Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-gs9qr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-29T12:14:46.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Studying Identities with Experiments: Weighing the Risk of Posttreatment Bias Against Priming Effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

Samara Klar ,
Thomas Leeper  and
Joshua Robison
Samara Klar
Affiliation:
School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA, e-mail: Klar@email.arizona.edu, Twitter: @SamaraKlar
Thomas Leeper
Affiliation:
Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK, e-mail: thosjleeper@gmail.com, Twitter: @ThosJLeeper
Joshua Robison
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands, e-mail: j.a.robison@fsw.leidenuniv.nl, Twitter: @JRob617
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars from across the social sciences argue that identities – such as race, ethnicity, and gender – are highly influential over individuals’ attitudes, actions, and evaluations. Experiments are becoming particularly integral for allowing identity scholars to explain how these social attachments shape our political behavior. In this letter, we draw attention to how identity scholars should approach the common practice of assessing moderators, measuring control variables, and detecting effect heterogeneity using covariates. Special care must be taken when deciding where to place measures of demographic covariates in identity-related experiments, as these cases pose unique challenges from how scholars traditionally approach experimental design. We argue in this letter that identity scholars, particularly those whose subjects identify as women or minorities, are often right to measure covariates of interest posttreatment.

Keywords

Identitiesexperimentsprimingexperimental designposttreatment bias

Information

Type
Short Report
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 56 - 60
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Citation of data: The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: doi:10.1017/XPS.2019.26.

References

Abrams, Dominic, Wetherell, Margaret, Cochrane, Sandra, Hogg, Michael A., and Turner, John C.. 1990. Know What to Think by Knowing Who You Are: Self-Categorization and the Nature of Norm Formation, Conformity and Group Polarization. British Journal of Social Psychology 29(2): 97–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Avidit, Blackwell, Matthew, and Sen, Maya. 2016. Explaining causal findings without bias: Detecting and assessing direct effects. American Political Science Review 110(3): 512–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antman, Francisca and Duncan, Brian. 2015. Incentives to identify: Racial identity in the age of affirmative action. Review of Economics and Statistics 97(3): 710–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benjamin, Daniel J., Choi, James C. and Strickland, A. Joshua. 2010. Social identity and preferences. American Economic Review 100(2): 1913–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blackwell, Matthew. 2013. A framework for dynamic causal inference in political science. American Journal of Political Science 57(2): 504–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branscombe, Nyla R, Ellemers, Naomi, Spears, Russell, and Doosje, Bertjan. 1999. The Context and Content of Social Identity Threat. In Social Identity, eds. Ellemers, N., Spears, R. and Doosje, B. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 35–58.Google Scholar
Craig, Maureen A., and Richeson, Jennifer A.. 2014. On the precipice of a “majority-minority” America: Perceived status threat from the racial demographic shift affects white Americans’ political ideology. Psychological Science 25(6): 1189–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Druckman, James N., and Chong, Dennis. 2010. Dynamic public opinion: Communication effects over time. American Political Science Review 104(4): 663–80.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., Palmquist, Bradley and Schickler, Eric. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds. Yale, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, Brian F., and Michelson, Melissa R.. 2016. More than a game: Football fans and marriage equality. PS: Political Science & Politics 49(4): 782–7.Google Scholar
Jackson, Melinda. 2011. Priming the sleeping giant: The dynamics of latino political identity and vote choice. Political Psychology 32(4): 691–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klar, Samara. 2013. The influence of competing identity primes on political preferences. The Journal of Politics 75(4): 1108–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klar, Samara, and Krupnikov, Yanna. 2016. Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Noam. 2013. Party brands and partisanship: Theory with evidence from a survey experiment in Argentina. American Journal of Political Science 57(1): 49–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClendon, Gwyneth. 2014. Social esteem and participation in contentious politics: A field experiments at an LGBT pride rally. American Journal of Political Science 58(2): 279–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelberg, Tali. 2008. Racial priming revived. Perspectives on Politics 6(1): 109–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Jacob M., Nyhan, Brendan, and Torres, Michelle. 2018. How condition on posttreatment variables can ruin your experiment and what to do about it. American Journal of Political Science 62(3): 760–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Michael W., Carranza, Erica, and Fox, Craig R.. 2008. Mistaken Identity: Activating Conservative Political Identities Induces Conservative Financial Decisions. Psychological Science 19(11): 1154–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mummolo, Jonathan. 2016. News from the other side: How topic relevance limits the prevalence of partisan selective exposure. The Journal of Politics 78(3): 763–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, Diana, Pemantle, Robin, and Pham, Philip. 2019. The Perils of balance testing in experimental design: Messy analyses of clean data. The American Statistician 73(1): 32–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez, Efrén O., Andrew, M. Engelhardt, and Deichert, Maggie. 2019. E Pluribus Unum? How ethnic and national identity motivate reactions to a political ideal. The Journal of Politics. 81(4). doi: 10.1086/704596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Hagendoorn, Louk, and Prior, Markus. 2004. Predisposing factors and situational triggers: Exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities. American Political Science Review 98(1): 35–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transue, John E. 2007. Identity salience, identity acceptance, and racial policy attitudes: American national identity as a uniting force. American Journal of Political Science 51(1): 78–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, Marc D. 2015. A Natural experiment: Inadvertent priming of party identification in a split-sample survey. Survey Practice 8(6): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Monnica T., Turkheimer, Eric, Magee, Emily, and Guterbock, Thomas. 2008. The effects of race and racial priming on self-report of contamination anxiety. Personality and Individual Differences 44(3): 746–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed