Abstract
Parsing political divides, key questions about marriage and health, justifying gentrification, and perceptions of procedural justice: new research from the journals.
Politicians: Selfish or Selfless?
What’s more valuable to you: agency or communion? In Social Psychology Quarterly, Kimmo Eriksson considers whether Democrats and Republicans answer this question differently. He asks, first, which political parties are more likely to consider agency (self-oriented motivation) and communion (other-oriented motivation) as more valuable to society? Second, do Democrats and Republicans rate their own party’s members as more likely to embody the traits they find more important? And third, do these politicians value human nature or human uniqueness?
Eriksson finds that a large majority of Democrats value communion over agency. Among the Republicans, the opposite was true. He also found evidence of ingroup bias. Respondents were asked to evaluate the “average” Democrat or Republican in comparison to the “average American.” Democrats rated other Democrats as more likely to show communal orientations, while Republicans rated other Republicans as more likely to be agentic. However, neither Democrats nor Republicans showed this ingroup bias toward themselves: respondents from both parties rated themselves more agentic than communal.
Our orientations toward self-reliance or interdependence help explain political behaviors.
Valerie Everett, Flickr CC
This study also investigated perceptions of humanization among Republicans and Democrats. Associated literature says that liberals should emphasize human nature (differentiating humans from machines) while conservatives should emphasize human uniqueness (differentiating humans from animals). Based on these values, liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans should “dehumanize” each other in the areas they value most. Eriksson’s results, however, do not support that perspective. Instead, he asserts that orientations toward agency and communion give us the best insight into American political behavior.
Research shows that married people are healthier and live longer than unmarried people. One explanation is that spouses influence each other’s health behaviors (e.g., healthy eating, exercise, moderate drinking) through social controls including imposing threats, demands, requests, or rewards. Because this marital health advantage appears to be greater for men than women, Debra Umberson, Rachel Donnelly, and Amanda Pollit wonder how the health effect shakes out in same-sex marriages.
In the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the authors compare the marital dynamics of same-sex and different-sex spouses. Using survey data collected from a sample of both spouses in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples, they consider three aspects of health-related social control within marriage: desire to change a partner’s health habits, social control tactics used to influence a partner, and reactions to a partner’s social control efforts. These findings suggest that gendered patterns differ depending on whether one is in a same-sex or a different-sex marriage.
That is, the social control dynamics at play vary according to the gender of both spouses. For example, women are more likely than men to attempt to regulate a spouse’s health habits, but this pattern is stronger for women married to men than women married to women. Men are less likely than women to attempt to regulate their spouse’s health habits, but this pattern is stronger for men married to women than men married to men. Women married to men feel less appreciative of their spouse’s social control efforts, while women married to women feel most appreciative of their spouse’s efforts. These results suggest gendered patterns in health behaviors and social control sometimes unfold in different ways depending on whether one is married to a man or woman. So, ask yourself, “I’m marrying who?” before saying “I do.”
Perceptions of Police Procedural Justice
It seems intuitive that the neighborhood you grew up in and your past experiences with authority figures would shape your perceptions of police as helpful and fair. This idea, called “procedural justice,” is, more precisely, the notion that fair procedures are equally distributed to everyone. Past neighborhood experiences and fair treatment by early authority figures, such as parents and teachers, underpin one’s “relational justice schema (RJS),” or the shorthand set of personal assumptions you use to quickly determine whether you’re being treated with the respect and fairness afforded to others. Taken together, Justin Pickett, Justin Nix, and Sean Roche, theorizing in Social Psychology Quarterly, test whether a given person’s perceptions of police procedural justice are anchored in their more general RJS.
Social environments contribute to individuals’ ideas about whether police can be trusted to act fairly.
Doctor Popular, Flickr CC
To better understand how people use their RJS to evaluate police fairness, the authors used online surveys and a set of two studies aimed at measuring perceived police fairness, individuals’ RJS endorsement, and participants’ past experiences. Pickett, Nix, and Roche find that having positive neighborhood experiences and receiving quality parent and teacher procedural justice strongly informs the judgement that police fairly resolve disputes. Additionally, a general belief that people act respectfully and fairly positively influences individuals’ perceptions of police fairness. When taking past negative experiences with police into account, however, even RJS is unable to overcome one’s perception that police act unfairly.
As advocates argue for police reform aimed at improving attitudes toward police and community willingness to cooperate with authorities, it is important to acknowledge that social environments, including early interactions with teachers and others within our neighborhoods, contribute to our individual ideas about whether police act justly. The authors advise that one way to bolster police legitimacy is simple: police must refrain from performing justice unfairly. Beyond that, the scholars suggest creating more ways for community members to hold police officers accountable for their behaviors, such as mandating body-worn cameras and filming police-civilian interactions.
Justifying Gentrification
Incoming gentrifiers often appreciate the authenticity, grit, and diversity of their new neighborhoods. Many even acknowledge feeling guilty for contributing to gentrification, the process by which neighborhoods are renovated, resulting in higher property values and the potential to displace long-term residents. So, how do gentrifiers reconcile that guilt with the fact that they have, after all, moved in?
In a recent issue of City & Community, Kathleen Donnelly interviews 35 new residents of a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood about the narratives they construct to justify—to themselves—their feelings of guilt and uncertainty. Nearly all of the participants (adult residents who moved into the neighborhood after 2000 and are either college students or degree holders) brought up both guilt and gentrification, despite Donnelly carefully avoiding asking about those terms directly.
Three main narrative strategies emerged as interviewees worked to justify their residence in the neighborhood. First, respondents reframed the outcomes of gentrification so that neighborhood changes, including the emerging mix of high- and low-end shops, were portrayed as a type of diversity. Second, separating themselves from the “bad gentrifiers,” respondents positioned themselves against a more typical narrative of disrespectful residents eagerly promoting the displacement of long-time residents. They used overly positive language to describe long-time residents and negative language about other newcomers. Third, respondents displaced responsibility for gentrification; over a third of the respondents described themselves as victims of management companies, city government, and longtime residents and forced, by need of a place to live, to become gentrifiers.
Donnelly shows how gentrifiers use a group of cultural frameworks to justify what they believe are morally questionable actions. More broadly, her study provides a framework for examining the ways we all justify inconsistencies, managing moments when our morals compete with the consequences of our actions.
They gentrify—but why?
Mark Strozier, Flickr CC
Sex ratios in marriage markets may drive the “marriage gap” between straight Black and White women.
Brandon King, Flickr CC
The Marriage Market Gap
“Will they or won’t they?” The popular question is situated in lay beliefs about romantic love and choice, but overlooks the structural hurdles people face on the path to marriage. In their Socius article, Joanna Pepin and Philip Cohen apply a fresh approach to a classic question. Drawing on newly released American Community Survey data, the authors use statistical techniques to untangle the conditions facing Black and White women in their respective marriage markets.
Departing from most research on marriage outcomes, Pepin and Cohen look at the resources available to women, rather than the availability of their potential partners. Their sample of roughly 300,000 Black and White women between the ages of 20 and 45 showed a number of growing disparities in who married over three years. Though only 5% of the sample had gotten married for the first time in the previous year, marriage was half as likely for Black women than for White women. In addition to having more social and economic advantages than Black women, the authors also found White women tended to marry two years sooner. Both higher educational attainment and proportions of unmarried men in a local market were associated with increasing the chances of a woman getting married in the last year.
While homeownership, region, and divorce rate did not impact marital outcomes, the sex ratio of a particular marriage market did. The proportion of single Black men to Black women and White men to White women mattered most when it came to marital odds. Pepin and Cohen therefore propose addressing unequal experiences of mortality and incarceration across race to reduce the marriage gap. This research seeks to reframe understandings of couplings between men and women from “Will they or won’t they?” to “Can they or can’t they?”