Publications and Working Papers

Abstract: Our decisions about everything from who we’ll hire to what we’ll buy are often preceded byanother decision: from what choice set we will ultimately choose? That is, which recruiting website, streaming service, or restaurant menu is the one from which we’ll pick a small number of jobs, shows, or dishes, respectively? While researchers have extensively studied how people choose between items, less work has focused on how people choose between choice sets. We show that structuring the same decision as a two-stage choice (selecting a choice set before selecting an item) versus a one-stage choice (selecting directly from all available items across choice sets) produces a predictable preference reversal. When choices are structured in two stages, exceptional individual options embedded in otherwise inferior sets are less likely to be selected than if they had been presented in a one-stage choice. This is true even when information, incentives and available options are held constant, and we call it the “hidden in plain set” effect. Why does this occur? In two-stage choices, decision makers place greater weight on attributes of sets as a whole, such as their average quality, whereas in one-stage choices they place greater weight on the qualities of individual items within sets. This shift in weighting changes which option is ultimately selected. We document this effect across seven pre-registered studies (N = 3,864), spanning managerial and consumer decisions. Our findings point to an understudied feature of choice architecture that can predictably and consequentially shape decisions.

Abstract: People naturally seek group memberships that support their need for belonging and desire to interact with like-minded others (e.g., those with similar affiliations, such as political parties, preferred sports teams, or academic disciplines). However, we theorize and show that people may be more willing to forgo such homophily in the face of competition. We propose this pattern arises because of the belief that having a distinctive identity will yield two strategic advantages: (1) it will render a person's ideas and contributions more unique, improving their performance relative to the group; and (2) it will leave evaluators with no clear comparison standard, allowing the person in question to stand out from their group. Across four pre-registered studies (N = 3200), including a correlational field study of full-time workers and three experiments involving both real and hypothetical group choices, we show that competition increases people's willingness to opt into groups without like-minded others (e.g., becoming the only Democrat among Republicans) and find evidence consistent with our two proposed mechanisms. This research sheds new light on when and why competitive environments systematically shape our strategic thinking and affiliative choices.

Abstract: Women are consistently underrepresented in leadership roles. One contributor may be that women are generally less willing than equally-qualified men to enter competitions (e.g., for jobs or promotions). We draw from research on “stereotype reactance”—the idea that telling people about stereotyped expectations can encourage defiance—to propose and test whether telling women about the gender gap in competition entry can increase their willingness to compete. Our prediction contrasts with prior work on stereotype threat and descriptive norms suggesting that highlighting the gender competition gap might lead women to refrain from competing. In two incentive-compatible, preregistered online experiments, we find that informing women about the gender competition gap increases their likelihood of competing for higher pay, and this effect is mediated by stereotype reactance, consistent with our theorizing. Moreover, exposing both men and women to information about the gender competition gap closes the gap. We then test this informational intervention in a large-scale field experiment on an executive job search platform (n = 4,245), examining whether telling women about the gender competition gap increases their willingness to compete for leadership roles relative to a control message that tells them about an identity-irrelevant competition gap. We find that relative to our control message, informing women about the gender gap in willingness to compete increases submitted job applications by over 20% on the day of condition assignment. This suggests that women’s willingness to compete is affected not just by confidence, but also by cultural expectations and motivation to defy stereotypical norms.

Abstract: Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices — most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse — which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study’s findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

Abstract: Scholars, policy makers, and the general public have expressed growing concern about the possibility of large-scale political violence in the United States. Prior research substantiates these worries, as studies reveal that many American partisans support the use of violence against rival partisans. Here, we propose that support for partisan violence is based in part on greatly exaggerated perceptions of rival partisans’ support for violence. We also predict that correcting these inaccurate “metaperceptions” can reduce partisans’ own support for partisan violence. We test these hypotheses in a series of preregistered, nationally representative, correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies (total n = 4,741) collected both before and after the 2020 US presidential election and the 2021 US Capitol attack. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ perceptions of their rival partisans’ support for violence and willingness to engage in violence were very inaccurate, with estimates ranging from 245 to 442% higher than actual levels. Further, we found that a brief, informational correction of these misperceptions reduced support for violence by 34% (Study 3) and willingness to engage in violence by 44% (Study 4). In the latter study, a follow-up survey revealed that the correction continued to significantly reduce support for violence approximately 1 mo later. Together, these results suggest that support for partisan violence in the United States stems in part from systematic overestimations of rival partisans’ support for violence and that correcting these misperceptions can durably reduce support for partisan violence in the mass public.

Abstract: Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to get vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized, and a substantial proportion of Republicans have remained vaccine hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans’ COVID-19 vaccination intentions and attitudes. In a preregistered survey experiment (n = 1,480), we varied whether self-identified Republicans saw endorsements of the vaccine from prominent Republicans (including video of a speech by former President Donald Trump), from the Democratic Party (including video of a speech by President Joseph Biden), or a neutral control condition including no endorsements. Unvaccinated Republicans who were exposed to the Republican elite endorsement reported 7.0% higher vaccination intentions than those who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement and 5.7% higher than those in the neutral control condition. These effects were statistically mediated by participants’ reports of how much they thought Republican politicians would want them to get vaccinated. We also found evidence of backlash effects against Democratic elites: Republicans who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement reported they would be significantly less likely to encourage others to vaccinate and had more negative attitudes toward the vaccine, compared with those who viewed the Republican elite endorsement or the neutral control. These results demonstrate the relative advantage of cues from Republican elites—and the risks of messaging from Democrats currently in power—for promoting vaccination among the largest vaccine-hesitant subgroup in the United States.

Abstract: Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the United States is religiosity, with more-religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less likely to get vaccinated. Here, we test whether explicit cues of common religious identity can help medical experts build trust and increase vaccination intentions. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted with a sample of unvaccinated American Christians (n = 1,765), we presented participants with a vaccine endorsement from a prominent medical expert (NIH Director Francis Collins) and a short essay about doctors’ and scientists’ endorsement of the vaccines. In the common religious identity condition, these materials also highlighted the religious identity of Collins and many medical experts. Unvaccinated Christians in the common identity condition expressed higher trust in medical experts, greater intentions to vaccinate, and greater intentions to promote vaccination to friends and family than those who did not see the common identity cue. These effects were moderated by religiosity, with the strongest effects observed among the most religious participants, and statistically mediated by heightened perceptions of shared values with the medical expert endorsing the vaccine. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of common identity cues for promoting vaccination in a vaccine-hesitant subpopulation. More generally, the results illustrate how trust in science can be built through the invocation of common group identities, even identities often assumed to be in tension with science.