The EUI Interdisciplinary Experimental Working Group (ECO/SPS)
24 October 2019, Seminar Room 4, Badia Fiesolana
Prof. Eva Anduiza (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona)
“Feminism as a cue”
In this paper we explore how feminism works as a cue. The #MeToo era is witnessing a rise in the visibility of feminism, feminist arguments and feminist issues, as well as powerful backlash reactions. We use a pre-registered survey experiment to assess to what extent feminist endorsements work as a cues when people think about some gender issues (gender violence, surrogate pregnancies, gender quotas, and the use of niqabs and burkas). We run the experiment in Spain, where there are indicators of both strong support for feminism (as the massive 8M demonstrations indicate) as well as a significant backlash reaction (best epitomized in the growth of Vox). We test four different hypotheses: affect (feminist endorsements have positive effects for people who have favorable predispositions), rejection (feminist endorsements have negative effects for people who have negative predispositions), activation (feminist sophistication enhances both affect and rejection effects) and purple-washing correction (feminist endorsements correct purple-washing when the issue is connected to immigration). We present and discuss our findings.
Prof. Luis Miller (Spanish National Research Council, Madrid)
“The effect of education, income inequality and merit on inequality acceptance”
A large number of observational and experimental studies have explored the determinants of individual preferences for redistribution. In general, inequalities are more likely to be accepted by people of a higher socioeconomic status, in richer societies and when inequalities are perceived as justifiable owing to differences in productivity. Almas et al (2019) show that in a relatively unequal society (the United States), the high educated accept inequality significantly more than the low educated, whereas, in a relatively equal society (Norway), the low educated accept inequality more, but not significantly more, than the high educated. Here, we replicate this finding using data from experiments conducted in four locations across three countries all distinct from the ones studied by Almas et al. However, a closer look at the data indicates that the origin of the interaction effect varies depending on which societies one compares. Data for Norway and the United States indicate that meritocratic values among the high educated are less prevalent in more equal societies and that this is the driver of the triple interaction effect. In contrast, in our data the interaction effects have multiple drivers.