Strategic Opposition Research. Benjamin Ogden & Alejandro Medina. Texas A&M University Working Paper, June 2020. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d51841f673aa70001587348/t/5eed1373f54506483b4d82db/1592595316471/MO_2_19_20.pdf
Abstract: We develop a model of strategic opposition research within a campaign. A candidate faces an opponent of unknown relative quality. After observing an unverifiable private signal (e.g., rumor of a scandal), the candidate chooses whether to undertake opposition research, attempting a costly search for verifiable bad news, and then whether to reveal what the research found to the voters. Increasing the ex-ante quality of an opponent deters opposition research, but also increases voter response to any given revelation in equilibrium because the voter knows the (unobserved) private signal was sufficient to launch research. This "Halo Effect" can explain both why voters seem to react more to relatively smaller scandals by high-quality officials compared to low-quality ones, and why even high-quality challengers may want to raise the cost of searching their backgrounds, despite their expected lack of scandal. This effect may be sufficiently strong that parties prefer lower expected quality candidates on average. These results also rationalize the mixed empirical literature showing that exogenously generated negative information about candidates (i.e., experiments) tend to show smaller effects on voter behavior than endogenously generated negative information over the course of campaigns (i.e., surveys).
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Behavioral Response to Increased Pedestrian and Staying Activity in Public Space: Men may be more likely to be attracted to places with more public users, while females may be less likely to stay
The Behavioral Response to Increased Pedestrian and Staying Activity in Public Space: A Field Experiment. Oscar Zapata and Jordi Honey-Rosés. Environment and Behavior 1 –22. Aug 2020. DOI: 10.1177/0013916520953147
Abstract: William Whyte originally hypothesized that the presence of people in a public space would attract more people. Contemporary planners now refer to “sticky streets” as places where pedestrians are compelled to linger and enjoy vibrant public life. We test the hypothesis that adding users to a public space will attract more people using an experimental design with confederates to add pedestrian movement and staying activity in a residential street for 45 randomly selected hours. We observed staying behavior by gender with and without our intervention. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women. We find that women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals, even in safe spaces and during daylight hours. Our findings suggest that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site.
Keywords: behavior, field experiment, gender, public life study, public space, urban design
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In sum, our results suggest that increasing the number of users in public space has a differentiated effect among males and females. On average, men may be more likely to be attracted to places with more public users, while females may be less likely to stay. However, the difference in number of people staying in the public space is statistically significant only among women. We do not find evidence that the addition of public users increased total staying behavior.
Conclusion
Since the work of Jane Jacobs (1961) and William H. Whyte (1980), urban-ists have thought carefully about how to entice people to stay in well-designed urban plazas, parks and streets. With the work of Jan Gehl and others, the study of public life has emerged as a distinct subfield, with its own methods and tools (Ciocoletto, 2014; Gehl & Svarre, 2013). A major premise of research on public life is that people attract other people. More than anything else, people enjoy watching other people (Toderian, 2014). Well-designed spaces are those that succeed at enticing others to linger, stay longer and in this way, help to build vibrant and inclusive communities. The presence or absence of people in a public space may be interpreted as an indicator of its quality, and these ideas have influenced the design of public spaces, such as plazas, parks, and streets.
We examined the behavioral effect of adding more people to a pedestrian-ized street in a residential community. We test the hypothesis that adding people to the public space might make it more attractive to others. We con-ducted our experiment in a high-quality and pedestrianized street that offers formal and informal seating. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women.We observe a strong differential effect by gender in which adding people to a space may invite more males while simultaneously push away females. Our results show that women and men perceive public space differently, and these different perceptions translate into different behavioral responses. We find additional evidence that women’s right to the city is restricted in comparison to men’s. Importantly, this remains true even in high-quality, pedestrianized and safe places. This suggests that gendered spaces are not limited to those areas that are clearly perceived to be unsafe, poorly lit, or otherwise perceived as dangerous for women. Rather even in safe spaces, during day-light hours, women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals.Our experimental design does not allow us to identify the underlying factors or mechanisms that might explain the gender difference in the use of the public space. However, the literature already identifies the elements that may explain how the experience of the public space is different for men and women. It is clear that perceptions of safety and the opportunities for social interaction in public areas are conditioned by gender.Our results appear to contradict Whyte’s assertion that people attract peo-ple. Yet we cannot refute this claim for all sites and conditions. Whether our findings would hold in public spaces that are more social in nature, such as plazas or commercial streets, remains an open question. At the very least, we find that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site. It is possible that the particular geometry or conditions of our study site may have contributed to the observed results.
