Appendix: Survey Vignettes

Note: We constructed the vignettes not as comprehensive overviews but to capture the major fault lines of controversy. We did not include bibliographies or references to specific authors to best tap respondents’ views of the substantive claims made, rather than their reactions to possible caricatures of the authors in the field. The exclusion of references also aided readability. Vignette I draws verbatim from a few lines in Patterson (2015); vignette II paraphrases American Psychological Association (2006) and Beltz et al. (2011); vignette III paraphrases Haidt (2016).

Please Read the Following Vignette About Inner-City Poverty and Respond to the Questions Below:

Postwar “culture-of-poverty” theories applied to U.S. inner cities fell out of favor in the 1960s–70s, as social scientists came to see discussion of cultural factors as examples of blaming the victim. In recent years, however, social scientists are bringing culture back into the discussion. They argue that although structural factors like joblessness, social isolation, and poor schools are decisive factors, a violent culture among male black youth plays a role as well in perpetuating the black “underclass.” Such values include hypermasculinity and sexual conquest, extreme individualism and materialism (including contempt for low-wage work), and reverence for the gun. Consistent with such research, some observers call on solutions that stress the government’s role in addressing key structural factors, while also highlighting the responsibility of the black community to confront the problems of violence and out-of-wedlock births that they believe help perpetuate inner-city poverty.

Please Read The Following Vignette About Gendered Occupational Choices and Respond to the Questions Below:

Women’s persistent underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers continues to spur social scientific investigation. There is widespread consensus among social scientists that gender socialization and discrimination are key limitations to women’s access to such occupations. More controversial, however, is the claim that gendered occupational choice has a sex-related biological component. Research reveals average difference in aptitude between females and males on skills such as verbal abilities (where women tend to score slightly higher) and visuospatial abilities (when men tend to have a slight edge). Moreover, research demonstrates average differences in occupational preferences, with males more inclined to work with things and females more inclined to work with people. A recent study reveals a biological contribution to such differences, showing that girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (atypical exposure to prenatal androgens) expressed greater interest in things relative to people than unaffected females.

Please Read the Final Vignette About Immigration and Respond to the Questions Below:

Few issues are as divisive today as immigration. Palpable anxieties polarize Europe and the United States over their respective Muslim and Hispanic populations. Social science literature devotes considerable attention to immigrants’ experiences of marginalization and institutionalized discrimination. Perhaps less studied are the implications of immigration for social and cultural integration. Social scientists have found that anti-immigrant sentiment is rooted more in perceptions of “cultural threat” than in economic anxiety. In this vein, some observers view the call to limit immigration as reflecting in part legitimate moral concerns of shared identity and collective trust that should not be reduced to economic anxiety or dismissed as simply racist. Europe’s rising Muslim populations, for example, spur the fear that Islamic values and customs threaten Western norms of human rights and gender equality. In the U.S. context, some fear that cosmopolitan policies, such as bilingual education, if not balanced by concerns for assimilation and shared values, may nourish the fractious cultural environment that helped prompt the rise of Trump.