "valorization", in the model) explain why people with black names are considered less desirable. For Indian and Latina applicants they can pair Americanized first names with distinctive last names in order to highlight that cultural inclusion dimension, but there's no way to do this for black names without destroying the ability of the name to signal race. The authors also discuss other limitations of name-based audit studies, and the literature review is worth reading in this study, I think.

The other part that's interesting is the followup survey, which in comparison to the audit study demonstrates issues of social desirability bias in survey research:

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Between January 2017 and August 2017, we conducted a survey experiment using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). This survey experiment allows us to examine whether Millennials answer questions about discrimination consistent with their peers’ actions and whether their answers to a series of questions about these hypothetical individuals provide some insight about the mechanisms of discrimination.

Using MTurk is definitely also a limitation here, but I think it's probably good enough for this project.

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Concerns regarding MTurk focus on both external and internal validity, but numerous studies address these issues in depth. First, research consistently shows that while MTurk respondents are not perfectly representative of the U.S. population, the differences are not extreme on many important characteristics (Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz 2012; Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling 2011; Chandler et al. 2014; Paolacci, Chandler, and Ipeirotis 2010).

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Essentially, how people say they would respond to hypothetical roommate applications doesn't match how they actually respond in the audit study.

This isn't terribly surprising, but I think it's interesting in context with other research about racial ideology, particularly Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's concept of "color-blind racism", i.e. the idea that people consciously hold to abstractly liberal views about race ("I don't see race"), while still behaving in a way that reveals implicit preferences and biases.

Last edited by well named; 06-07-2019 at 12:06 PM.

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06-07-2019 , 04:14 PM

#35

Kelhus999

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Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

Frankly, the most surprising thing to me about those results was the implicit bias against Americanized Indians was so low. I didn't get to the discussion yet (which may be good because you'll get my thoughts not biased by the authors), but it seems the issue (for good or bad, most would argue bad) probably centers around stereotypes that the subject doesn't even think are particularly racist or problematic, as there is no animus.

A typical biased person probably thinks something along the lines of, "This Indian girl is just going to sit in her room quietly, and always pay their rent on time" and "This black girl is going to be inviting guys over to smoke weed and play loud music, and be late on rent," and acts accordingly.

As I said before, I don't deny that systemic racism or implicit bias exists, I just dont think the tactics we have been employing to correct it (censorship and shaming mainly) are moving anything in the right direction.

But then again, maybe that is just my own self-motivated implicit bias.

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06-07-2019 , 05:00 PM

#36

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kelhus999

but it seems the issue (for good or bad, most would argue bad) probably centers around stereotypes that the subject doesn't even think are particularly racist or problematic, as there is no animus.

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Originally Posted by Kelhus999

As I said before, I don't deny that systemic racism or implicit bias exists, I just dont think the tactics we have been employing to correct it (censorship and shaming mainly) are moving anything in the right direction.

I've said this in the past but I think your complaints in this regard (mostly with extremely-online super-woke activists?) are pretty separable from academic research. And it seems to me that you probably overestimate how much "we" (as a society) have been deploying censorship and shaming as a tactic to address inequality.

Anyway, I link research like this because in my experience many people are stuck on step (1): recognizing an actual social problem, rather than on step (2): deciding on a strategy to address it. So I think the main value is just descriptive, rather than prescriptive.

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06-07-2019 , 05:35 PM

#37

John21

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,558

The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour

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Abstract
Drawing on recent research on the psychology of social class, I argue that the material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle‐class counterparts, lower/working‐class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self‐concepts; they are also more inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal control. Working‐class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help others in distress. The widely held view that working‐class individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle‐class norms of independence prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working‐class people less likely to apply for positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that working‐class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve their material circumstances. This means that redistributive policies are needed to break the cycle of deprivation that limits opportunities and threatens social cohesion.

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The finding that there is an association between social class and prejudice has also been explained in terms of economic threat. The idea here is that members of ethnic minorities and immigrants also tend to be low in social status and are therefore more likely to be competing with working‐class people than with middle‐class people for jobs, housing, and other services. A strong way to test the economic threat explanation would be to assess whether higher‐class people are prejudiced when confronted with immigrants who are highly educated and likely to be competing with them for access to employment and housing. Such a test was conducted by Kuppens, Spears, Manstead, and Tausch (2018). These researchers examined whether more highly educated participants would express negative attitudes towards highly educated immigrants, especially when threat to the respondents’ own jobs was made salient, either by drawing attention to the negative economic outlook or by subtly implying that the respondents’ own qualifications might be insufficient in the current job market. Consistent with the economic threat hypothesis, a series of experimental studies with student participants in different European countries showed that attitudes to immigrants were most negative when the immigrants also had a university education.

