Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"So what is it that changed? In Congress, according to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the turning point seems to have been 1994, the year of Newt Gingrich’s takeover of the Republican Party and his “contract with America.”"

"Indeed, while polarization has increased in all demographic groups since 1996, it increased the most among those sixty-five or older, who are the least likely to be on the internet, and increased the least among the youngest people (those aged eighteen to thirty-nine)."

"It is now possible to predict the political affiliation of a congressman simply by listening to the words they use."

"One obvious downside of sticking to our own is we don’t get exposed to other points of view."

"That it is easy to divide is a strong reason to be extremely frightened by the xenophobes and the cynical manipulators of xenophobia who rule so many countries today. The damage they do is not permanent, but unless it is carefully undone it can leave a terrible scar on a nation."

"Interestingly, the fact that arbitrary labels heavily influence our loyalties is true even without the bonding experience the initial isolation provided."

"We know that people will go to great lengths to avoid evidence that would force them to revise their opinions on what they consider to be their core value system (including their opinion about other races or immigrants), because it is so related to their views of themselves. Unfortunately, it does not follow that people are particularly thoughtful about forming those initial opinions."

"This underscores why we need social policies to reach beyond economic survival and try to restore the dignity of those whose occupations are threatened by technological progress, trade, and other disruptions."

"We should not stop telling the truth, but it is more useful to express it in a nonjudgmental way."

"Over time, the instinctive defensive reaction we started from is replaced by a carefully constructed set of seemingly robust arguments."

"We don’t like changing our minds because we don’t like to admit we were wrong to begin with."

"since we want to shield ourselves from our own prejudices, we couch them in the language of objective truth"

"They argue that a big step toward understanding beliefs is not taking them too literally."

"In other words, people seemed to act as if they had multiple personalities, each with different preferences. The context picks the personality that gets to decide in a particular situation."

"Violence becomes the norm in a neighborhood where it is expected, just as taking five courses when four are required is the norm for MIT undergraduate students."

"It is always a traditionally disadvantaged person who ends up as the victim of a biased, but self-fulfilling prediction."

"What started as an unjustified preference against women resulted in women actually doing worse through no fault of their own, and this reinforced their inferior status."

"Along the same lines, when women in Bangladesh were trained to become line managers, they were just as good as men based on an objective assessment of their leadership and technical qualities, but they were perceived as less good by their line workers. And, presumably as a result, the performance of their lines also suffered, perversely confirming the prejudice that they were worse managers."

"Discrimination against women in leadership positions often carries the same flavor of self-fulfilling prophecy."

"The study showed that assignment to a supervisor more or less biased against a minority affected the performance of minority and nonminority workers differently."

"Self-discrimination is often self-reinforcing; people perform differently when they are reminded of their group identity, which makes them doubt themselves even more. The same goes for discrimination against other groups."

"Minorities aren’t the only ones vulnerable to stereotype threat."

"the source of the different behaviors in the trust game seems to be suspicion rather than animosity."

"The reason was that without the actual information about convictions, the employers assumed all black applicants were more likely to have a conviction."

"The most surprising finding, however, was that the BTB policy substantially increased racial disparities in callbacks."

"So statistical discrimination, rather than old-fashioned prejudice— what economists call taste-based discrimination— may be the cause. The end result is the same if you are black or Muslim, though."

"It is also true that sometimes individuals feel the need to express intolerance and prejudice (including sentiments they do not actually share) in order to signal fealty to their group."

"Violence is often a convenient camouflage for theft."

"Why do we seem to look for a new enemy even as we become reconciled to the previous one?"

"And yet each wave of immigrants eventually was accepted and assimilated."