On April 18th, police officer Christopher Krickovich faced public criticism for rough handling a Black teenager at a local school. Similar incidents across the nation have compelled Black parents to talk to their children about how to navigate and survive police interactions. Most of these conversations use familiar high-profile cases involving Black men such as Michael Brown and Eric Gardner to illustrate the danger with police contact. Yet, Black girls and women have largely been neglected as targets of police brutality. In a recent study, Shannon Malone Gonzalez reveals that Black girls are not only left out of public discourse regarding police violence, but also the everyday “police talk” Black mothers use to teach Black children how to navigate interactions with law enforcement.

Gonzalez conducted interviews with 30 middle- and working-class Black mothers in an urban city. Each mother had one or more children between the ages of four and thirteen and 21 Black mothers had at least one daughter. During her interviews, Gonzalez asked Black mothers to reflect on their children’s racial and gendered vulnerabilities to police violence and how these perceptions of vulnerability informed police talk with their children. Black mothers often categorized Black sons as the primary targets of police brutality and Black daughters as collateral targets or “secondary victims.”

Black mothers often utilized the “making it home” framework when discussing police with their children. Through double consciousness — understanding one’s own vulnerabilities through the lens of the dominant group — this framework teaches Black youth to be hyperaware of police stereotypes that reproduce notions of Black criminality. Mothers provide suggestions for how Black youth should interact with law enforcement to increase their chances of “making it home” safely. Black mothers believe these talks are vital for their children’s survival.

At the same time, Gonzalez points out that these talks marginalize the experiences of Black girls in three ways. First, Black mothers often categorized Black sons as the primary targets of police brutality and Black daughters as collateral targets or “secondary victims.” Even when asked about girls, several mothers turn their attention back to their sons. Second, these talks reinforce the idea that violence associated with masculinity, such as physical assault and shootings, are more important than verbal harassment or sexual violence — experiences that are more often linked to women’s experiences of police misconduct. The “making it home” narrative also treats the home as an inherently safe space, even though homes often function as a site of police violence for Black girls and women. Finally, mothers see police talk as crucial for boys’ socialization but optional for their daughters. Through her work, Gonzalez encourages us to make Black women’s and girls’ experiences with police more visible in our understandings of police-community relations.

It’s teaching evaluation season again, when universities collect anonymous student evaluations of each class, contingent faculty wonder whether their scores will help them get another contract, and female faculty brace themselves for comments about their appearance. Teaching evaluations continue to be the most widely used (often the only) tool to evaluate and reward college-level teaching, despite a long history of research on gender bias in evaluations. New research considers how the design of evaluations affect their outcomes, and whether simply changing the number of points in a rating scale reduces the size of gender gaps.

Lauren A. Rivera and András Tilcsik studied a large North American university that moved from a 10-point scale to a 6-point scale in its teaching evaluations. The change in scale allowed the researchers to test whether the same professors, teaching the same courses, were evaluated differently on the 6-point scale than on the 10-point scale. Rivera and Tilcsik also performed an experiment where participants evaluated identical lecture transcripts in order to control for teacher quality and improvement.

Changing from a 10-point to a 6-point scale significantly affected the gender gap in the most male-dominated fields. Specifically, on the 10-point scale 31.4% of male professors received the highest score, while only 19.5% of female professors did. A ten was the most common rating for male professors, followed by a nine and then an eight. For female professors, an eight was the most common, followed by a nine and then a ten. After switching to the 6-point scale from a 10-point scale, the gender gap disappeared.

After switching to the 6-point scale, the gender gap disappeared. On the 6-point scale, 41.2% of male professors and 41.7% of female professors received the highest score. Findings from the experiment likewise found a statistically significant difference between men and women using the 10-point scale and no statistically significant difference with the 6-point scale for professors in male-dominated fields.

The authors hypothesize that a ten on a 10-point scale connotes brilliance, a trait that students are less likely to attribute to female professors in these male-dominated fields. While ingrained biases are difficult to shift, careful construction of evaluation instruments is an achievable step for organizations looking to mitigate gendered effects.