The same researchers also combined US census data with American National Election Study survey data to examine whether symbolic racism was higher in areas where there was a higher number of Blacks with a similar education to that of the White participants. In areas where Blacks were on average less educated, a higher number Blacks was associated with more symbolic racism among Whites who had less education, but in areas where Blacks were on average highly educated, a higher number of Blacks was associated with more symbolic racism on the part of highly educated White people. Again, these findings are consistent with the view that prejudice arises from economic threat.

Research reported by Jetten, Mols, Healy, and Spears (2017) is also relevant to this issue. These authors examined how economic instability affects low‐SES and high‐SES people. Unsurprisingly, they found that collective angst was higher among low‐SES participants. However, they also found that high‐SES participants expressed anxiety when they were presented with information suggesting that there was high economic instability, that is, that the ‘economic bubble’ might be about to burst. Moreover, they were more likely to oppose immigration when economic instability was said to be high, rather than low. These results reflect the fact that high‐SES people have a lot to lose in times of economic crisis, and that this ‘fear of falling’ is associated with opposition to immigration.

Together, these results provide good support for an explanation of the association between social class and prejudice in terms of differential threat to the group (see also Brandt & Henry, 2012; Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017). Ethnic minorities and immigrants typically pose most threat to the economic well‐being of working‐class people who have low educational qualifications, and this provides the basis for the observation that working‐class people are more likely to be prejudiced. The fact that higher‐educated and high‐SES people express negative views towards ethnic minorities and immigrants when their economic well‐being is threatened shows that it is perceived threat to one's group's interests that underpins this prejudice. It is also worth noting that the perception of threat to a group's economic interests is likely to be greater during times of economic recession.

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06-07-2019 , 05:40 PM

#38

John21

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 3,558

The Paradox of Rising Ethnic Prejudice in Times of Educational Expansion and Secularization in the Netherlands, 1985–2011

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Abstract
We aim to clarify a puzzling paradox: while shares of highly educated and non-religious individuals—who generally hold less prejudice—have increased in the Netherlands, levels of prejudice against ethnic minorities have yet risen over time. To solve the paradox, we use cross-sectional data from 1985 to 2011 in counterfactual analyses. In these analyses we simulate that levels of ethnic prejudice within categories of education, church membership, and church attendance are kept constant at the 1985 level and a new simulated trend in prejudice is estimated for the 1985–2011 period. Our findings show that changing levels of prejudice within categories of education are partly responsible for the trend. We conclude that the increasing share of highly educated individuals has not resulted in a decline of prejudice in the Netherlands over time, because all Dutch have become more prejudiced over the years and in particular the higher educated.

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Ethnic Competition Theory
On the individual level, ethnic competition theory has proven fruitful to explain differences in ethnic prejudice between the higher and lower educated (Coenders and Scheepers 2003; Hello et al. 2002; Wagner and Zick 1995), and between non-religious and religiously affiliated individuals (Allport and Ross 1967; Scheepers and Eisinga 2015; Scheepers et al. 2002). Competition between in-group members and ethnic out-group members over scarce economic or cultural resources poses a real threat to the social position of the in-group as a whole, and in particular to those competing more severely with ethnic out-groups (Blalock 1967; Coenders 2001). This encourages perceptions of interethnic threat, which in turn induce ethnic prejudice and exclusionism (Quillian 1995; Scheepers et al. 2002).

In general, ethnic minorities have more disadvantaged socio-economic positions and less education compared to the average population (Gijsberts et al. 2012). Natives with lower education are more likely to hold similar economic positions to ethnic minorities than higher educated natives. Lower educated natives may therefore have stronger perceptions of threat from ethnic minorities over economic resources, such as jobs and social security benefits than higher educated individuals, which induces prejudice against ethnic minorities (Hello et al. 2002, 2006). Higher educated individuals may perceive less ethnic threat because they compete less with ethnic minorities, but also because they are less susceptible to ethnic threat. It is argued that education increases awareness to alternative viewpoints and broadens people’s perspectives, including ideas of cultural relativity and diversity (Gabennesch 1972). As a consequence, higher educated individuals will be better able to recognize cultural expressions and more willing to accept cultural and ethnic differences (Manevska and Achterberg 2013). Likewise, the educational system is argued to transmit democratic norms and values that emphasize individual and cultural freedom and enables pupils to generalize these principles to minority groups (Vogt 1997). The higher people’s educational level, the longer their exposure to this ‘liberalizing’ influence of education and the less ethnic prejudice they have (Hello et al. 2002).

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06-07-2019 , 05:52 PM

#39

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

Quote:

Originally Posted by well named

Right. I'm not sure if you're meaning to imply that some interpreters of the study would assume it was entirely conscious and driven by animus? I would guess that's not the most common interpretation though, to put it mildly.

I'm also not sure how the sort of stereotyping you're describing is supposed to ever be good. It seems fairly clear that it's closely related to some pretty bad outcomes.

I've said this in the past but I think your complaints in this regard (mostly with extremely-online super-woke activists?) are pretty separable from academic research. And it seems to me that you probably overestimate how much "we" (as a society) have been deploying censorship and shaming as a tactic to address inequality.

Anyway, I link research like this because in my experience many people are stuck on step (1): recognizing an actual social problem, rather than on step (2): deciding on a strategy to address it. So I think the main value is just descriptive, rather than prescriptive.

I think maybe judged is a better word than shamed? I was thinking of more subtle mechanisms by which people feel pressure to say one thing, and act another way. Not overt shaming per se (although obviously I think that exists too).

Also (I am trying not to cross any boundaries while still getting my point across, but please let me know if I do cross any boundaries), I feel that our society doesn't even think stereotyping is wrong, just that we have some sort of weird social credit system based on historical grievance over who is allowed to stereotype and who is allowed to be the victim of stereotyping. And I think this severely undercuts the ability of step 1 to ever be realized.

I think the way the progressive minded posters in this forum frequently use socially accepted negative stereotyping as part of their rhetorical arsenal illustrates this. I am not even saying it is your job as a moderator to try to combat this. Society has already set the boundaries of what constitutes permissible stereotyping, and they mostly stay within these bounds.

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06-07-2019 , 06:14 PM

#40

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

I agree that racial stereotyping isn't the only kind of stereotyping. Overgeneralization is a pretty common cognitive bias/fallacy, especially in relation to group boundaries and out-group members -- whatever type of group one might discuss.

But I feel there's plenty of justification for thinking that racial stereotyping has historically, and is still now, a very big issue, and more pressing than some other examples of the general tendency. Certainly more pressing than whether or not posters in this forum are reasonable or not. And my experience participating in some more heavily conservative forums suggests to me that the tendency you're describing is pretty universal in politics.

Obviously whether I'm accusing conservatives of stereotyping liberals or you're accusing progressives of stereotyping conservatives, many will push back and say they are just being accurate in their characterizations. I have my opinions about just how egregious partisans on each side are on average, but I think it's kind of a conversational dead end and it doesn't seem too useful to me to argue about it.

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06-07-2019 , 06:15 PM

#41

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

John: thanks for those links. I'll have to look more closely later on.

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06-07-2019 , 07:39 PM

#42

coordi

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 22,804

Maybe this goes in the American Culture thread. It really seems to address most peoples issues with immigrants, beyond overt racism obviously. I'd also like to point out they use assimilate freely

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In this essay, we address three major questions in the economics of immigration: whether immigrants were positively or negatively selected from their sending countries; how immigrants assimilated into the US economy and society; and what effects that immigration may have on the economy, including the effect of immigration on native employment and wages.

Immigration in American Economic History - 2015

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Originally Posted by Abstract

The United States has long been perceived as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Yet, both in the past and today, US natives have expressed concern that immigrants fail to integrate into US society and lower wages for existing workers. This paper reviews the literatures on historical and contemporary migrant flows, yielding new insights on migrant selection, assimilation of immigrants into US economy and society, and the effect of immigration on the labor market.

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Following the imposition of strict immigration quotas, the foreign born share of the US population declined from 14 percent in 1920 to 5 percent in 1970 (see Panel B of Figure 1). The flow of low-skilled immigrants dropped substantially after 1921, due both to a change in the country-of-origin mix and to increased selectivity within sending countries (Massey, 2013)....

