Research

Works in Progress

Sports Gambling Laws and Family Stress: Evidence from Reports of Child Abuse and Neglect

I address a pressing gap in understanding the unintended consequences of sports betting legalization. The prevalence of risk factors for child maltreatment appear to increase in response to the legalization of sports betting, but the direct impacts on abuse and neglect remain unexplored. Using administrative child protective services (CPS) case data retrieved from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), I will use a difference-in-difference two-way fixed effects framework to explore how sports gambling legalization impacts the overall prevalence of child maltreatment. Moreover, by exploring the heterogeneity in case types, reporting sources, and placement outcomes, I aim to disentangle the causal pathways between sports gambling and child maltreatment, to provide information which may in the future help to mitigate negative effects. Preliminary results suggest that the legalization of mobile sports gambling leads to an increase in the reporting of incidences of child maltreatment.

Together in Purpose, Not Persona: Leader Identity’s impact on Volunteer Effort

In the context of nonprofits, I explore the effect of a leader’s gender and sexuality on volunteer motivation. I propose an experiment using both stated and revealed measures to investigate the effect of a leader’s identity on volunteers attitudes and performance. I find that women in positions of leadership are rated as more typical more effective than their male peers. I do not find evidence that leader gender or sexuality have a direct effect on follower performance. I discuss how follower’s group identities and their personal attitudes towards the nonprofit they are volunteering for interact with these results.

Artifical Aging and Face Morphing: Testing the Double Standard of Aging Hypothesis

with Mary Kite

We introduce a novel method, artificial aging and face morphing, to test how people perceive old age based on a target’s gender and race. Undergraduates (N = 170) were shown six slide decks with automatic progression in the lab which showed a face transitioning from young to old (or old to young). Participants were instructed to stop the slide deck when the face had started to look old (young). The stopped frame value was recorded for each video. Participants then reported their thoughts while doing the morphs, provided attractiveness ratings and age anchors for all of the faces they viewed, and completed a demographic questionnaire. The stopped frame was compared by a 4 (Target Race) X 2 (Target Gender) ANOVA. Results showed significant main effects for target gender (p < 0.009), target race (p < 0.03), and an interaction effect between race and gender (p < 0.03). I will introduce the results in the context of stopped frames and open up a discussion on the value of imputing target race as an alternative.

Faces retrieved from Chicago Face Database