RESEARCH

Human Trafficking Vulnerability

I am the Co-Scientific Director of the Human Trafficking Research Initiative at Innovations for Poverty Action, and the Co-Lead of the Human Trafficking Vulnerability (HTV) Project, a research project based at the University of California, Berkeley and York University (Canada). The lab employs experimental methods to study the impact of interventions designed to reduce vulnerability to human trafficking. Thus far, data has been collected in Nepal and Hong Kong.

With funding from Humanity United, USAID, US Department of Labor, Stanford University, Terres des Hommes, and Vanderbilt University, the HTV Project has tested the efficacy of interventions on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of populations that are either vulnerable to trafficking and labor exploitation or responsible for mitigating it. This includes the general public, law enforcement agents, employers, and migrant domestic workers.

The Impact of Youth Service on Beliefs, Mindsets, and Life Pathways

The health and strength of a democratic polity rests upon the public possessing a sufficient level of trust in government, political efficacy, civic engagement, and tolerance. Without citizens who display civic virtues, a democracy cannot fulfill its promise of liberal justice. A democracy requires citizens that are tolerant and actively participate in public deliberation rather than citizens that are apathetic, alienated from the political process, and withdrawal into the private sphere of family, career and personal projects. Given that youth represent the future health of civic life, they have been the objects of many efforts to inculcate the values and practices upon which democratic citizenship depends. However, it is not clear if youth service programs like the U.S. Peace Corps, Global Citizen Year, and Teach For America are mechanisms by which engaged, efficacious, and knowledgeable citizens can be groomed.

This research agenda, in partnership with the Teach For All network and Global Citizen Year, asks if participating in youth service programs focused on low-income communities can cultivate the virtues and practices of democratic citizens. For example, are youth service participants more likely to take part in civic actions? Do these young professionals demonstrate greater political efficacy after having served? Does participation foster greater trust or skepticism in their political system? Does close intergroup with marginalized communities contact increase or decrease tolerance? Does participation lead to pro-social career trajectories?

Working Papers

Leadership Sexism: A New Sexism Measure to Predict Candidate Choice (with Libby Jenke, Jon Krosnick, and Emily West) [Available upon request]

Across the social sciences, several different measures have been developed to assess sexism, including the modern sexism, ambivalent sexism, and social role sexism scales, as well as implicit attitude measures. We introduce another measure—\textit{leadership sexism}—that is especially predictive of an important outcome in the study of political behavior: candidate choices. This measure focuses on whether an individual holds gender stereotypes with respect to personality traits viewed as important to voters when considering political leaders. Leveraging two national surveys, we demonstrate that leadership sexism is a useful addition to scholars’ toolbox for understanding the role of gender attitudes in shaping voting behavior. Leadership sexism taps a type of sexism distinct from commonly used sexism measures. Moreover, leadership sexism predicts vote choice in U.S. presidential elections, even if the election does not feature a female candidate, suggesting that prejudicial attitudes against women widely influence contemporary American politics.

Micro-Inequities Against Asian Americans (with Charles D. Crabtree, John B. Holbein, and J. Quin Monson) [Available upon request]

To what extent do Asian Americans face micro-inequities, and can signaling assimilation reduce this bias? We examine these questions through a large-scale field experiment involving 250,000 randomly sampled registered voters in the United States. Participants received emails from fictitious senders whose racial identity (Asian or white) was signaled through names. Among senders with putatively Asian names, we randomized whether the first name was Western or anglicized—a practice often known as “name whitening.” We find that micro-inequities against Asians are (1) large, precisely estimated, and robust; (2) systemic across the U.S.; (3) common across most demographic subgroups; and (4) uncorrelated with previously documented forms of anti-Asian bias. Using original survey data on how names are perceived, we test seven potential mechanisms: perceptions of Asian identity, perceived foreignness, perceived socioeconomic status, perceived character flaws, perceived fictitiousness of Asian-origin names (i.e., viewing Asian-origin names as corresponding to “bots” rather than real people), filtering by spam detection algorithms, and a lack of exposure to Asians. Our results are consistent with discrimination against Asians being driven, in part, by perceptions of foreignness or non-citizenship, and the mistaken belief that Asian names belong to fictitious “bots.” While anglicizing Asian names reduces the discrimination we detected by about half, it does not eliminate it. These results provide some of the clearest evidence to date on the nature and causes of micro-inequities faced by Asian Americans in the United States.

“Human Trafficking Vulnerability: An Experimental Intervention Using Mass Media to Change Norms and Behaviors in Nepal” (with Margaret Boittin) [Available upon request]

What are the effects of mass media campaigns on norms and behaviors related to human trafficking? Namely, can mass media campaigns be employed to induce shifts in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices (KABP) that will reduce the incidence of modern forms of slavery and assist victims of human trafficking? We find that narrative-based campaigns with positive appeals that aim to empower the audience are more effective than purely fact-based campaigns or campaigns aimed to scare the audience. Awareness campaigns can increase the likelihood that a person will recognize and report cases of human trafficking. They can also increase concern for human trafficking while decreasing misperceptions about human trafficking, and increase an individual’s willingness to discuss human trafficking with family and friends, donate money to the cause, and volunteer their time to anti-trafficking efforts. However, while exposure to awareness campaigns about the risks of human trafficking can effectively increase people’s sense that it is an important national problem, it does not alter perceptions about its local importance. If human trafficking is viewed as someone else’s problem, people may be less vigilant about mitigating their own human trafficking risks. This find speaks to the importance of creating content that is deeply contextualized and relatable to an individual so they see themselves reflected in the messaging. Moreover, without any follow-up campaigns, these effects nearly completely diminished over time. Results are currently published in a USAID working paper series, and we are currently writing a version of the report for an academic audience.

Works in Progress

“Do Museums Highlighting the Experiences of Minorities Persuade Visitors? Reducing Biases Against Asian Americans” (with Charles Crabtree, John B. Holbein, and Surili Sheth)

“Can Natural Disasters Have a Rally ‘Round the Flag Effect? The Political Consequences of Nepal’s 2015 Earthquake” (with Margaret Boittin and Stephen Utych)

“The Unintended Consequences of Women’s Empowerment Narratives: An Experimental Study of Gender Attitudes in Nepal” (with Margaret Boittin, Katrina Kosec, and Soo Sun You)

“Law Enforcement and Human Trafficking Vulnerability: The Case of Nepal” (with Margaret Boittin)

“The Impact of Youth Service on Beliefs, Mindsets, and Life Pathways: Evidence from Teach For All” (with Katharine Conn)

“The Impact of a Service-Focused Teaching Corps on Participants’ Career Pathways and Aspirations: Evidence from the Teach For All Network” (with Katharine Conn and Evelyn Kim)

“Engendering Empathy Through Virtual Reality” (with Dan Archer)

“Understanding Decision Dilemmas” (with Jonathan Bendor and Benjamin Douglas)

“Differential Evaluations for Imperfections: Negative Campaigns and Underrepresentation in Politics” (with Anna Mikkelborg and Soo Sun You)

“The Etiology of Child Trafficking” (with Guy Grossman, Dennis Feehan, Elizabeth Herman, and Maya Lu)

“Sexism in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections: Prejudice Against Women (Leaders) on Voter Turnout and Candidate Choice” (with Libby Jenke, Jon Krosnick, and Emily West)