Infrequent Identity Signals, Multiple Correspondence, and Detection Risks in Audit Correspondence Studies

Audit correspondence studies are field experiments that test for discriminatory behavior in active markets. Researchers measure discrimination by comparing how responsive individuals (“audited units”) are to correspondences from different types of people. This article elaborates on the tradeoffs researchers face between sending audited units only one correspondence and sending them multiple correspondences, especially when including less common identity signals in the correspondences. We argue that when researchers use audit correspondence studies to measure discrimination against individuals that infrequently interact with audited units, they raise the risk that these audited units become aware they are being studied or otherwise act differently. We also argue that sending multiple pieces of correspondence can increase detection risk. We present the result of an audit correspondence study that demonstrates how detection can occur for these reasons, leading to significantly attenuated (biased toward zero) estimates of discrimination.

Ivan Franko’s Perception of Oleksandr Konyskyi: the Processes of Convergence, Divergence and Memorialisation

The article analyzes the reception of Oleksandr Konysky in the literary-critical and journalistic heritage of Ivan Franko. An important point in the study of the relationship between national identity and places of memory is P. Nora’s observation that through common symbols individuals become the basis of a common identity, then the bearers of collective memory no longer need special knowledge to achieve a common identity. The author gives interpretation of such concepts as “iconic figure of the transition period”, “Galicia — Ukrainian Piedmont” and the meaning of specific symbolic place — the Shevchenko Scientific Society, which Franco once drew attention to, glorifying the figure of Konysky, and which still have attractive properties, determining the processes of national identification, the cultural leader of which was Konysky. The subject of the research is tracing the inclusion of the figure of O. Konysky in the Ukrainian cultural and historical canon in the aspect of research on cultural memory and places of memory. The object of analysis is Franko’s literary criticism and journalistic work. The aim of study is to trace the formation of Ukrainophiles generation locus memoria on the example of inscribing the figure of O. Konysky in the Ukrainian cultural and historical canon. This aim involves solving the following tasks: to analyze in detail the figure of Konysky in the literary-critical discourse of Franko; identify the influence of mental and generational factors on their relationships; to find out the ways of memorializing the figure of Konysky in the reception of Franko. As a result of the analysis, using the approaches of biographical, historical-literary, empirical research methods, it was found that despite some contradictions of personal and ideological nature, Franco praised Konysky’s role in building the Ukrainian scientific and cultural space. Franko presented Konysky as an important figure of the transitional period and accentuated the key moments of his activities that had a positive impact on the development of the national idea and on the desire of Ukrainians for the autonomy.

About the Name Yoruba

A curious debate is going on about the group name of the Yoruba nation, the name ‘Yoruba’. All sorts of strange and fanciful things are being said about this name. Also, many people are calling on me to intervene in the debate. I therefore hereby intervene. But I cannot participate in the more flippant levels of debate over this or any matter; I can only make known the results of my serious research. I might add that what I reveal here is a small peep into a very important body of research on the Yoruba nation, a body of research that will, hopefully, soon appear as a book on the profile of the Yoruba nation. In modern times, the Yorùba people in Nigeria have exhibited a remarkable ́ degree and quality of unity as a people. Such strong unity is engendered primarily by their common love of, and pride in, their culture, their strong emphasis on development and modernization, and in their civilizational achievements in history and in modern times. It is also reinforced by their common identity with such ideals as love of freedom, respect for the individual, accountability of leadership and governance, the servanthood of rulers, religious tolerance and accommodation, hospitality towards all other peoples, tenacity in fighting for ideals, and a unique fixation, as a people, on progress in all facets of modern development and transformation.

Identity, place and values. On construction and internalization of festival normalities on the examples of music festivals in Poland

The aim of this paper is to compare of how two different festivals stimulate specific norms and perceptions, and therefore to present the way in which the visions of the festival cities are reproduced by the festival audience based on the axio-normative orders contained in the missions of the events. Based on the shared symbols and life strategies promoted by festivals, participants (re)build their identity which they manifest in chosen cultural practices. The article attempt to answer the following question: what is shared by festival-goers? Are the main motivations for participating in the vent due to shared musical tastes or also specific values and lifestyles, and consequently a common identity? It has been shown that the values promoted during festivals are declared by their organizers – they are present in the visual identification, seminars, workshops, etc. Festivals create their narratives based on symbols such as logos, attitude smartphones, or festival slogans which contain condensed axio-normative systems that create the boundaries of the community. It influencesthe behavior of festival goers: the city’s vision, ways of spending free time, and their identity. The places where the fieldwork was conducted were: “Henryk Rasiewicz National Festival of Unbreakable and Independent Songs in Kraków”, “Ostróda Reggae Festiva” in Ostróda, and the “Song of Our RootsFestival” in Jarosław.

