Papers under review and working papers listed by date of release in descending order:
Khan, Nuzaina, Rand, David, and Olga Shurchkov. “He Said, She Said: Who Gets Believed When Spreading (Mis)information” IZA Discussion Paper DP No. 17282. (Submitted for publication)
Pre-analysis plan available here.
Abbreviated Instructions, Debriefing and Full List of Posts
Complete Bank of Stock Photos Used for Profile Images
ABSTRACT
We design an online experiment that mimics a Twitter/X “feed” to test whether (perceived) poster gender influences users’ propensity to doubt the veracity of a given post. On average, posts by women are less likely to be flagged as concerning than identical posts by men. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that men are more likely to flag female-authored posts as the post’s topic domain becomes more male-stereotyped. Female users do not exhibit the same bias. Actual post veracity, user ideology, and user familiarity with Twitter do not explain the findings. Flagging behavior on Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program is consistent with these findings.
KEY WORDS
Gender differences, misinformation, economic experiments
Flory, Jeff, Leibbrandt, Andreas, Shurchkov, Olga, Stoddard, Olga, and Alva Taylor. “Consumer Preferences for Diversity: A Field Experiment in Product Design,” Working Paper (Submitted for publication)
ABSTRACT
This paper describes a randomized controlled field experiment designed to measure how individuals respond to racial and gender diversity in representations of certain archetypical occupations. We ask participants in two pools – a tech conferences and online – to evaluate their user experience with an image search engine tool and randomize them to see either diverse or non-diverse images. Subjects in the less diverse treatment view images that are predominantly white men for the high-status occupations (boss and professor) and predominantly women for the low-status occupations (nurse and clerk). In the more diverse treatment, subjects view image sets that contain a more equitable distribution of gender and race. We observe that diverse images result in significantly higher ratings across all participants and find no evidence of in-group bias in this context. However, women are disproportionately more dissatisfied with the lack of diversity in high-status occupations (boss and professor) than men are. For the low-status words (clerk and nurse), we find weaker treatment effects and no heterogeneity in the satisfaction ratings by gender or race. Free response qualitative data provide a potential explanation for the findings: while the extreme underrepresentation of women and minorities in the high-status, low-pay professions is salient, the equivalent underrepresentation of white men in the low-status, low-pay professions is less salient. Correcting the asymmetry in the way we promote diversity in high-status and low-status domains has important policy implications.
KEYWORDS
Diversity; Gender differences; Economic experiments
CITATION
Flory, Jeffrey, Leibbrandt, Andreas, Shurchkov, Olga, Stoddard, Olga, and Alva Taylor. 2023. Consumer Preferences for Diversity: A Field Experiment in Product Design. Working Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4281634.
Work in progress:
Ho, Benjamin, Deryugina, Tatyana, and Olga Shurchkov. “The Optimal Size of a Lie: Persuasion and Perceptions in Sender-Receiver Cheating Games”
Pre-registered here.
ABSTRACT
We study how individuals perceive and strategically manage truthfulness in quantitative reports, shedding light on the behavioral underpinnings of disinformation. While prior research has focused primarily on factors that drive senders to lie, we examine how accurately receivers detect such deception and how both sides adjust their behavior in response to incentives to persuade. Using a large preregistered online experiment that includes a Random-Draw and a Matrix Task, we focus on how the extremeness of a report -- how high or low it falls in the range of possible outcomes -- affects its perceived credibility. We find systematic miscalibration on both sides: Senders underutilize big lies that would have maximized payoffs. Receivers are overly skeptical of mid-to-high reports that are likely to be big lies. Effectively senders anticipate that receivers will be skeptical, but senders overreact in how much they avoid big lies, which makes that receiver skepticism unwarranted. Receivers in turn fail to account for how senders are overly cautious about big lies. Our results highlight the behavioral limits of strategic reasoning in belief formation and contribute to understanding how outlandish statements propagate in environments where credibility matters, such as political communication, financial disclosure, and online media.
Alston, Mackenzie, Deryugina, Tatyana, and Olga Shurchkov. “The Role of Social Media in Academic Careers”
Visit our study website here.
Gee, Laura, Liu, Jing, and Olga Shurchkov. “Impact of Oaths and Observability on Civility”
Pre-registered here.
ABSTRACT
This study is designed to experimentally test the effect of two behavioral nudges – pledging to act civilly and public observability – on civility in online communications. In our study, online participants will provide responses to real statements sourced from online platforms on various topics, choosing from a list containing civil and uncivil responses that either agree or disagree with a given statement. Furthermore, we will randomize subjects into treatments where their responses would potentially be publicly viewed by others, while other subjects will be providing purely hypothetical responses. We will also collect subject beliefs, ideological leanings, and demographics to conduct heterogeneity analyses.