Are U.S. Professionals and Managers More Left Than Blue-Collar Workers? An Analysis of the General Social Survey, 1974 to 2018

Social science interest in professionals and managers as a left- and liberal-trending stratum has increased in recent years. Using General Social Survey data over a 44-year period, the authors examine 15 attitudes spanning social, economic, and political identity liberalism. On nearly all attitudes, professionals and managers have trended in a liberal direction, have liberalized more quickly than blue-collar workers, and are either as or more liberal than blue-collar workers. The authors find that the higher levels of education among professionals and managers, their tendency to adopt nonauthoritarian outlooks, and their lower propensity to identify with fundamentalist religion mediate their more liberal trends vis-à-vis blue-collar workers. Conversely, their higher relative incomes suppress the extent of their economic and criminal justice liberalism. The authors’ theorization links changes in the macro-economy to growing gaps in the composition of the two strata and the activities of politicians and parties to consolidate emerging political differences.

Visualizing Partisan Identification Switching in the General Social Survey Panel, 2016–2020

This visualization captures shifts in partisan identification in the 2016–2020 General Social Survey Panel. Although most partisans remained stable in their identifications, a significant proportion of respondents either shifted to the opposing party or became independents. These patterns have important implications for our understanding of recent party realignment, trends in partisanship, and the care needed when using party identification as an independent variable.

Social Autonomy among Married Men and Women

Numerous studies highlight the value of spouses spending quality time together. Although it is undoubtedly important to make sufficient time for each other, minimal research considers the degree to which married individuals socialize with others outside the presence of their spouses. These latter interactions provide an opportunity to practice social autonomy (i.e., time during which one’s actions are not directly influenced by their spouse). Drawing on data from the American Time Use Survey, the author finds that (1) the number of minutes married women engage in nonspousal interactions peaks in midlife and declines in later life, (2) married men spend more time engaging in nonspousal interactions at work than married women, and (3) the number of minutes married men engage in nonspousal interactions in nonwork settings steadily decreases as they age. These findings suggest that age and gender play central roles in the social lives of married couples.

Support for Paid Family Leave among Small Employers Increases during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The United States is one of the few countries that does not guarantee paid family leave (PFL) to workers. Proposals for PFL legislation are often met with opposition from employer organizations, which fear disruptions to business, especially among small employers. But there are limited data on employers’ views. The authors surveyed firms with 10 to 99 employees in New York and New Jersey on their attitudes toward PFL programs before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. There was high support for state PFL programs in 2019 that rose substantially over the course of the pandemic: by the fall of 2020, almost 70 percent of firms were supportive. Increases in support were larger among firms that had employees using PFL, suggesting that experience with PFL led to employers becoming more supportive. Thus, concerns about negative impacts on small employers should not impede efforts to expand PFL at the state or federal level.

Employment Discrimination Charge Rates: Variation and Sources

The authors document variation in charge rates by demographic basis, observe basis and spatial variation in charge rates, and examine potential sources of this variation. The authors find that discrimination charge rates are much higher for the disabled and African Americans than for women, people older than 40 years, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants, and men, and there is dramatic state-level variation in charge rates. Possible explanations for this variation include access to legal representation, post-complaint employer retaliation, job loss, rights consciousness, and variations in charge outcomes. Findings point toward regulatory outcomes mandating changes in employer behavior as the only robust antecedent to discrimination charge filing. Unfortunately remedies targeting employer behavior are rare, while employer retaliation and firing are common. Neither access to law nor the frequency of monetary damages are associated with charge filing. Rights consciousness is associated with more discrimination charge filings, but only on the bases of disability.

“The Looming, Crazy Stalker Coronavirus”: Fear Mongering, Fake News, and the Diffusion of Distrust

The authors explore media distrust among a sample of precarious and gig workers interviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although these left-leaning respondents initially increased their media consumption at the outset of the pandemic, they soon complained of media sensationalism and repurposed a readily available cultural tool: claims of “fake news.” As a result, these unsettled times have resulted in a “diffusion of distrust,” in which an elite conservative discourse of skepticism toward the media has also become a popular form of compensatory control among self-identified liberals. Perceiving “fake news” and media sensationalism as “not good” for their mental health, respondents also reported experiencing media burnout and withdrawing from media consumption. As the pandemic passes its one-year anniversary, this research has implications for long-term media coverage on COVID-19 and ongoing media trust and consumption.

Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

Remote or Removed: Predicting Successful Engagement with Online Learning during COVID-19

Using data from a spring 2020 survey of nearly 10,000 parents of elementary school parents in one large southeastern public school district, the authors investigate predictors of elementary school student engagement during the initial period of pandemic remote learning. The authors hypothesize that household material and technological resources, school programming and instructional strategies, and family social capital contribute to student engagement in remote learning. The analyses indicate that even after controlling for rich measures of family socioeconomic resources, students with access to high-speed Internet and Internet-enabled devices have higher levels of engagement. Exposure to more diverse socioemotional and academic learning opportunities further predicts higher levels of engagement. In addition, students whose families remained socially connected to other students’ families were more likely to engage online.

Christian Nationalism and Views of Immigrants in the United States: Is the Relationship Stronger for the Religiously Inactive?

Previous research has shown that Christian nationalism is linked to nativism and immigrant animus, while religious service attendance is associated with pro-immigrant views. The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between religious ideologies and practices when considering how religion affects politics. Using a national sample of U.S. adults, we analyze immigrant views by measuring levels of agreement or disagreement that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are “mostly dangerous criminals.” We find that Christian nationalism is inversely related to pro-immigrant views for both the religiously active and inactive. However, strongly pro-immigrant views are less likely and anti-immigrant views are more likely among strong Christian nationalists who are religiously inactive compared with strong Christian nationalists who are religiously active. These results illustrate how religious nationalism can weaken tolerance and heighten intolerance most noticeably when untethered from religious communities.

The Relevance of Inequality Research in Sociology for Inequality Reduction

Social inequality is a central topic of research in the social sciences. Decades of research have deepened our understanding of the characteristics and causes of social inequality. At the same time, social inequality has markedly increased during the past 40 years, and progress on reducing poverty and improving the life chances of Americans in the bottom half of the distribution has been frustratingly slow. How useful has sociological research been to the task of reducing inequality? The authors analyze the stance taken by sociological research on the subject of reducing inequality. They identify an imbalance in the literature between the discipline’s continual efforts to motivate the plausibility of large-scale change and its lesser efforts to identify feasible strategies of change either through social policy or by enhancing individual and local agency with the potential to cumulate into meaningful progress on inequality reduction.