The foreign-born share of the population increased from 5 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 2010, returning to a level last seen during the previous Age of Mass Migration. In 2010, 51 percent of the migrant stock was from Latin America and 28 percent was from Asia. Given that demand for immigration to the US now outstrips available slots, the number of “illegal” or “undocumented” immigrants living in the US increased, reaching 27 percent of the total stock of immigrants by 2011 (and a larger share of the annual flow). In the decade of the 2000s, estimates suggest that around 650,000 undocumented immigrants arrived each year, mainly from Mexico (Hanson, 2006).26

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Unlike in the past, recent empirical evidence on migrant selection to the US appears to be at odds with predictions from the basic Roy model. In particular, migrants to the US from many sending countries appear to be positively selected in their education and other observable skills, regardless of the differentials in returns to skill between destination and source (Jasso, et al., 2004; Feliciano, 2005; Kennedy, et al., 2006; Grogger and Hanson, 2011)....

Legal immigrants are then able to sponsor family members to join them through family reunification. Jasso, et al. (2000) document that the average skills of new green card holders have been increasing relative to the native born since the 1970s and attribute these changes to an increasing preference for skilled workers over time.40

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Both during the Age of Mass Migration and today, immigrants experienced some earnings convergence with natives as they spent more time in the US labor market, but this convergence process is slow. As a result, immigrants do not experience complete catch-up in a single generation, either in the past or the present....

Differences between immigrants and the native born can persist into the second generation if children inherit ability or skills from their parents, or from their broader ethnic environment.54 However, we would expect these gaps to diminish across generations both due to regression to the mean and because, unlike their parents, many children of immigrants were educated in US schools and exposed to US cultural norms.

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In the long-run, the effect of immigration on native wages is moderated by the pace of new capital investments....

Historical immigration was also associated with higher rates of both trade and innovation, which may have contributed to economic growth.74 Dunlevy and Hutchinson (1999) find that immigrants increased trade flows between the US and Europe in the early twentieth century, perhaps by providing information about and network connections to their home markets (see also O'Rourke and Williamson, 1999, chapter 13). Moser, Voena and Waldinger (2014) analyze one immigrant flow that would be particularly expected to increase innovation in the US economy: the arrival of Jewish scientists forced to flee from Nazi Germany in the 1930s.75 US patenting in categories associated with the dismissed scientists increased by 30 percent after 1933.76

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06-07-2019 , 11:12 PM

#43

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

Quote:

Originally Posted by well named

In my zeal to take a shot at the usual suspects I think my message got distorted. I wasn't really referring to political stereotyping/bigotry per se, although that is part of it. I am just saying the zeitgeist of the day isn't really that bigotry is bad, it is bigotry is fine, and should even be celebrated, if enacted in a socially just manner. And it is something both sides do way too much, and this seems to be getting worse instead of better. I guess I just dont see any path forward in the current climate. Maybe things will get better when Trump is gone.

Ending the derail and getting back on point, I think this study has a good methodology that does a good job of illustrating how implicit bias operates, and the results were not particularly surprising at all.

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06-08-2019 , 09:54 AM

#44

pSyChO bILL

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Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 10

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678799/
It makes much more sense to compare the two racial groups that fall at the opposite extremes that are both minority groups with the strongest histories of racial discrimination.

OP: the dichotomy of black vs white is literally the worst data set you can possibly use if trying to prove or disprove racial bias.
1) You're choosing one ruling majority group vs one minority group with a strong history of racial discrimination.
2) The majority group doesn't even fall at the opposite extreme between all of the racial groups.

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06-08-2019 , 12:41 PM

#45

coordi

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 22,804

Quote:

Originally Posted by pSyChO bILL

This is related to a point I was trying to make in another thread by effectively asking if releasing racial statistics was detrimental to the plight of lower performing "races'. It seems to present the idea of a level playing field, when that probably isn't the case. I feel like it leads people to the bias that some races are less capable when the social structures aren't built up to the same level of fortification.

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06-08-2019 , 01:52 PM

#46

pSyChO bILL

banned

Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 10

The first step into the most likely cause of legalized abortion's effect on crime rates:
(Figure 2)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat...ancy_rates.htm
(Figure 3)
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmw...cid=mm6227a1_w

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06-08-2019 , 03:54 PM

#47

pSyChO bILL

banned

Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 10

Quote:

Originally Posted by coordi

Yeah, this is the main problem. That the most common data sets used seem to be essentially the presupposition in and of themselves.
You have one group that stands apart from all other groups in the very two main factors that are under scrutiny for legitimacy, along with this same group not even falling at any extreme. Meanwhile, the two most similar groups, in terms of being the smallest of the main groups have also endured the most historical discrimination in the U.S., yet fall at exactly opposing extremes within every social measurement.

