Group Assignment
Public acknowledgement as a double-edged sword: Gender differences in how publicity motivates children and youths to achieve top performance
Michelle Wang, Sarah-Jane Leslie & Marjorie Rhodes
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, November 2025, Pages 3195-3216
Abstract:
Girls and women are disproportionately underrepresented at the top of performance distributions, including in both male- and female-stereotyped fields. Although early-developing gender disparities at the top have been well-documented, little is known about how they develop and the sociopsychological processes that give rise to their emergence. Here, we tested the possibility that social contexts that use publicity as a form of motivation for top performance (e.g., public praise, titles, awards) may contribute to such disparities. Three preregistered experimental studies with elementary-age children, adolescents, and adults (N = 1,518) revealed that by at least middle childhood, (a) boys and men are more willing to publicize their own top than average performance, while girls and women are equally willing to publicize top and average performance, and (b) public acknowledgment of top performance boosts men's willingness to achieve top performance, but not women's (and demotivates girls but not boys). Together, these data reveal that a common form of motivation used in the classroom and beyond is systematically more effective for boys and men than girls and women, thus illustrating how sociopsychological processes and modifiable social contexts underlie patterns of female underrepresentation at the top.
How Mythical Is the Model Minority Stereotype? Asian American Variations in Socioeconomic Achievement
Jing Zhang & John Reynolds
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers have long critiqued the "model minority" stereotype for overlooking substantial achievement variations across Asian American ethnic groups. This study extends these critiques by analyzing how detailed Asian-origin groups differ in their rankings across four socioeconomic dimensions: education, employment, personal income, and homeownership. Using data from the 2017–2021 American Community Survey, we rank 20 Asian-origin groups, revealing four distinct achievement configurations. Only seven Asian-origin groups have consistently high, moderate, or low achievements. The rest are status-inconsistent: "traditional stability achievers" have high employment and homeownership but modest education and income; "educationally driven achievers" excel in education and earnings but have lower homeownership rates; and finally, two outliers, Chinese and Mongolian Americans, have mixed achievements that elude clear categorization. These findings demonstrate the need to consider multiple socioeconomic indicators to fully capture the diversity within Asian American communities. Future research should investigate how factors such as geographic clustering, household finances, and disparate returns to resources shape these multifaceted achievement patterns.
Managing motherhood: How "queen bee" managers in the US service sector reduce motherhood advantages in work scheduling
Joshua Choper
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study advances sociological theories of motherhood-based workplace inequalities by examining how frontline managers shape mothers’ access to stable work schedules in the US service sector. Prior research has shown that mothers in the US service sector experience intense conflict between the time demands of motherhood and employers’ expectations that employees will be available to work unstable work schedules, yet little work has investigated sources of variation in mothers’ exposure to schedule instability. Building on and synthesizing theories of homophily, expectation states theory, and "queen bee" theories of women in management, I propose a model in which managers’ own gender and parenthood status structure their responses to their employees’ scheduling needs. Female managers who are mothers are theorized to exhibit homophily and produce motherhood scheduling advantages, while female managers without children are expected to penalize mothers. Analyses of survey and experimental data collected from a large national sample of US retail and food service workers support this theoretical synthesis, showing that motherhood advantages in scheduling appear under male managers and female managers who are mothers, but erode under female managers without children. By positioning motherhood — not gender alone — as the status dimension that most directly collides with ideal worker norms, this work highlights an important determinant of when women in management act as agents of change and when they reinforce inequality. More broadly, this study frames managerial discretion as a key mechanism linking status expectations, manager-employee relations, and organizational outcomes, advancing theory on the micro-foundations of workplace inequality.
Distinguishing Causes of Neighborhood Racial Change: A Nearest-Neighbor Design
Patrick Bayer et al.
American Economic Review, November 2025, Pages 3999-4039
Abstract:
We study neighborhood choice using a novel research design that contrasts the move rate of homeowners who receive a new different-race neighbor immediately next-door versus slightly farther away on the same block. This approach isolates a component of preferences directly attributable to neighbors' identities. Both Black and White homeowners are more likely to move after receiving a new different-race neighbor. Findings are robust to additional controls (e.g., income) and alternative research designs. We find evidence of heterogeneity in responses, especially associated with housing density, which has implications for understanding contemporary neighborhood racial change and prospects for maintaining stable, integrated neighborhoods.
The Effects of Teacher-Student Demographic Matching on Social-Emotional Learning
Christopher Cleveland & Ethan Scherer
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing body of research shows that students benefit when they demographically match their teachers. However, little is known about how matching affects social-emotional development. We use student-fixed effects to exploit changes over time in the proportion of teachers within a school grade who demographically match a student to estimate the effect on social-emotional measures, test scores, and behavioral outcomes. We find improvements in students’ grit and interpersonal self-management when matched to teachers of their race and gender. Black female students drive these effects. We also find that matching reduces absences and suspensions, especially for Black students. Our findings add to the emerging teacher diversity literature by showing its benefits for Black and female students during a critical stage of development.
Picturing Diversity: Patterns of Race/Ethnicity and Gender Representation on Corporate Websites
Sekou Bermiss & John Hand
University of North Carolina Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
We measure, describe, evaluate and offer initial explanations for the levels of and intertemporal changes in the racial/ethnic and male/female diversities of the adults shown on the DEI page of S&P 500® firms' websites before George Floyd's murder (Q4:2019), after George Floyd's murder (Q4:2024), and after President Trump's second presidential term began (Q2:2025). Defining racial/ethnic and male/female diversity as being optimally representative when their densities match the US adult population, we report five main findings. [1] Racial/ethnic densities pre-George Floyd reflected an imbalance in representation: Asians and Blacks were over-represented, while Hispanics and Whites were under-represented. [2] Black female over-representation and White male under-representation increased post-George Floyd. [3] Post-President Trump II, Asians and Blacks remain over-represented, Hispanics and Whites under-represented. [4] Similar but smaller racial/ethnic misrepresentations are present on firms' Home and About Us pages. [5] Whereas pre-George Floyd, male/female densities on DEI webpages matched the US adult population, after George Floyd's murder females have been over-represented. We offer the preliminary explanations that our race/ethnicity findings reflect firms' responses to internal and external pressures arising from U.S. social movements of the 2010s, which were galvanized by a series of police-involved shootings of Black victims, whereas Asian/Hispanic over-/under-representations stem from large differences in educational qualifications that lead firms for profit-maximizing reasons aimed at recruiting the best prepared talent to visually connect more with Asian than with Hispanic visitors to their DEI, Home and About Us pages.
Discrimination in Access to Corporate Insiders: Evidence from a Pre-Registered Field Experiment
Austin Moss et al.
Indiana University Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
We examine whether investor characteristics influence access to corporate insiders. Using a pre-registered 2×2×2 field experiment, we send meeting requests from fictious investors to 2,731 U.S. public companies, systematically manipulating investor race (Black and White), gender (female and male), and type (retail and professional). We find evidence of racial discrimination: White investors receive meeting approvals 34% more often than Black investors. This discrimination persists across investor types, which we manipulate using custom email domains and websites. In contrast, we do not find evidence of gender-based differences in initial meeting access. Further, investor type alone does not affect meeting access: retail and professional investors receive meeting invitations at comparable rates, challenging the conventional belief that retail investors are systematically disadvantaged relative to professional investors. These findings reveal that information access varies systematically by investor characteristics, advancing our understanding of discrimination in financial markets and providing insight into the landscape of corporate information access.