SOCIAL STUDIES |
Guilty umpires
Thornton-Lugo, M. et al., “Makeup Calls in Organizations: An Application of Justice to the Study of Bad Calls,” Journal of Applied Psychology (forthcoming).
Swing voters
Until 2018, Louisiana required just 10 out of 12 jurors in criminal trials to agree on a conviction. Data from that era shows that juries almost always convicted — not-guilty findings were rare — and almost no juries deadlocked with only nine votes to convict. Researchers curious about what drove the pivotal 10th vote (or in states with unanimous jury requirements, what drives the pivotal 12th vote) conducted experiments in which participants hesitating to make a decision were either pivotal to a verdict or not pivotal. Pivotal voters were more likely than non-pivotal voters to go along with a conviction, but they were not more likely to go along with an acquittal. The researchers theorize that pivotal vottraffic ers do not want to bear the responsibility for generating a “non-outcome” — in this case, a deadlocked jury.
Davenport, D. & Winet, Y., “Pivotal Voting: The Opportunity to Tip Group Decisions Skews Juries and Other Voting Outcomes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (August 2022).
Blue language
People were shown two versions of two different dashcam videos in which an officer used force. One of the videos depicted an officer responding to a domestic violence incident and eventually kicking and hitting the suspect. The other video depicted an officer conducting a traffic stop with a driver who had an outstanding warrant and eventually having to wrestle the suspect to the ground. Both videos were subtitled without audio; one version of each video had the officer using profanity. The use of profanity significantly reduced the perceived reasonableness of force, especially for the stop. Martaindale, H. et al., “@#%$!: The Impact of Officer Profanity on Civilians’ Perception of What Constitutes Reasonable Use of Force,” Police Quarterly (forthcoming).
To have and to hold
Economists found that married women and single cohabitating women with elementary school-aged children were more likely to drop out of the labor force after the onset of the pandemic if their state had divorce rules that were more favorable to spouses who earn less money. The researchers theorize that mothers are more willing to drop out of the workforce if they know their partners can’t use their lack of earnings against them in a future divorce. There was no similar association between divorce rules and labor force participation for women of similar ages without children, for mothers of older children who could presumably fend for themselves at home during remote learning, for partnered men with school-age children, or during the Great Recession, when schools weren’t closed.
Bansak, C. et al., “Mothers’ Caregiving During COVID: The Impact of Marital Property Laws on Women’s Labor Force Status,” Economics & Human Biology (forthcoming).
Earth, wind, and fire
Economists found that rebels who fought in the Irish war of independence in the early 20th century were more likely to come from families and locations that had been deeply affected by the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century. This suggests the famine left a legacy of distaste for the United Kingdom, and indeed, the economists note that use of the word “famine” in Irish newspapers spiked during the rebellion.
Narciso, G. & Severgnini, B., “The Deep Roots of Rebellion,” Journal of Development Economics (forthcoming).