Archive: Jan 2020

The spring real estate market is right around the corner, and the annual frenzy of home buying and selling will begin again. For many parents, the residential search means finding a house in a neighborhood and school district with desired characteristics. But new research shows that not all families have the luxury of taking these factors into account. 

To better understand how people choose a home, Hope Harvey, Kelley Fong, Kathryn Edin, and Stefanie DeLuca interviewed 156 parents with young children in metro areas in Ohio and Texas. They interviewed about two-thirds of the parents again one year later, and also accompanied about two dozen residents who moved between interviews on their search for a new home. 

Regardless of their financial resources, parents of all racial and ethnic backgrounds expressed similar desires for high-quality homes in safe neighborhoods with strong schools where they could live for many years. However, parents thought about the goals of their searches differently depending on their income level. Higher-income parents’ searches were geared toward finding “forever homes,” and these parents attempted to come as close as possible to achieving their long-term preferences. In contrast, nearly all of the lower-income parents in the study were seeking to rent rather than buy. Because circumstances like eviction often pushed them to relocate, these parents tended to look for a new rental unit that would meet their immediate needs. Thinking of these rented homes as “temporary stops,” lower-income parents deferred their plans to search for homes that better matched their preferences until they were ready to buy a home. 

Understanding why lower-income parents may be willing to settle for houses that don’t match their long-term preferences is key to reducing a number of social inequalities, like disparities in school and neighborhood quality across income groups. This study shows that parents who decide to relocate before they can afford to purchase a home often turn to rental units that are better than their previous residences, while falling far short of their ideals. As a result, solutions that provide families more time to evaluate their options–like giving evicted residents longer to move–could help lower-income families forced to move on a tight timeline. 

National crises can have long lasting impacts beyond the day or year they occur. For example, in the wake of September 11th, American nationalism increased. However, the unity Americans displayed was an exclusive form of nationalism that pitted many U.S. citizens against non-citizens. A recent study found that following the 9/11 national crisis, non-citizens in the United States faced a greater likelihood of imprisonment than citizens. In fact, by 2010 nearly 48 percent of the federal docket was comprised of cases against non-U.S. citizens. 

Michael Light, Ellen Dinsmore and Michael Massoglia examined a database of federal criminal felony offenses that includes case type, defendant characteristics, court location, and judge-specific data. They find non-U.S. citizens living in New York and Washington D.C were eight percent more likely to be imprisoned than U.S. citizens after 9/11. The increased likelihood of incarceration for non-citizens in New York and D.C. was evident for a full four years after September 11, 2001.

The authors suggest that the reason for this disparity in criminal punishment is not due to changes in federal policies, but instead due to judges being less sympathetic to defendants without American citizenship during times of national emergencies. In other words, the federal criminal justice system is not unbiased: Legal actors like judges can be affected by national fear during times of crisis. The findings show legal patterns of inequality that target non-U.S. citizens — raising the question of whether the American penal system has become a component of immigration enforcement.

This research raises important questions about the functioning of democratic institutions in the wake of national emergencies. The findings show legal patterns of inequality that target non-U.S. citizens — raising the question of whether the American penal system has become a component of immigration enforcement.

Originally published April 17, 2019.

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.

Originally posted November 5, 2019.

The term ‘gaslighting’ earned its name by way of the 1944 film, Gaslight. In the film, an antagonist secretly brightens and dims his home’s lights, making his wife doubt her sanity and sense of reality. Despite the cinematic origins of its label, this form of abuse is experienced by many women. Though psychologists have extensively investigated the subject, little attention has been paid to the role that underlying social characteristics may play. In new research, Paige Sweet fills this void by revealing how social characteristics affect individual experiences of gaslighting within domestic abuse.

Through a series of life course interviews, Sweet finds that abusers mobilize gender stereotypes, racial stereotypes, and victims’ institutional settings in order to manipulate their victims’ sense of reality. Women of different racial and social backgrounds experience gaslighting in different forms; whereas an abuser might prey upon a black woman’s fear of becoming a stereotypical “baby mama,” another might threaten an undocumented Hispanic woman with deportation. Despite differences, abusers in Sweet’s study utilized “crazy-making” tactics for all women — drawing on stereotypes that men are rational, while women are irrational. “Micro tactics of abuse are situated in macro conditions of inequality.”

Sweet’s argument that “micro tactics of abuse are situated in macro conditions of inequality”  helps us to understand why gaslighting can be so effective at stripping down one’s sense of reality; by drawing attention to existing power structures and inequalities, abusers are able to gain a greater sense of legitimacy and tailor their tactics to a victim’s personal social experiences. It is crucial that we understand the forces that underlie gaslighting in order to more effectively recognize symptoms of abuse, and subsequently support the victims who experience it.