Contesting individual’s claims to Indigenous ancestry is nothing new; a notable example is Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry testing and Donald Trump’s repeated “Pocahontas” jeers. Proving authentic group heritage is something many Americans never think about, but such dynamics are common for Indigenous persons.

The labels, “Native American,” “Indigenous,” and “American Indian,” are social constructions rooted in the story of colonization. Indigenous populations in present-day United States were subject to state policies and institutions that lumped many different groups into the label, “Native American.” As a legacy of these policies, people have to provide proof of Native American ancestry to be considered official tribal members. In new research published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Dwanna L. McKay explores how Indigenous people draw on different strategies to navigate these complicated systems of belonging and proving identity. Proving authentic group heritage is something many Americans never think about, but such dynamics are common for Indigenous Peoples.

Interviewing 45 Native American participants, McKay describes two dominant methods they use to defend their identity as authentic Indigineous Peoples. First, there is “blood quantum,” a term that refers to how much Native ancestry or family a person can point to in their family tree. The other common way to display authenticity is producing one’s “Indian Card,” a certificate that some Indigenous people receive as proof of their heritage. For several interviewees, these cards not only represent a structural and political qualification, but also hold cultural and personal significance.  

Of course, blood quantums and Indian cards are specific to Native Americans; members of other races in the United States do not have to similarly prove their ancestry or identity. This distinct picture is a product of colonialism and the subsequent categorization, marginalization, and isolated Indigenous populations. Today, such history has affected how people experience race and negotiate Indigenous authenticity.

Men are less likely than women to consider becoming vegetarian. And in the United States, where men have higher rates of life-threatening health conditions than women — including uncontrolled high blood pressure and heart disease — changing eating habits may be important for their health. To learn more about meat and masculinity, Researchers Sandra Nakagawa and Chloe Hart conducted a study examining how gender identity influences eating habits.

Nakagawa and Hart conducted experiments to test whether a threat to masculinity influences men’s likelihood of eating meat. In one experiment, the researchers told some men their answers from a previous survey fell in the “average female” range, while others fell into the “average male” range. For the men who received “average female” results, the authors expected them to feel like their masculinity was in question.Men who experienced a threat to their masculinity showed more attachment to meat and were more likely to say they needed meat to feel full.

Men who experienced a threat to their masculinity showed more attachment to meat than those who did not experience the threat. They were also more likely to say they needed meat to feel full and were less likely to consider switching to a diet with no meat. This study shows that masculinity does matter for how men maintain their health. Importantly, it is not masculinity itself that is the problem here, but the high standards men feel they must meet — and eat.

The heated condemnation of celebrities and business leaders in the recent Varsity Blues Scandal reveals how indifference to apparently harmless donations can transform into massive condemnation of a crime. In a recent study of moral reactions to questionable transactions, researchers Oliver Schilke and Gabriel Rossman asked people to rate their disapproval to dubious exchanges taking place under varying scenarios. Reactions varied according to the social context and components of the transaction, even when goods and the traders involved in the negotiation remained the same.

Schilke and Rossman created several vignettes describing real-world experiences, including political bribery, commercial bribery, and selling a baby. For example, in one of the vignettes a couple reaches out to a new mother with several types of offers in order to adopt her baby. In the first scenario, the couple and the mother undertake a quid pro quo arrangement, in which the couple compensates the mother with $10,000. In alternative scenarios, the couple conceals the monetary exchange by offering to pay off the medical costs of the delivery (pawning) or by buying the mother’s car for several times its real value (gift exchange). The couple still paid $10,000 in each scenario. Respondents expressed more disapproval of direct payments (paying a woman directly to adopt her baby) than to the alternative scenarios (paying her medical bills).

