Articles
Damann, Taylor J., Jeremy Siow & Margit Tavits (2023). “Persistence of Gender Biases in Europe.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213266120
Prior work suggests that modern gender bias might have historical roots but has not been able to demonstrate long-term persistence of this bias due to a lack of historical data. We follow archaeological research and employ skeletal records of women’s and men’s health from 139 archaeological sites in Europe dating back, on average, to about 1200 AD to construct a site-level indicator of historical bias in favor of one gender over the other using dental linear enamel hypoplasias. This historical measure of gender bias significantly predicts contemporary gender attitudes, despite the monumental socioeconomic and political changes that have taken place since. We also show that this persistence is most likely due to the intergenerational transmission of gender norms, which can be disrupted by significant population replacement. Our results demonstrate the resilience of gender norms and highlight the importance of cultural legacies in sustaining and perpetuating gender (in)equality today.
Wayne, Carly, Taylor J. Damann & Shani Fachter (2023). “The Holocaust, the Socialization of Victimhood and Outgroup Political Attitudes in Israel.” Comparative Political Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231194068
How does historical victimization impact present-day outgroup attitudes in conflict-riven societies? This study explores this question using a survey experiment with a representative sample of n = 2000 Jewish Israelis — half of whom are direct descendants of Holocaust survivors — and a content analysis of 98 state-approved school textbooks to examine how histories of family victimization and perceived histories of group victimization become socialized and shape outgroup attitudes. We find that, in Israel, family victimization during the Holocaust plays surprisingly little role in shaping present-day political attitudes. Rather, perceived historical victimization of the Jewish and Israeli people is broadly socialized among the Israeli public and is a stronger predictor of outgroup (in)tolerance. These findings shed light on the power of societal victimhood narratives — even in the absence of personal family histories of victimization — to shape political attitudes in conflict contexts, with long-term implications for intergroup cooperation and conflict.
Under Review
Political Leadership During War: The Role of Gender (with Margit Tavits and Dahjin Kim) [R&R]
Does war deepen gender inequalities in political representation or help erase them? We draw from the emerging literature on the behavior of leaders during crisis and the terror management theory developed in psychology to argue that the onset of a violent conflict is likely to push politicians to conform more strongly with traditional gender stereotypes because of public expectations. To test our argument, we use data on Ukrainian politicians’ engagement on social media (136,436 posts by 469 politicians) during the three months before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and interrupted time series analysis to identify the effect of conflict on politicians’ behavior. The evidence confirms that conflict onset deepens gender stereotypical behavior among women and men politicians in their public engagement. We also show that these effects likely occur because of gender biases among the public, which are magnified during war.
A Framework for Studying Causal Effects of Speech Style: Application to U.S. Presidential Campaigns (with Dean Knox and Christopher Lucas) [R&R]
How do voters evaluate political candidates? Qualitative research has long highlighted the importance of vocal style in public speaking, yet quantitative research has largely ignored this component of speech in favor of easier-to-measure text. We collect a new audiovisual corpus of U.S. presidential campaign speech, computationally measure vocal style, and descriptively study variation across candidates and topics. We advance a unified causal framework for studying effects of text, audio, and visual speech components, forming the basis for: (1) a naturalistic experiment, exploiting subtle variation in campaign “catchphrases” with identical or near-identical wording, identified with new automated phrase-clustering methods; and (2) an audio conjoint experiment with nearly 1,000 recordings manipulating specific vocal mechanisms, produced with professional voice actors and audio editing software. We find strong evidence that candidates are evaluated not just on the positions they express, but how they express them. We also find suggestive evidence that the penalty for less desirable vocal styles is larger for women than for men. Throughout, we lay methodological foundations for a broad agenda on campaign speech..
How Historical Trauma Encourages Wartime Support: Civilian Action in Ukraine
Scholars show that civilian support is crucial to armed group success, but do not theorize where this support comes from. I argue that the legacy of trauma predicts civilian behavior — both individual and collective — in providing aid to warmakers in subsequent conflict. I test this argument by estimating the effect of the Holodomor, a 1930s starvation in Ukraine enforced by Soviet Russia, on civilian mobilization in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Using original data on civilian support organizations, I show that higher district-level suffering during the Holodomor corresponds with more assistance being offered to the Ukrainian military in war with Russia from 2014 to 2018. These districts created more organizations that provided wartime aid to the Ukrainian military, and civilians in these districts also contributed more individually, than is the case in districts with fewer Holodomor losses. My findings suggest that civilian participation in warmaking can be traced to historical foundations.
Working Papers
How Wartime Sexual Violence Spurs Civilian Support: Evidence from Ukraine