SOCIAL STUDIES
What I think I said
In mid-March 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, researchers surveyed people about their preferences regarding lockdowns and travel restrictions. They were asked whether current US government policy was too restrictive or not restrictive enough and how much they trusted the federal government. A month later, the researchers surveyed the same people and asked them to recall their earlier preferences, giving them a small reward for correct answers. People generally recalled preferring stronger restrictions than they actually had chosen. This was an instance of hindsight bias — there was higher support for tighter restrictions in the second survey, and that affected people’s recollections of what they had said the first time. People who exhibited more of this hindsight bias also exhibited a bigger drop in their trust in government.
Herz, H. et al., “Hindsight Bias and Trust in Government,” Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming).
My enemy is my friend
Your best teammate in a competition could be a former opponent. A study looked at match data from a globally popular online game in which two five-person teams play against each other. Most matches consist of teams assembled on the spot by a matchmaking algorithm to have comparable skill. When teams were made up of players who had opposed one another in prior matches, they were likelier to win and to coordinate their gameplay even when internet lags made that more challenging. This suggests that players develop a better implicit sense of someone else’s gameplay by being their opponent than by being their teammate.
Ching, K. et al., “Competitive Familiarity: Learning to Coordinate by Competing,” Organization Science (forthcoming).
Job stereotypes
A study in a top sociology journal finds that in both China and the United States, physically attractive job candidates who graduated from prestigious colleges are likelier to get callbacks for positions that pay above-average salaries or are on a management track. And having either of those two qualities (attractiveness or college prestige) reduces a candidate’s likelihood of getting called back for entry-level positions or those that pay belowaverage salaries. Callbacks for those lowerlevel positions are likelier to go to applicants who rank low for both physical attractiveness and college prestige.
Marquis, C. et al., “Attractiveness and Attainment: Status, Beauty, and Jobs in China and the United States,” American Journal of Sociology (forthcoming).
Out of the darkness
A new study finds that big fans of horror movies are no more coldhearted, less empathetic, or less generous than other people.
Scrivner, C., “Bleeding-Heart Horror Fans: Enjoyment of Horror Media Is Not Related to Lower Empathy or Compassion,” Journal of Media Psychology (forthcoming).