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Month: September 2014

By Posted on Posted in Methods No Comments

Here's the abstract of a PLoS One article, "Racial Bias in Perceptions of Others' Pain":

The present work provides evidence that people assume a priori that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites. It also demonstrates that this bias is rooted in perceptions of status and the privilege (or hardship) status confers, not race per se. Archival data from the National Football League injury reports reveal that, relative to injured White players, injured Black players are deemed more likely to play in a subsequent game, possibly because people assume they feel less pain. Experiments 1–4 show that White and Black Americans–including registered nurses and nursing students–assume that Black people feel less pain than do White people. Finally, Experiments 5 and 6 provide evidence that this bias is rooted in perceptions of status, not race per se. Taken together, these data have important implications for understanding race-related biases and healthcare disparities.

Here are descriptions of the samples for each experiment, after exclusions of respondents who did not meet criteria for inclusion:

  • Experiment 1: 240 whites from the University of Virginia psychology pool or MTurk
  • Experiment 2: 35 blacks from the University of Virginia psychology pool or MTurk
  • Experiment 3: 43 registered nurses or nursing students
  • Experiment 4: 60 persons from MTurk
  • Experiment 5: 104 persons from MTurk
  • Experiment 6: 245 persons from MTurk

Not the most representative samples, of course. If you're thinking that it would be interesting to see whether results hold in a nationally representative sample with a large sample size, well, that was tried, with a survey experiment as part of the Time Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences. Here's the description of the results listed on the TESS site for the study:

Analyses yielded mixed evidence. Planned comparison were often marginal or non-significant. As predicted, White participants made (marginally) lower pain ratings for Black vs. White targets, but only when self-ratings came before target ratings. When target ratings came before self-ratings, White participants made (marginally) lower pain ratings for White vs. Black targets. Follow-up analyses suggest that White participants may have been reactant. White participants reported that they were most similar to the Black target and least similar to the White target, contrary to prediction and previous work both in our lab and others' lab. Moreover, White participants reported that Blacks were most privileged and White participants least privileged, again contrary to prediction and previous work both in our lab and others' lab.

The results of this TESS study do not invalidate the results of the six experiments and one archival study reported in the PLoS One article, but the non-reporting of the TESS study does raise questions about whether there were other unreported experiments and archival studies.

The TESS study had an unusually large and diverse sample: 586 non-Hispanic whites, 526 non-Hispanic blacks, 520 non-Hispanic Asians, and 528 Hispanics. It's too bad that these data were placed into a file drawer.

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By Posted on Posted in Methods 2 Comments

Here are some graphs to follow up on this Monkey Cage post.

DW-Nominate_SD

Bailey_SD---

UPDATE (Sept 12, 2014)

Here's another graph of the Bailey data, to illustrate the narrowing and moderate cross-time shift of the congressional GOP and northern Democratic ideal point estimates, but a more dramatic leftward cross-time shift in the congressional southern Democratic ideal point estimates.

bailey_sort

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UPDATE (Sept 13, 2014)

Here are the do files I used to create a database with Bailey scores and state and party codes for each case (House, Senate). Here is a description of the process that I used to create the do files.

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By Posted on Posted in Methods 2 Comments

I blogged here about inferential problems in the typical symbolic racism research study, which measures symbolic racism with these items:

1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

4. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

One inferential problem is that the above items cannot differentiate racial bias from non-racial beliefs and attitudes; for example, a respondent might oppose special favors for blacks because that respondent is racist or because that respondent opposes special favors in general.

Symbolic racism research has typically addressed this inferential problem through statistical control, tossing into a regression such variables as partisanship, self-identified ideology, or specific conservative beliefs. But the working manuscript here provided evidence that statistical control does not always isolate the racial component of symbolic racism.

The TESS proposal that I recently submitted tried to isolate the racial component of symbolic racism through a survey experiment: a randomly-selected half of white respondents would receive the traditional symbolic racism items, and the other half would receive an adjusted set of items, such as "Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other groups overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Poor whites should do the same without any special favors." The idea would be to compare support for the traditional item to support for the adjusted item to assess how much responses differ due to the target mentioned in the item (blacks or poor whites).

I did not originate this idea: Paul Sniderman and Edward Carmines reported a survey that did the same exact thing, but which used "new immigrants from Europe" in the special favors item (see p. 199 here, but the survey is reported in other publications, too). However, as far as I can tell, that survey experiment concerned only the special favors symbolic racism item; the purpose of the proposed experiment is to assess the racial component of the entire battery of symbolic racism items.

Benefits of the survey experiment measurement of symbolic racism are resources saved (no need to include control items) and stronger inference. Ideally, adjusted items could reflect the race or ethnicity of each respondent, such as poor Hispanics or poor Asians instead of poor whites.

Here is the proposal for TESS, which was rejected. Comments are welcome.

 

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