Animosity, Amnesia, or Admiration? Mass Opinion Around the World Toward the Former Colonizer

Animosity, Amnesia, or Admiration? Mass Opinion Around the World Toward the Former Colonizer. Andy Baker, David Cupery. British Journal of Political Science, February 15 2023. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/animosity-amnesia-or-admiration-mass-opinion-around-the-world-toward-the-former-colonizer/44421583E99527DF77E04091584B9516

Abstract: Nearly all contemporary countries were colonized at some point in their history by a foreign power, but do citizens resent their former metropoles for past colonial abuses? We exploit survey questions in which respondents were asked for their opinion of a named foreign country. Our analyses of responses from over ninety countries yield the surprising finding that today's citizens are more favourable toward their country's former colonizer – by 40 per cent of a standard deviation – than they are toward other countries. Contemporary monadic traits that make former metropoles liked around the world – especially their tendency to be democracies – as well as their relatively high volumes of trade with former colonies explain their popularity among citizens of their former colonies. We also illustrate and describe these patterns in two least-likely cases, Mexico and Zimbabwe. Our findings have important implications for understanding international soft power, an asset about which today's states care deeply.

Observers have pinned the ‘humanity's worst mistake’ label on several of history's major institutions, ranging from the adoption of agriculture to twentieth-century communism (Diamond Reference Diamond1987; Economist 2009). In our assessment, the institution of modern colonialism – meaning the exploration, conquest, settlement, and political dominance of distant lands by European and other great powers during the second millennium CE – is surely a strong contender. For centuries, especially from the late fifteenth to the late twentieth centuries, colonized people in virtually every corner of the globe were at some point subjected to several abusive practices from a very long list: Slavery and other forms of forced labour, ethnoracial cleansing and genocide, eradication by disease, violent state repression, land expropriation, forced migration, theft of mineral and agricultural resources, massacres, racist ideological projects, excessive taxation, commercial monopolies, and so on (Fanon Reference Fanon1963; Rodney Reference Rodney1972; Tharoor Reference Tharoor2016). Moreover, the process of decolonizing was often a bloody one and, even in the aftermath of modern colonialism, the post-colonial world continues to struggle with many of the institution's stubborn legacies, including political violence deriving from arbitrarily drawn borders (Herbst Reference Herbst2000) as well as severe global income inequalities (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson Reference Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson2001). In short, modern colonialism is one of the most transformational and nefarious institutions in human history.

Despite these impacts and ongoing consequences, scholars of mass opinion and collective memory know little about where former colonizers and colonialism stand in the contemporary public mind. Do individuals in today's post-colonial world hold animosity toward the country that colonized and brutalized their ancestors? Or do they instead have amnesia about the colonial abuses of the past and, perhaps, even admire former metropoles because they tend to be wealthy democracies? In this paper, we discern whether today's citizens hold animosity, amnesia, or admiration toward their former colonizer.

To do so, we compile and aggregate responses to thousands of cross-nationally comparable survey questions asked in over ninety countries. Each question queries respondents' evaluations of a named foreign country, including on many occasions the former colonizer of the respondent's country. We find a surprising ‘former-colonizer gap’ in global mass opinion: Today's citizens are on average more favourable toward their former metropole – by about 40 per cent of a standard deviation – than they are toward other countries. Similarly, the amount of abuse and violence that occurred under colonialism does not correlate with how favourably an erstwhile metropole is evaluated. The former-colonizer gap exists, we show, not because of the colonial experience or history itself but because of contemporary political and economic features of former colonizers. Former metropoles today tend to be more democratic than other countries, a monadic trait that makes them relatively popular in world opinion and thus more popular than other countries in former colonies. Former metropoles also tend to be relatively important trading partners with their former colonies, a dyadic trait that contributes to the former-colonizer gap. We illustrate these patterns with large-sample statistical analyses and studies of two least-likely country cases, Mexico and Zimbabwe. In sum, we do not observe widespread animosity but, instead, uncover evidence for a combination of amnesia and admiration.

Our findings have several important implications. As large literatures on soft power, international status, and public diplomacy show, states invest heavily in and care deeply about the images they project abroad (Nye Reference Nye2004; Renshon Reference Renshon2017; Wang Reference Wang2008). A country's image to foreign mass publics affects that state's material interests in a variety of ways: Its risk from terrorism, its ability to form international alliances, its inflows of foreign tourists, and so on (Datta Reference Datta2014; Goldsmith and Horiuchi Reference Goldsmith and Horiuchi2012; Krueger and Malečková Reference Krueger and Malečková2009). Thus our findings on what shapes these images speak to central issues in international relations. Within this vein, we add to nascent literature that empirically demonstrates how valuable democracy is in improving a country's image abroad, demonstrating that contemporary democracy replaces the abuses of the past in citizens' evaluations of former colonizers (Tomz and Weeks Reference Tomz and Weeks2020). The former-colonizer gap is largely spurious and, in the end, it is democracy and trade – not the colonial project or relationships themselves – that promote international soft power. In other words, although we find that collective memories are short and former colonizers are relatively popular, our findings in no way justify the horrors of colonialism. Finally, we contribute to the literature on the long-term psychological consequences of political violence. Whereas recent findings demonstrate the intergenerational transmission of trauma from ethnically-targeted violence (Lupu and Peisakhin Reference Lupu and Peisakhin2017), ours show that collective memories of colonial affronts among broad populations have a short half-life.

Mass Animosity Toward the Former Colonizer?

