Uniquely There
Judging a book by its cover: Cultural differences in inference of the inner state based on the outward appearance
Li-Jun Ji et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The world can be represented by two layers of information: How it appears on the outside (outward appearance) and what it is on the inside (inner state). To what extent an outward appearance is assumed to reflect the inner state is fundamental to social inference and judgments. Conceptualizing inference in terms of the relationship between the outward appearance and the inner state generates an integrative interpretation for a wide range of phenomena. We showed that Chinese were more likely than Euro-Canadians to make inference of inner state that deviated from outward appearance, whereas Euro-Canadians were more likely than Chinese to infer a convergence between outward appearance and inner state (Studies 1-5). We observed these cross-cultural patterns in various contexts involving people or physical structures. Individual differences in correspondence bias or response bias did not explain these patterns. The lay belief that outward appearance can be misleading mediated the cultural effects (Study 4). To probe the underlying process, two additional experiments showed that highlighting the misleading nature of appearance, but not highlighting the power of the situation, reduced Americans' beliefs (Study 6) and inference (Study 7) that the outward appearance reflects the inner state. By focusing on the assumed relationship between the outward appearance and inner state, these findings provide a unique angle for understanding cross-cultural phenomena and have practical implications in daily life.
A Macroscope of English Print Culture, 1530-1700, Applied to the Coevolution of Ideas on Religion, Science, and Institutions
Peter Grajzl & Peter Murrell
University of Maryland Working Paper, January 2023
Abstract:
We combine unsupervised machine-learning and econometric methods to examine cultural change in 16th- and 17th-century England. A machine-learning digest synthesizes the content of 57,863 texts comprising 83 million words into 110 topics. The topics include the expected, such as Natural Philosophy, and the unexpected, such as Baconian Theology. Using the data generated via machine-learning we then study facets of England's cultural history. Timelines suggest that religious and political discourse gradually became more scholarly over time and economic topics more prominent. The epistemology associated with Bacon was present in theological debates already in the 16th century. Estimating a VAR, we explore the coevolution of ideas on religion, science, and institutions. Innovations in religious ideas induced strong responses in the other two domains. Revolutions did not spur debates on institutions nor did the founding of the Royal Society markedly elevate attention to science.
The effects of TV content on entrepreneurship: Evidence from German unification
Viktor Slavtchev & Michael Wyrwich
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper empirically analyzes whether television (TV) can influence individuals' decisions to start businesses. To identify TV's effects, we rely on a unique quasi-natural experiment related to the division of Germany after WWII until 1990 into West Germany with a free market economy and the socialist East Germany where starting one's own business was not permitted. Despite this division, Western TV was exogenously available since the 1960s in some, but not all East German regions and conveyed images and attitudes conducive to entrepreneurship. We use both regional-level and geo-referenced individual-level data and show that since starting a business in East Germany became possible thanks to the reunification in 1990, entrepreneurship incidence is higher in East German regions that had Western TV signal. This indicates a first-order effect on directly exposed individuals. We show that this is due to the effects of Western TV on attitudes and value orientations associated with entrepreneurship, particularly independence. We find no indication that the differences in the entrepreneurship incidence of East German regions with and without Western TV disappear. Instead, we find that successive cohorts and descendants of directly exposed individuals who were not directly exposed themselves more frequently wish to become entrepreneurs. The latter findings are consistent with second-order effects due to intergenerational transmission of an entrepreneurial mindset and suggest that a self-sustaining entrepreneurial culture can be formed. This can cause long-lasting differences between treated and non-treated population groups or regions.
Languages and future-oriented economic behavior -- Experimental evidence for causal effects
Ian Ayres, Tamar Kricheli Katz & Tali Regev
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 February 2023
Abstract:
Studies have shown that the use of languages which grammatically associate the future and the present tends to correlate with more future-oriented behavior. We take an experimental approach to go beyond correlation. We asked bilingual research participants, people fluent in two languages (12 language pairs) which differ in the way they encode time, to make a set of future-oriented economic decisions. We find that participants addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly tended to value future events less than participants addressed in a language in which the present and the future are similarly marked. In an additional experiment, bilingual research participants (seven language pairs) were asked to choose whether they wish to complete a more enjoyable task first or later (delayed gratification). When addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly, participants tended to prefer immediate gratification more than when addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked less distinctly. We shed light on the mechanism in a within-person experiment in which bilingual research participants (nine language pairs) were asked to spatially mark the distance between the present and the future. When participants were addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked more distinctly, they tended to express more precise temporal beliefs compared with when addressed in a language in which the present and the future are marked less distinctly.
Darwin in India: Anticolonial Evolutionism at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
Inder Marwah
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines how Indian anticolonialists drew on Darwinism and evolutionary theory to resist British imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival material from The Bengalee (and beyond), I show how Indian nationalists marshaled evolutionist schemas to contest stage-based accounts of social advancement rationalizing despotic rule in India. I argue that Darwinian evolutionism enabled anticolonialists to respond to a particular decolonial dilemma-that of developmentalism, the unilinear notion of historical time justifying India's political subjection. While Darwinism's social application is commonly understood to sustain imperialism, I demonstrate that it served, in the colonial context, to deconstruct historicist tropes portraying India as politically immature. Drawing on evolutionism, nationalists contested the presumptions of imperialist discourse and reconceptualized progress in novel, anticolonial terms. Darwin's travel to India thus exposes a distinctive decolonial quandary, the syncretic Indian anticolonial response to it, and the intractability of the contradictions facing decolonizing movements globally.
Legal Environment and Corporate Tax Avoidance: A Geographic Discontinuity Design based on the Great Wall in China
Ming Gao et al.
Finance Research Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the long-term impact of the Great Wall established in the Ming-dynasty on corporate tax avoidance. The centralized administrative system in the borderlands on the south side of the Great Wall shaped a formal unified legal environment, while "feudal lordship" system had an obvious influence on the north side, which enables us to examine the legacy impact on firms with a regression discontinuity design. We find significant lower tax avoidance by firms in the region south of the Great Wall relative to firms on the north of it, and this difference is pronounced for non-SOEs.
Islamist terrorism and the status of women
Daniel Meierrieks & Laura Renner
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the effect of Islamist terrorist activity on women's legal position in society, using data for 171 countries between 1970 and 2016. To identify causal effects, we exploit the prevalence of Islamist terrorism in neighboring countries as an exogenous source of variation, arguing that regional terrorism affects local terrorism through contagion effects. We show that increased activity by Islamist terrorist groups is linked to lower legal status of women. By contrast, we find that neither Islam per se nor other types of terrorism have comparable effects. This reinforces the notion that Islamist terrorism is singularly interested and effective in weakening women's rights. Our results are consistent with a rational-economic model of terrorism, where Islamist terrorists purposefully use violence to maximize political utility, while governments make concessions that constrain the role of women because the costs of compliance are lower than the harm from continued Islamist terrorism.