A different vignette describes the story of a defense contractor that asks a congressman to endorse his company’s equipment for testing by the Army. The quid pro quo exchange describes that the lobbyists offers $10,000 directly for the endorsement. In an alternative scenario, the defense contractor ‘suggests’ that the company expects compensation for previous contributions in past political campaigns.

Research participants rated the vignettes and the scenarios based on a 7-point scale of moral disapproval. As expected, respondents expressed more disapproval of direct payments than to the alternative scenarios. However, three factors lessened this disapproval:

• First, people soften their reactions in scenarios when there is a lack of clarity about the exchangers’ real intentions (attributional opacity).
• Second, moral disapproval declines when the acts of giving and receiving are distant in time (perceived transactionalism).
• Finally, respondents lessened their disapproval when they believed the exchange wouldn’t provoke general disapproval in the population (collective validity).

Respondents also declared different levels of disapproval to the giver and the receiver in the transaction. For example, respondents empathized with the couple for their desire to raise a child, but they condemned the mother for giving the baby away. The stigma in illicit exchanges is likely to be more connected with traders’ roles and statuses in the transaction than with the nature of the good itself.

The line between acceptable and unacceptable exchanges is a gray area. This study reveals that people’s reactions towards transactions involving non-market goods, such as babies, democratic decisions, and college education, depends on social expectations and how people perceive the intentions and reciprocity of the exchange. In the midst of the massive scandals in college admissions, social science offers useful guidelines to understand societies’ moral values.

In 1994, 800,000 Tutsi were killed in the Rwandan genocide as UN peacekeepers stood by. Despite relentless requests from Force Commander Roméo Dallaire, UN headquarters and powerful governments refused to provide trucks or radio-blocking technology that could have protected civilians, and UN peacekeepers were under orders not to use force unless they were directly targeted. In the wake of the violence, international leaders promised legal solutions to prevent genocide and mass violence in-real-time through legal doctrine like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Twenty-five years have now passed since the Rwandan genocide, but despite the optimism around R2P and other legal developments, mass violence and genocide continue to occur. And they are met with limited legal response as they unfold. Syria, the Central African Republic, and Yemen have all seen extreme violence against civilians in recent years. If the law prohibits such behavior, why is there no resulting global action?

In recent research, Katherine Southwich employs a classic legal model that shows how the naming, blaming, and claiming of violence are central to legal disputes. This allows her to pinpoint moments when political choice can affect the function of international law. Legally, a violation must first be “named” as harmful. Then “blame” for this harm must then be attributed on a group or individual. Finally, the victim must “claim” victimhood and seek remedy. Southwich argues that each of these stages are politically tenuous in international law.

The burden for claiming crimes against humanity is broad. The term “crimes against humanity” is meant to reflect that violations like torture or enslavement are an afront against not only the victim, but against all people. Based on this understanding, developments like R2P created a global responsibility to defend against such crimes in order to protect all of humankind. Southwich asserts that a diffusion of responsibility makes it less likely for anyone to act. And in terms of naming, no central body exists that determines whether or not a crime is genocide. States or international bodies may adopt the language, but there is no group that defines the crime. When such assessments are inherently challenging, especially in-real-time, naming is often put off until it’s too late to help targeted groups. The existence of legal protection doctrine does little alone. Powerful states and international organizations must choose to uphold their legal commitments.

Southwich uses the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar to examine the failures of international institutions in upholding promises of civilian protection. The Rohingya have faced persecution in Myanmar for decades, with many experts calling for legal action during this ongoing genocide. But despite restrictions to health care, destroyed villages, and mass killings, judicial processes to address the violence are largely at a stand-still. In the meantime, the humanitarian situation escalates, with Rohingya refugees fleeing to neighboring countries that struggle to support them.

Many states have chosen to dwell in semantic disputes to avoid response. And there are many reasons they may choose to not act – they may see Myanmar as a potential business partner, or they may be hesitant to endanger their own soldiers in peacekeeping missions. As experts still remain divided about the best strategies to respond to mass violence or genocide, many states decide their own costs outweigh potential benefits to victims.

