Gabriele Magni and Zoila Ponce de Leon The effect of gender in the response rate of politicians to inquiries about healthcare and unemployment support Women politicians are more responsive than men when people come to them seeking health care and economic support, our newly published study on gender and government responsiveness reveals. Our research, conducted in 2017, … Read more
Jean-François Daoust, Richard Nadeau, Ruth Dassonneville, Erick Lachapelle, Éric Bélanger, Justin Savoie, and Clifton van der Linden Mass compliance with recently enacted public health measures such as social distancing or lockdowns can have a definitive impact on coronavirus transmissions and, by extension, the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths. It is thus fundamental to understand … Read more
José Gabriel Castillo and John Hamman Does a democratic election confer legitimacy to the elected authority? Does this, in turn, improve collective action? In other words, does democracy, by itself, lead to higher economic growth and development? Despite the abundance of social science research on this topic, we still lack a definite answer to such … Read more
Sarah Kreps, Miles McCain, and Miles Brundage In October, 2020, Former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt cautioned that “the broad ability to do deepfakes, and fake texts and so forth, it’s only going to get worse.” He was referring to images, video, and text that appear real but have been generated by machine learning algorithms. … Read more
James Druckman, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John Ryan Speaking in a field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania last year, President Biden noted that “The country is in a dangerous place…Too many Americans see our public life not as an arena for mediation of our difference but, rather, they see it as an occasion for … Read more
Danilo Freire, Umberto Mignozzetti, and David Skarbek Climate change poses a serious threat to humankind, yet international agreements have often fallen short of their goals. The 2016 Paris Agreement has brought renewed hope to climate activists, as it has tried to increase compliance by allowing each country should set their own efforts to reduce carbon … Read more
Matthew Nanes and Dotan Haim “Should abortion be legal?” “Do you support the Taliban?” “Would you report anti-government insurgents to the police?” Social science researchers often want to know the answers to sensitive questions. Oftentimes, the impediment to collecting such information is not that people do not wish to reveal their answer, but that they … Read more
Steve Utych In 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began protesting during the national anthem prior to his team’s games to bring awareness to police brutality against Black Americans. Over time, many more athletes in the NFL joined Kaepernick in his protest, which drew both praise from advocates and scorn from opponents, including President … Read more
Jon Kingzette Many people are alarmed at the extent to which Democrats and Republicans dislike each other. Partisan animosities may bias decision making, prevent people from working together to solve important public problems, and generally make life less pleasant due to rancorous interactions with people on the other side—from the Thanksgiving table to PTA meetings … Read more