How do perceptions of luck shape views about inequality and redistribution? Could interventions nudge hiring managers to evaluate job candidates blindly, and thus more objectively? Has remote instruction during the pandemic improved student interactions and equity in science labs?
Researchers posing those questions were among more than 20 awarded grants last fall by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences (CCSS). In total, two dozen projects led by scholars spanning 11 colleges and schools – on diverse topics ranging from COVID-19 and policing to clean energy and product design – won seed funding totaling over $240,000.
Funded each fall and spring by the CCSS and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the grants of up to $12,000 seek to support proposals evaluated as strong candidates for external funding, and to jump-start research by junior faculty. Half of the proposals selected this fall are led by assistant professors.
They include Marcel Preuss, assistant professor of economics in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management (Johnson), part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business (SC Johnson), who will look at how perceptions of luck – as an opportunity to demonstrate merit, or as a windfall – shape acceptance of wealth inequality. Research has found that people are more tolerant of inequality if they believe it results from personal effort rather than luck, though the two often are intertwined, Preuss notes in a summary of his proposal, “The Dynamics of Luck, Effort and Redistribution.”
“The goal is to understand in which environments people accurately grasp the importance of luck in shaping outcomes,” he wrote, “and what interventions lead to more precise beliefs.”
Sean Fath, assistant professor of organizational behavior in the ILR School, will examine strategies for reducing bias through “blind” evaluations, such as a professor removing students’ names from papers before grading them. “Testing Interventions to Encourage Self-Blinding” will experiment with ways to encourage subjects such as hiring managers or teachers to not view potentially biasing information about targets of evaluation, according to the project summary.
In “Equity in Group Work between In-Person and Remote Labs,” Natasha Holmes, the Ann S. Bowers Assistant Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and a researcher in the Cornell Physics Education Research Lab, with postdoctoral research associates Yasemin Kalender and Anna Phillips, will analyze video recordings of introductory physics labs conducted via Zoom with videos taken of in-person labs in the fall of 2019, looking for measures of equity in group work. The research “will contribute to national work seeking to understand representation issues in physics,” the researchers wrote in an abstract, “and probe potential challenges and opportunities with remote instruction.”
Impacts from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines were a prominent theme across the projects winning CCSS support, including:
Additional research projects receiving CCSS grants this fall include:
Center’s grants seed diverse research in the social sciences
By:
James Dean,
Cornell Chronicle
January 4, 2021