The existence of legal protection doctrine does little alone.  Political will is necessary to mobilize the law and to promote protections for civilians. Powerful states and international organizations must choose to uphold their legal commitments. Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, the need to protect civilians from genocide and mass violence remains as crucial now as it was in 1994.

“I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.”

This somewhat humorous 1957 quotation from University of California President Clark Kerr captures just how highly athletics rank in the priorities of university administrators. Today, as new research from Ryan King-White and Adam Beissel demonstrates, athletics continue to be at the center of university governance because they are assumed to assist universities with branding, recruiting, and revenue-raising.

The prevailing logic of American higher education holds that opportunities for corporate partnership are always good, that universities are competing for student-consumers, and that high-profile athletics will assist in both of those realms. King-White and Beissel use the case study of Towson University’s decision-making on athletics to demonstrate how that logic allows university leadership to expand athletics without real input or opposition and hide the actual cost to students.

King-White and Beissel are long-time professors, students, and coaches at Towson University, and they use these positions to develop a rich case study drawing on interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival data to chronicle the rapid expansion and promotion of Towson athletics. They label Towson, a public university in Maryland, an “aspirational university” that invested in athletics and facilities as part of an effort to grow the brand and prestige of the school. Towson made the decision to move to Division I NCAA athletics in the late 1970s, with football joining in 1987. In 2007, a new president doubled down on what had previously been a fits and starts expansion and poured resources into men’s football and basketball to attempt to become a true “peer” to the other public state school, the University of Maryland, College Park. The idea of athletics as a solid investment in the standing of the school fits neatly into our image of American colleges, despite also knowing the actual costs.

The investment did change the campus. Towson built new facilities, contracted with Aspire Group, and signed corporate agreements with Pepsi, UnderArmour, and Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment. But despite hopes that it would be self-sufficient, today Towson is one of the most subsidized athletic departments in the nation, with 79% of its budget coming from student fees or direct subsidies from campus. Student fees have increased 545% since 1980.

The decision-making process at Towson didn’t raise too many eyebrows because — despite mixed research on the actual effectiveness of athletics in raising revenue or a school’s profile — using athletics in this way is consistent with how Americans expect university leaders to act. That means that when Towson treated students like consumers, overrode concerns from faculty, and treated athletics as a potential revenue stream, it wasn’t acting outside of the logic of any other university in its same position. The idea of athletics as a solid investment in the standing of the school fits neatly into our image of American colleges, despite also knowing the actual costs.

In the United States, more than 1 in 10 households spend at least half of their income on housing costs meaning these households struggle to pay for other basic needs with their remaining income. New research goes beyond housing payments and potential eviction to help us understand the complexity of housing hardship. In a recent study, Ryan Finnigan and Kelsey D. Meagher examine households that missed housing payments and utility payments. They find that missing utility payments is associated with persistent economic disadvantage, and an onset of missed payment is predicted by a major change in health.

The researchers use U.S. census data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, in which approximately 30,000 households complete a survey every four months for two to five years. They specifically focus on households with missed payments for housing, utilities, or both (13-16% of households in the sample).

More households missed payments for utilities than for rent or a mortgage, and missed payments for utilities persisted over time, while missed housing payments did not. For example, half of households that missed utility payments in 2009-10 continued to miss payments a year later, whereas households that missed housing payments were more likely to catch up by the next year. The authors suggest this may be because households prioritize housing payments in order to avoid eviction. The biggest predictor of households missing payments for utilities, housing, or both was declines in health — even more so than losses to income.

Those that missed payments for utilities (or both utilities and housing together) tended to have the most disadvantaged characteristics — higher poverty rates, lower average incomes, fewer employed household members, lower homeownership rates, and a household member in poor health.

The biggest predictor of households missing payments for utilities, housing, or both was declines in health — even more so than losses to income. Since the authors controlled for out-of-pocket medical expenses in their analysis, they suggest this finding may be related to increased caregiving responsibilities on other members of the household.

This research helps us to understand that housing hardship isn’t just about losing your house. Even when people are able to prevent eviction, they may struggle with making payments for other basic needs like heat or water. This means that policymakers interested in reducing hardship may want to consider aid for utilities and other basic needs, instead of primarily focusing on housing and food insecurity.

Do you belong in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin? Consulting the sorting hat may help you make sense of who you are, but psychologists typically distinguish personality differences using a different set of categories. The Big Five identifies a set of five broad personality traits –extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness — that are known to be stable over a person’s lifetime. Recent research considers whether those personality traits can predict how good someone is at forging beneficial social connections, which matters because hobnobbing with the right crowd is an effective means of getting ahead. After all, who would Ron Weasley be without Harry and Hermione?

In their study, Marina Tulin, Bram Lancee, and Beata Volker analyze data from a survey of over 1,000 Dutch adults from different neighborhoods to find out whether people’s personalities can predict their social networks. Controlling for age, gender, education, and migration background, they looked to see if certain personality traits predicted having social networks with contacts in many different types of employment and with more prestigious jobs.

Extraverts were more likely to have diverse social ties and to feel that their networks were highly supportive. The researchers believe this is likely due to extraverts’ comfort in social settings, which offers opportunities to meet a large variety of people, as well as their willingness to nurture existing ties. Openness to experience was also an important predictor, likely because of open respondents’ tendency to prefer social contexts with more diversity and novelty. Extraverts were more likely to have diverse social ties and to feel that their networks were highly supportive.

Whereas sociologists typically explain what happens in the social world as effects of forces at the group or society level, psychologists tend to look at the individual level. In comparing the social networks of extraverted individuals who are open to new experiences to those of their introverted and routine-loving peers, this study combines ideas from sociology and psychology. And it gives us a new appreciation for our Hogwarts House by helping us to understand how the combination of personal characteristics and social world shapes important outcomes across the life course.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice honors the lives of the over 4,000 Black men, women, and children who were lynched on U.S. soil between 1877 and 1950. When the memorial opened in Montgomery, Alabama last spring, reporters asked founder Bryan Stevenson, why build a lynching memorial? Stevenson aptly replied that the memorial serves to not only honor lynching victims but to highlight how the legacy of racial violence affects U.S. punishment practices today. A new study from Eric Stewart and colleagues helps us understand the relationship between lynching and the contemporary punitive attitudes of whites.

The study builds on a long line of research that stems from the work of Ida B. Wells and examines how this history of racial violence shapes criminal justice practices. Wells was one of the main public voices to challenge the common justification for lynchings among whites — that Black men committed acts of rape and other crimes against white women. Her work demonstrated that lynchings were in fact, not a response to crime but a tool of economic and political control used to maintain white dominance in both the South and North. Stewart and his co-authors attempt to unpack this complex history and its implications for criminal justice attitudes today.

The authors draw from a wide range of sources, including a 2013 national survey of crime and punishment attitudes and multiple historical lynching data inventories matched to modern county boundaries. Their findings indicate that this history of racial violence is relevant for whites’ beliefs about crime and punishment today. Specifically, white people who reside in areas where lynchings were more common have increased punitive sentiments towards Black people, including greater support for imprisonment, longer prison sentences, and the death penalty.In places where lynchings were historically more common, white residents report increased punitive sentiments towards Black people.

This effect is amplified among whites who view Black people as more prone to violence against white people. This finding demonstrates that the historical myth used to justify lynchings of black-on-white violence continues to hold sway over white beliefs’ about crime and punishment today. Further, the findings seem to apply nationally — not just in the South — and lynchings do not appear to impact the punitiveness among Black survey respondents.

Stewart and colleagues’ study demonstrates that the legacy of lynchings has shaped contemporary white views of crime, criminality, and punishment through a racial lens. Similar to Stevenson’s comments, the authors conclude that researchers must continue to unpack the importance of historical context in shaping contemporary views of crime and other social issues.