Our results bolster Whyte’s claim that people have an intuitive sense of the carrying capacity of a public space. In his observational work, he noticed that each site had a maximum number of people that it would support, and people would intuitively move somewhere else once that level had been reached. It appears that our intervention reached or surpassed the intuitive carrying capacity of our site. It also seems that men and women perceive density differently, and consequently have different density thresholds regarding what density levels are tolerable. In short, our results are consistent with Whyte’s notion of carrying capacity but there are likely to be differences between genders on what the intuitive carrying capacity might be.
We are intrigued by Whyte’s notion that we have an intuitive sense of the right number of people is to occupy a space. As noted, this intuitive notion is contingent on gender, but probably other cultural notions and tastes as well. It is also possible that these cultural notions or our perceptions of safety in public space might be evolving, potentially as a result of changing norms or our use of technology in public space. For example, an underlying assumption driving the sticky streets hypothesis is that we enjoy watching other people. When Whyte studied public users in New York, this was certainly true, and people watching was a New York pastime. Surveys of visitors to Central Park in 1982 showed that people watching was the most popular passive activity in Central Park, followed by relaxation, thinking and reading (Barlow Rogers, 1987). Times have changed and perhaps emerging cultural norms are less tolerant of people watching behavior than in the past. Younger generations may feel less comfortable with watching others or being watched, resulting in different behavioral responses to others in public space. If indeed there are changing cultural norms, we would expect to observe these differences by age (Aoki & Downes, 2003). We did not include age in our head-counts of staying behavior, leaving this unresolved in our study. Does the behavioral response of increasing pedestrian and staying behavior have het-erogenous effects by age as well as by gender? Are younger generations less interested in people watching and more attracted to the use of electronic devices? Our results merely raise more questions about under which conditions would we observe different effects. How can planners estimate or predict the carrying capacity of a particular site? What simple design interventions may increase or decrease perceived carrying capacity? What can be done to reduce the gender gap in terms of perception of safety, sense of belonging and staying behavior?
More work is needed to identify the factors that explain people’s decisions around the use of public space. It would be particularly useful to have meth-ods for estimating the carrying capacity of particular sites, as Whyte suggests, or the characteristics of spaces that may make adding people tolerable or desirable. It may also be worth considering how experimental designs may assist in answering these questions. Field experiments on questions about public space remain rare, yet have untapped potential. Field experiments may complement other research methods that aim to understand individual choices, movements and staying behavior in public. Learning when and why certain places are attractive and welcoming to both women and men will provide valuable insights for the theory and practice of urban design and planning.
Abstract: William Whyte originally hypothesized that the presence of people in a public space would attract more people. Contemporary planners now refer to “sticky streets” as places where pedestrians are compelled to linger and enjoy vibrant public life. We test the hypothesis that adding users to a public space will attract more people using an experimental design with confederates to add pedestrian movement and staying activity in a residential street for 45 randomly selected hours. We observed staying behavior by gender with and without our intervention. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women. We find that women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals, even in safe spaces and during daylight hours. Our findings suggest that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site.
Keywords: behavior, field experiment, gender, public life study, public space, urban design
---
In sum, our results suggest that increasing the number of users in public space has a differentiated effect among males and females. On average, men may be more likely to be attracted to places with more public users, while females may be less likely to stay. However, the difference in number of people staying in the public space is statistically significant only among women. We do not find evidence that the addition of public users increased total staying behavior.
Since the work of Jane Jacobs (1961) and William H. Whyte (1980), urban-ists have thought carefully about how to entice people to stay in well-designed urban plazas, parks and streets. With the work of Jan Gehl and others, the study of public life has emerged as a distinct subfield, with its own methods and tools (Ciocoletto, 2014; Gehl & Svarre, 2013). A major premise of research on public life is that people attract other people. More than anything else, people enjoy watching other people (Toderian, 2014). Well-designed spaces are those that succeed at enticing others to linger, stay longer and in this way, help to build vibrant and inclusive communities. The presence or absence of people in a public space may be interpreted as an indicator of its quality, and these ideas have influenced the design of public spaces, such as plazas, parks, and streets.
