This event is free and open to the public. Join us at the Zoom link below:
https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/93773939786?pwd=cWs1MUJjdGFsRUNVMWlUVUFGV1YwZz09
“The Whip of Hunger: The Causal Effects of Economic Insecurity on Racial and Redistributive Attitudes” Cody Melcher (Sociology, CUNY)
This project seeks to establish a causal link between elevated levels of subjective economic insecurity and a host of social and political attitudes, including anti-immigrant sentiment, racial resentment, and redistributive attitudes. Despite a small and growing literature illustrating the correlation between economic insecurity and broader attitudes, a lack of empirical probing is at least partially responsible for the near-consensus--and, I believe, incorrect--view that economic self-interest plays little to no role in the formation of public opinion. Thus, a planned experiment will aim to prime respondents to feel more economically insecure. It is then hypothesized that this sense of insecurity will affect changes in respondents’ social/political attitudes in predictable ways relative to the control group.
Cody R. Melcher is a PhD candidate in the sociology department at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His research focuses primarily on class, race, and the role of economic insecurity in social and political life. His work has been published in Ethnic & Racial Studies, Critical Sociology, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.
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“Are Alignment Mechanisms in Human Communication Language-Specific? An Online Experiment Using Nonlinguistic Signals (birdsongs)”
Julia Hyland Bruno (Society and Neuroscience, Columbia)
Olga Fehér (Psychology, University of Warwick)
Alignment mechanisms such as priming and convergence are pervasive in human communication. It has been claimed that these mechanisms are intrinsic to language, and even that they evolved to facilitate language learning during human development. These claims assume that cognitive systems co-evolved with communication systems. Alternatively, communicative alignment might be rooted in more universal interactive mechanisms that preceded the evolution of language, and might therefore not be language-specific or human-specific. The present study asks whether alignment processes can be identified when humans interact via birdsong (the communication system of another species). To (most) humans, zebra finch songs are unfamiliar, complex acoustic signals that have no intelligible semantic meaning or language-like structure. Study participants will have the opportunity to learn to ‘play’ a given zebra finch song repertoire, and then to interact with an online partner equipped with a different set of songs. In a series of such experiments, we will separately manipulate signal repertoire composition, partner responsiveness, and interaction constraints, thus generating dyadic interaction data under controlled nonlinguistic conditions.
Julia Hyland Bruno is a postdoc in Columbia's interdisciplinary Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program, working with Peter Bearman (Sociology) and George Lewis (Music). Her research focuses on vocal communication in songbirds. She received her PhD in biopsychology and behavioral neuroscience from the City University of New York, where she studied the rhythmic patterning of zebra finch vocal learning.
Olga Fehér is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Warwick University in the UK. She got her PhD at the City University of New York, then won post-doctoral fellowships at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She studies the evolution of birdsong and language. Her main interest is how learning and interaction shape the structure of communication systems.
Through the Experimental Design Workshop, social scientists at Columbia have the opportunity to workshop the design of an experiment they have not yet fielded. Presenters will receive specific, actionable feedback on that design from other workshop participants.
Funding support for the Experimental Design Workshop Series is provided by the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Lecture Series, administered by INCITE, which features events and programming that embody and honor Lazarsfeld’s commitment to the improvement of methodological approaches that address concerns of vital cultural and social significance.
For inquiries about the Experimental Design Workshop, or if you are interested in joining the workshop's email list, please contact Daniel Tadmon (daniel.tadmon@columbia.edu).