Religious identity cues increase vaccination intentions and trust in medical experts among American Christians

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the United States is religiosity, with more-religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less likely to get vaccinated. Here, we test whether explicit cues of common religious identity can help medical experts build trust and increase vaccination intentions. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted with a sample of unvaccinated American Christians (n = 1,765), we presented participants with a vaccine endorsement from a prominent medical expert (NIH Director Francis Collins) and a short essay about doctors’ and scientists’ endorsement of the vaccines. In the common religious identity condition, these materials also highlighted the religious identity of Collins and many medical experts. Unvaccinated Christians in the common identity condition expressed higher trust in medical experts, greater intentions to vaccinate, and greater intentions to promote vaccination to friends and family than those who did not see the common identity cue. These effects were moderated by religiosity, with the strongest effects observed among the most religious participants, and statistically mediated by heightened perceptions of shared values with the medical expert endorsing the vaccine. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of common identity cues for promoting vaccination in a vaccine-hesitant subpopulation. More generally, the results illustrate how trust in science can be built through the invocation of common group identities, even identities often assumed to be in tension with science.

The Islamic Call to Prayer and Its Origin: A Story about Cultural Memory’s Permanence and Adaptability

For more than two centuries, Muslims have been retelling different stories about the origin of their call to prayer. While the converging details of these narratives offer a glimpse of Muslim cultural memory and its preservation, the diverging elements reflect different mechanisms that facilitate the adaption of this cultural memory to new contexts and concerns. Based on the work of Jan Assmann, the present study explores how Muslims conserved and adapted their cultural memory to keep their common identity and expand their diversity following distinctive religious, political, or personal forms of belongings. The narratives concerned with the origin of the Islamic call to prayer and preserved in various written text collections offer a fertile ground to analyze how this part of Muslim cultural memory became the vehicle of a permanent but adaptable Muslim identity.

FairPlay: Detecting and Deterring Online Customer Misbehavior

This study examines how firms can detect and manage customer misbehavior in online brand communities. We first develop a data science approach to detect customer misbehavior on social media and devise intervention strategies to deter it. Our design science approach achieves superior performance, improving detection by 7%–9% compared with traditional methods. We then implement two types of intervention policies based on injunctive (i.e., a punishment policy) and descriptive norms (i.e., a common identity policy) to restrain customer misbehavior. The results of field experiments indicate that punishment considerably reduces customer misbehavior in the short term, but this effect decays over time, whereas common identity has a smaller but more persistent effect on misbehavior reduction. In addition, punishing dysfunctional customers decreases their purchase frequency, whereas imposing a common identity increases it. Our results also show that combining the two policies effectively alleviates the detrimental effect of punishment, especially in the long run.

What Keeps a Vibrant Population Together?

Managing diversity is a challenging problem for organizations and governments. Diversity in a population may be of two kinds—acquired and innate. The former refers to diversity acquired by pre-existing social or organizational environments, attracting employees or immigrants because of their wealth and opportunities. Innate diversity, on the other hand, refers to a collection of pre-existing communities having to interact with one another and to build an overarching social or organizational identity. While acquired diversity has a prior element of common identity, innate diversity needs to build a common identity from a number of disparate regional or local identities. Diversity in any large population may have different extents of acquired and innate elements. In this paper, innate and acquired diversity are modeled in terms of two factors, namely: insularity and homophily, respectively. Insularity is the tendency of agents to act cooperatively only with others from the same community, which is often the primary challenge of innate diversity; while homophily is the tendency of agents to prefer members from their own community to start new social or business connections, which is often the primary challenge in acquired diversity. The emergence of network structure is studied when insularity and homophily are varied. In order to promote cooperation in a diverse population, the role played by a subset of agents called “global” agents who are not affected by homophily and insularity considerations is also studied. Simulation results show several interesting emergent properties. While the global agents are shown to acquire high betweenness, they are by no means the wealthiest or the most powerful in the network. However, the presence of global agents is important for the regional agents whose own wealth prospects increase because of their interaction with global agents.