We examined the behavioral effect of adding more people to a pedestrian-ized street in a residential community. We test the hypothesis that adding people to the public space might make it more attractive to others. We con-ducted our experiment in a high-quality and pedestrianized street that offers formal and informal seating. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women.We observe a strong differential effect by gender in which adding people to a space may invite more males while simultaneously push away females. Our results show that women and men perceive public space differently, and these different perceptions translate into different behavioral responses. We find additional evidence that women’s right to the city is restricted in comparison to men’s. Importantly, this remains true even in high-quality, pedestrianized and safe places. This suggests that gendered spaces are not limited to those areas that are clearly perceived to be unsafe, poorly lit, or otherwise perceived as dangerous for women. Rather even in safe spaces, during day-light hours, women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals.Our experimental design does not allow us to identify the underlying factors or mechanisms that might explain the gender difference in the use of the public space. However, the literature already identifies the elements that may explain how the experience of the public space is different for men and women. It is clear that perceptions of safety and the opportunities for social interaction in public areas are conditioned by gender.Our results appear to contradict Whyte’s assertion that people attract peo-ple. Yet we cannot refute this claim for all sites and conditions. Whether our findings would hold in public spaces that are more social in nature, such as plazas or commercial streets, remains an open question. At the very least, we find that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site. It is possible that the particular geometry or conditions of our study site may have contributed to the observed results.
Our results bolster Whyte’s claim that people have an intuitive sense of the carrying capacity of a public space. In his observational work, he noticed that each site had a maximum number of people that it would support, and people would intuitively move somewhere else once that level had been reached. It appears that our intervention reached or surpassed the intuitive carrying capacity of our site. It also seems that men and women perceive density differently, and consequently have different density thresholds regarding what density levels are tolerable. In short, our results are consistent with Whyte’s notion of carrying capacity but there are likely to be differences between genders on what the intuitive carrying capacity might be.
We are intrigued by Whyte’s notion that we have an intuitive sense of the right number of people is to occupy a space. As noted, this intuitive notion is contingent on gender, but probably other cultural notions and tastes as well. It is also possible that these cultural notions or our perceptions of safety in public space might be evolving, potentially as a result of changing norms or our use of technology in public space. For example, an underlying assumption driving the sticky streets hypothesis is that we enjoy watching other people. When Whyte studied public users in New York, this was certainly true, and people watching was a New York pastime. Surveys of visitors to Central Park in 1982 showed that people watching was the most popular passive activity in Central Park, followed by relaxation, thinking and reading (Barlow Rogers, 1987). Times have changed and perhaps emerging cultural norms are less tolerant of people watching behavior than in the past. Younger generations may feel less comfortable with watching others or being watched, resulting in different behavioral responses to others in public space. If indeed there are changing cultural norms, we would expect to observe these differences by age (Aoki & Downes, 2003). We did not include age in our head-counts of staying behavior, leaving this unresolved in our study. Does the behavioral response of increasing pedestrian and staying behavior have het-erogenous effects by age as well as by gender? Are younger generations less interested in people watching and more attracted to the use of electronic devices? Our results merely raise more questions about under which conditions would we observe different effects. How can planners estimate or predict the carrying capacity of a particular site? What simple design interventions may increase or decrease perceived carrying capacity? What can be done to reduce the gender gap in terms of perception of safety, sense of belonging and staying behavior?
More work is needed to identify the factors that explain people’s decisions around the use of public space. It would be particularly useful to have meth-ods for estimating the carrying capacity of particular sites, as Whyte suggests, or the characteristics of spaces that may make adding people tolerable or desirable. It may also be worth considering how experimental designs may assist in answering these questions. Field experiments on questions about public space remain rare, yet have untapped potential. Field experiments may complement other research methods that aim to understand individual choices, movements and staying behavior in public. Learning when and why certain places are attractive and welcoming to both women and men will provide valuable insights for the theory and practice of urban design and planning.
In relation to heterosexual and homosexual women and men, bisexual women and men appear to experience less sexual satisfaction
Björkenstam C, Mannheimer L, Löfström M, et al. Sexual Orientation–Related Differences in Sexual Satisfaction and Sexual Problems—A Population-Based Study in Sweden. J Sex Med 2020;XX:XXX–XXX. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.07.084
Abstract
Introduction Human sexuality is a natural and important part of peoples’ life and well-being. The underlying interactions affecting sexual satisfaction are complex, and sexual orientation differences partly remain to be identified as well as explained.
Aim Our aim was to investigate sexual orientation–related differences in sexual satisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction and differences in sexual function and sexual-related problems.
Methods We used Swedish data from SRHR2017 (sexual and reproductive health and rights), based on self-administered surveys, linked to nationwide registers. The national sample consisted of 14,537 women and men aged 16–84 years. With logistic regression, we examined sexual orientation–related differences in self-reported sexual satisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction, stratified by sex.
