How husbands and wives vote

This article uses economic theories of voting behavior and household decision making to analyze the role of own and spouse earnings in determining political voting behavior. The main predictions from these models is that earnings is one of the factors that has an impact on political preferences and in households who share resources, voting behavior will be influenced more by the most representative labor income in the family. I investigate empirically the importance of individual vs household income, and find that the importance of individual income on voting behavior is contingent on employment. On average women earn less than their husband and vote according to their husbands income. If the wife is the maximum earner of the household or works fulltime, she votes more according to her own earnings.     

Coalition incentives and party bias in Chile

This article revisits the debate over Chile's binomial electoral rules and its consequences and examines how the new electoral system conceived by a democratic congress altered political competition. It utilizes a seat-vote model of multiparty competition to analyze party bias under the binomial rule. This approach differs substantively from prior studies of the Chilean case that focused primarily on the disproportionality of aggregate results. In contrast to earlier analyses, the findings reveal that the allocation of the seats under the binominal resulted in significant party bias benefiting the main parties of the right. This bias, however, was eliminated after the electoral reform. The new rule continues to provide majoritarian benefits to parties receiving larger shares of votes, but this effect is less pronounced than before. It is now easier for small parties to gain seats, which has increased party fragmentation. However, we show that coalition incentives, which were heralded as one of the main advantages of the binomial rule, are also significant under the new rule in use since 2017.     

The Impact of Prejudice Screening Procedures on Racial Bias in the Courtroom

The current study examines the impact of the challenge for cause procedure and its effectiveness in curbing racial prejudice in trials involving Black defendants. Participants were provided with a trial summary of a defendant charged with either drug trafficking or embezzlement. The race of the defendant was either White or Black, with participants in the Black defendant condition receiving (prior to the trial presentation) either no challenge, a close-ended standard challenge, or a modified reflective pretrial questioning strategy. Overall, the results revealed an anti-Black bias in judgments. While the closed ended challenge did little to reduce this bias, the reflective format demonstrated a reduction in racial bias. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

Family in Dutch migration policy 1945–2005

This article looks at how and why the concept of ‘family’ was used in Dutch migration policy in the period between 1945 and 2005. Throughout this period differences were made between migrant women and migrant men. Whereas the migration of men was associated with labour migration, the migration of women was equated with family migration. Migrant women were constructed as wives and mothers (and not as workers). This construction of women was combined with a victimhood discourse in which women were presented as victims of repressive religion (usually Islam), domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution, and discriminatory government policy. The victimhood discourse was successfully used to acquire rights for migrant women (mostly the right to stay), but as a result all migrant women came to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. In this article, I show how this combined family and victimhood discourse was used by governments, by (migrant) organizations and, to a lesser extent, in court cases to create differences between migrant men and women. The ‘success’ of the victimhood discourse is not only explained by the fact that it fitted (Western) ideas on femininity. It was also used to give a humanitarian face – albeit beneficial to women only – to an essentially restrictive immigration policy.     

A century (plus) of parenthood: Changes in living with children, 1880–1990

This paper summarizes the broad foundations of the changing nature of parenthood by examining trends in coresidence with children under age 15. Our study uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) to provide a portrait of demographic parenthood in the US over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In describing changes in parenthood over the past 110 years, we distinguish between those living with own children and those living with other children. We focus in particular on changes in gender patterns of coresidential parenthood and changes in the likelihood that divorced men and women live with children. We also examine the impact of the baby boom on parenting. Our findings support a recasting of ongoing discussions of the parental roles of American men and women by shifting the historical demographic focus from biological transitions to the social aspects of parenting.     

紧急状态下的守法难题——以决策心理为视角

法治社会具有日常状态与紧急状态两幅面孔。当社会进入紧急状态，公民的行为策略会改变，遵守法律将变得困难。这是由人类的思维机制与认知倾向决定的。人类拥有快速但不准确的“系统一”与缓慢但可靠的“系统二”两套决策机制，在面对紧急状态时大量的情绪刺激会让“系统一”控制决策支配权，而信息过载也会限制“系统二”的监督与预警作用。因此，紧急状态下的个体决策者总是运用“系统一”进行行为选择。“系统一”采用启发式判断，有限时间内的决策往往存在各种认知偏差，导致人的行为与守法的要求背道而驰。正视这些违法行为背后的心理过程，通过事前建立完善应急措施与事中规范宣传报道，按照认知规律办事能够较好地减少违法行为。     

Women seafarers in Taiwan: survivors during the evolution of the special shipping relationship between China and Taiwan

The first Taiwan women seafarer appeared on a container ship as a training deck officer in 1998, but so far only a handful of Taiwan shipping companies are willing to provide female navigational students with on-board internship opportunities. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the career development of women seafarers in Taiwan. The author has adopted the qualitative research approach, conducted in-depth interviews with women seafarers and representatives of shipping companies, and sailed on an LPG carrier for 14 days to conduct on-site observations. This study discovers that, in the seesaw battle between occupational gender-equality awareness and the shipping market mechanism, the dominant power remains in the hands of employers who demonstrate gender bias towards women seafarers. A noteworthy finding in this study is that the political forces, which include the evolution of the special shipping relationship across the Taiwan Strait as well as the domestic regulations limiting the employment of foreign seafarers, have had a non-negligible positive impact on the seafaring career prospects of Taiwanese women.     

The Preference for Indirect Harm

We presented subjects pairs of hypothetical scenarios. The action in each scenario harmed some people in order to aid others. In one member of the pair, the harm was a direct result of the action. In the other member, it was an indirect byproduct. Subjects preferred the indirect harm to the direct harm. This result could not be fully explained in terms of differences in judgments about which option was more active, more intentional, more likely to cause harm, or more subject to the disapproval of others. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for a new bias in judgment, a tendency to favor indirectly harmful options over directly harmful alternatives, irrespective of the associated outcomes, intentions, or self-presentational concerns. We speculate that this bias could originate from the use of a typical but somewhat unreliable property of harmful acts, their directness, as a cue to moral evaluation. We discuss the implications of the bias for a range of social issues, including the distinction between passive and active euthanasia, legal deterrence, and the rhetoric of affirmative action.     

Knowledge is Power: A Theory-Based Approach to Reducing School Violence

The study assesses the impact of a theory-based school violence program though a survey of 1,500 middle and high school students. It is the first to apply the concept of optimistic bias within the school violence context. Despite high profile school shootings, the students maintained the belief that violence was less likely to happen to them (personally) or in their schools than elsewhere in the country. Findings indicate that optimistic bias can be reduced through educational campaigns, and suggest a means of reducing violence by first reducing optimistic bias.