Near and Dear? Evaluating the Impact of Neighbor Diversity on

Inter-Religious Attitudes

by Sharon Barnhardt

Discussion of

Gigi Foster

UNSW

Development Workshop 2011

What I love• The experimental design in a great institutional

context• Interviewing children• The IAT• You set up your story well

Issues on interpretation• The interaction versus preferences story is not convincing

– Beliefs about others versus empathy toward others are different phenomena. You only measure beliefs

– Rather: is the interaction effect on beliefs impeded or accelerated by preference changes?

• My prior is that this is simply Bayesian updating, and the Hindu-Muslim difference has a clear cause – and p. 29 discourse on other causes is not nearly as plausible

• Interpretation as “convergence” is problematic– Correct beliefs about each group may not be the same. No measure

of the truth about each group

– If you have other survey measures that could proxy for truth about each person’s trustworthiness, cheating, etc: use them to test the Bayesian updating story! Even variance in beliefs about own group could be used for this.

– Combine a parametric “self-serving bias” assumption with beliefs about own group?

Other points• Theory bits would benefit from inclusion under a single

conceptual rubric. E.g., what are “the conditions of Allport’s (1954) ‘contact theory?’” How do they relate to the interaction vs backlash story, vs to the social status story of Tropp and Pettigrew, vs to simple Bayesian updating?

• Actual floorplans would be helpful (common cooking heat source? Shared toilets, walls, or hallways?) – also enabling more detailed examination of proximity effects

• Why group 3/4 groups together with 4/4 groups?• Where did people live from 2005 to 2007?• The friendship modelling should be explained better in

the text (e.g., number of obs, “natural friendliness” term). It also goes on way too long

Minor stuff• Careful in word choice: beliefs about X by Y; “improvements in

beliefs” is vague (better, or closer to reality? Cf beliefs of Muslims in all-Muslim groups about Hindus)

• Need more info about the Hindu “reservation category” and affirmative action

• Cite Sharif and blue eyes-brown eyes studies • The house size is HUGE! Is that for real?

• People “still in line” for housing assignment may have less enlightened preferences

• Run the main model separately for Hindus

• How often did the participant object to closing the door?

• IAT: careful: good associations RELATIVE to the other group

• People over 50 are excluded - > generalizability question

Overall feel

• Interesting and important question, and terrific data

• More clarity about the exact phenomenon being tested/confirmed, with a link to an overarching theoretical framework, would be a big improvement

• Shorten the friendship-formation section and put more emphasis on policy relevance