Main outcome measures The main outcome measures of this study are odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results Bisexual women were more dissatisfied with their sex life, as compared with heterosexual women (OR: 1.8; 95% CI: 1.3–2.6), as were bisexual men compared with heterosexual men (OR: 2.7; 95% CI: 1.7–4.4). A bisexual or lesbian identity was a robust risk factor for premature orgasm (OR: 2.1; 95% CI: 1.1–3.9 and OR: 8.0; 95% CI: 3.2–20.0, respectively). Lesbian women seemed to have lower risk for many sexual-related problems (however not significant). Gay men lacked arousal (OR: 3.3; 95% CI: 1.6–6.9), had no orgasm (OR: 2.6; 95% CI: 1.4–4.7), and were at lower risk of experiencing premature ejaculation (OR: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2–0.9), as compared with heterosexual men.
Conclusion Our findings contribute to the sparse evidence of some sexual orientation differences in sexual satisfaction and sexual dysfunctions. Especially bisexual women and men appear to experience less sexual satisfaction in relation to heterosexual and homosexual women and men.
Key Words: LBGTSexualitySexual DysfunctionsSwedenPopulation-Based Survey
Abstract
Introduction Human sexuality is a natural and important part of peoples’ life and well-being. The underlying interactions affecting sexual satisfaction are complex, and sexual orientation differences partly remain to be identified as well as explained.
Aim Our aim was to investigate sexual orientation–related differences in sexual satisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction and differences in sexual function and sexual-related problems.
Methods We used Swedish data from SRHR2017 (sexual and reproductive health and rights), based on self-administered surveys, linked to nationwide registers. The national sample consisted of 14,537 women and men aged 16–84 years. With logistic regression, we examined sexual orientation–related differences in self-reported sexual satisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction, stratified by sex.
Main outcome measures The main outcome measures of this study are odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results Bisexual women were more dissatisfied with their sex life, as compared with heterosexual women (OR: 1.8; 95% CI: 1.3–2.6), as were bisexual men compared with heterosexual men (OR: 2.7; 95% CI: 1.7–4.4). A bisexual or lesbian identity was a robust risk factor for premature orgasm (OR: 2.1; 95% CI: 1.1–3.9 and OR: 8.0; 95% CI: 3.2–20.0, respectively). Lesbian women seemed to have lower risk for many sexual-related problems (however not significant). Gay men lacked arousal (OR: 3.3; 95% CI: 1.6–6.9), had no orgasm (OR: 2.6; 95% CI: 1.4–4.7), and were at lower risk of experiencing premature ejaculation (OR: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2–0.9), as compared with heterosexual men.
Conclusion Our findings contribute to the sparse evidence of some sexual orientation differences in sexual satisfaction and sexual dysfunctions. Especially bisexual women and men appear to experience less sexual satisfaction in relation to heterosexual and homosexual women and men.
Key Words: LBGTSexualitySexual DysfunctionsSwedenPopulation-Based Survey
Low-ranking Group Members Are Perceived as the Best Sources of Group Norms from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive norms
Dannals, Jennifer E., Emily Reit, and Dale T. Miller. 2020. “From Whom Do We Learn Group Norms? Low-ranking Group Members Are Perceived as the Best Sources.” PsyArXiv. August 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/vbtqr
Abstract: Social norm perception is ubiquitous in small groups and teams, but how individuals approach this process is not well understood. When individuals wish to perceive descriptive social norms in a group or team, whose ad- vice and behavior do they prefer to rely on? Four lab studies and one Teld survey demonstrate that when individuals seek information about a team’s social norms they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking individuals (Studies 1–4) and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Study 5). Results from correlation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) approaches suggest this preference stems from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive social norms of their team. Alternative mechanisms (e.g., perceived similarity to lower-ranking team members, greater honesty of lower-ranking team members) were also examined, but no support for these was found.
Abstract: Social norm perception is ubiquitous in small groups and teams, but how individuals approach this process is not well understood. When individuals wish to perceive descriptive social norms in a group or team, whose ad- vice and behavior do they prefer to rely on? Four lab studies and one Teld survey demonstrate that when individuals seek information about a team’s social norms they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking individuals (Studies 1–4) and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Study 5). Results from correlation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) approaches suggest this preference stems from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive social norms of their team. Alternative mechanisms (e.g., perceived similarity to lower-ranking team members, greater honesty of lower-ranking team members) were also examined, but no support for these was found.
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