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06-12-2019 , 01:01 PM

#48

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Not research, but Contexts (basically the "public sociology" magazine for the ASA) has published a pretty useful literature review on the economics of immigration.

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06-19-2019 , 06:29 PM

#49

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

“Human Nature” and the Biology of Everyday Life (full text here)

Quote:

Abstract

Anthropologists are well poised to contribute to an immanent theory of human physiological experiences that accounts for the broad social and environmental influences that shape individual and community experiences of health and disease. This article forwards a theory of “the biology of everyday life” as a means to conceptualize the interactions between institutional expectations of behavior, cultural norms, and biological plasticity. Drawing on a wide variety of research on human sleep, this article shows how the expression of sleep needs vary within and between societies and are shaped primarily not by innate biological drives but cultural norms embedded in the institutions that comprise the infrastructure of everyday life. Embracing perspectives from laboratory scientists, social theorists, and ethnographers, the biology of everyday life offers a way to conceptualize human nature not as a set of drives but a supple interaction of physiological plasticity, cultural expectations, and social organization.

I feel like this article could use some more editing/revising because it seems to jump back and forth between a few of the different topics, but I think the overarching perspective is is interesting, and the topic is one I find pretty compelling. Pretty much just the last bit in the abstract:

Quote:

...a way to conceptualize human nature not as a set of drives but a supple interaction of physiological plasticity, cultural expectations, and social organization.

The author probably relies a bit too heavily on empirical data from just one avenue of biology research involving sleep, but it's a good example of the point being made, i.e. in noting that

a) there is a fair amount of biological plasticity in sleep patterns - we can adapt to all kinds of circumstances, and

b) the development of scientific theories of "normal" and "abnormal" sleep patterns reflect more of the social conditions in which the science was developed than the actual biological necessity of the patterns deemed normal

Quote:

In the case of human sleep patterns, this has meant that ideas about the naturalness of consolidated sleep—roughly eight hours of continuous sleep during the night, without a nap during the day—took hold in the nineteenth century with little to no evidence, and often with evidence to the contrary (Ekirch 2001; Reiss 2017; Wolf-Meyer 2011). In support of popularizing the naturalness of consolidated sleep, physicians, scientists, employers, and politicians ar- gued against the sins of biphasic sleep. By the turn of the twentieth century, consolidated sleep was accepted as normal to the degree that experiments to determine its natu- ralness were largely abandoned (Kroker 2007). When non-consolidated sleep appeared in laboratory settings, it was largely as an accident...

If sleep science had emerged from outside of the North Atlantic in a society where midday naps were the norm, or where individuals and families routinely stayed up late into the night, the basic understanding of circadian rhythms and the arrangement of sleep would be different.

Some other examples of the interdependence between environmental factors and biological plasticity are also interesting, e.g.

Quote:

This model is not entirely alien to anthropology, and it finds resonances in the work of Margaret Lock and Patricia Kaufert’s (2001) elaboration of “local biology” as a conceptual framework for thinking about bodies and their cross-cultural variance. With a large number of soy-based phytoestrogens in Japanese diets, Japanese bodies are subtly remade, mitigating some of the elements of menopause that American and Canadian women experience. Moreover, because of the historical basis of this diet, the Japanese pharmaceutical and consumer markets have not developed the same suite of products aimed at the experience of menopause, nor do popular narratives about women’s bodies emphasize menopause as a negative experience (Lock 1993). Japanese bodies are different from American and Canadian bodies, which is not due to some inherent “racial” difference but to everyday consumption and normative expectations. Institutionalized norms structure the experience of human plasticity.

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06-19-2019 , 06:42 PM

#50

Kelhus999

banned

Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 3,282

Can you provide the link to the study. What is the actual data that supports the argument?

As far as the last paragraph, last time I checked Japanese society over time has been pretty consistent with just about every other patriarchal, hierarchial society that has existed in the last 10,000 years or so; so this plasticity certainly hasn't resulted in any major (or even minor) evolution at the societal level that I can tell.

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