Formal colonialism is largely an institution of the past, but its scope, brutality, and legacy mean that the residents of the 150-plus independent nation-states that were once colonies of European and other powers still have good reason to resent their former metropoles. Most of the territories of Africa, Asia, East Europe, and the Western Hemisphere were colonized or annexed by at least one global power – Belgium, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Soviet Union, Spain, Turkey, and the United States – for some period between 1299 (the founding of the Ottoman Empire) and 1991 (the collapse of the Soviet Union). Colonial affronts against native and indigenous populations were brazen and have been well-documented in numerous academic literatures, so we do not summarize all of them here. They include the theft of labour and of commodities; mass murder and a subsequent decline in native populations by as much as 90 per cent in some colonized territories; and paternalistic and coercive ideological projects, such as the racist mission to ‘civilize’ the native residents or the Marxian imperative to scrub territories of their ethnic and religious identities (Amin Reference Amin1990; Galeano Reference Galeano1973; Hochschild Reference Hochschild1998). Put differently, the typical metropole did much to foment long-standing animosity and resentment toward itself by the colonial and postcolonial masses.

Indeed, recent research suggests that various agents of socialization can propagate and thus sustain the painful memories of oppression for a long time – ‘political attitudes associated with certain institutional practices persist long after the institutions themselves have disappeared’ (Lupu and Peisakhin Reference Lupu and Peisakhin2017, 838). Families and identity groups in particular can transmit victimization narratives and grudges across multiple generations (Balcells Reference Balcells2012; Rozenas, Schutte, and Zhukov Reference Rozenas, Schutte and Zhukov2017). Additionally, political elites sometimes seek to sustain colonial abuses in the collective memory. In 2021, for example, the Jamaican government demanded reparations from the British Queen for slavery and colonialism (White Reference White2021). Because elite rhetoric is often an important source of mass attitudes toward foreign countries, efforts such as these may reproduce anti-colonizer sentiment among contemporary mass publics (Blaydes and Linzer Reference Blaydes and Linzer2012).

Further, the pernicious consequences of colonialism persist and are visible in today's independent states, as documented in booming literatures. For instance, many civil and ethnic conflicts in Africa (for example, Sudan and Côte d'Ivoire) and the Middle East (for example, Iraq and Lebanon) exist partly because of the artificiality of national borders – borders that are legacies of superpower rivalries and other European prerogatives, not organic nation-building efforts (Englebert Reference Englebert2009). Similarly, many former colonies still struggle to break from corrupt, regressive, and growth-retarding institutions and practices, such as neopatrimonialism and the maldistribution of land, which are clear legacies of colonial governance (Dell Reference Dell2010; Engerman and Sokoloff Reference Engerman and Sokoloff2012). To sum up, some existing theories and findings imply an animosity hypothesis, whereby today's citizens are much less favourable toward their former colonizer than they are toward other foreign countries.

Amnesia and Admiration

Historical motives for postcolonial citizens to hold a well-justified animosity toward their former colonizers are thus abundant, yet theoretical reasons to doubt that they do so are stronger. Research confirming the intergenerational transmission of political trauma focuses on specific victimized groups – families and ethnoracial groups and their direct descendants. To be sure, some groups (for example, the indigenous peoples of Spanish America) were more victimized by colonial rule than others (for example, the criollos). But our focus and unit of analysis is a larger, more diffuse, and more diverse collective – all people living within a postcolonial territory; that is, a contemporary nation-state's entire adult population. Because colonialism was also an affront to entire societies, it is worth considering whether today's societal aggregates single out their former colonial master for resentment (Lloyd Reference Lloyd2000). We are sceptical that they do so because mass publics are notoriously myopic and fickle about political and economic events (Healy and Lenz Reference Healy and Lenz2014). For example, Li, Wang, and Chen (Reference Li, Wang and Chen2016) find that the Nanjing Massacre (1927) played a small role in how Chinese citizens viewed Japan in 2010, and a 70 per cent majority of Vietnamese respondents approved of the US in a survey that took place just three decades (2002) after the US withdrawal from the Vietnam War (Pew Research Center 2020). For these and other reasons, many scholars bemoan a purported ‘postcolonial amnesia’ in today's nation-states (Diop Reference Diop2020; Kennedy Reference Kennedy2016).

Because of citizen myopia, sustaining a sense of grievance in the collective memory may require, as a minimum, ongoing nurture from elites and other agents of socialization, but this practice is somewhat rare: ‘Most postcolonial countries have not gone … far in revisiting the painful circumstances of their creation’ (Kennedy Reference Kennedy2016, 98). Instead, most political elites avoid vehement and open animosity toward their former metropoles, the example of Jamaica notwithstanding. As relatively wealthy countries, former metropoles often have diplomatic leverage over their former colonies and, for that matter, all less developed countries (Casetti Reference Casetti2003). For example, India's Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has stressed friendship, shared traditions, and common initiatives when addressing relations with the United Kingdom (Modi Reference Modi2015). If contemporary elites are not persistently unified in vocal criticism of their former colonizers, citizens are unlikely to absorb and maintain anticolonial narratives. And even if elites are unified and persistent, their rhetoric does not automatically translate into public opinion, as this process is imperfect and filled with mitigating factors (Zaller Reference Zaller1992). We thus posit an amnesia hypothesis, which holds that colonial abuses have a minimal presence and resonance in contemporary opinions toward the metropole.

Although the average citizen is myopic and not deeply knowledgeable about foreign countries, previous research suggests that individuals develop impressions – sometimes complex, multidimensional impressions – about foreign countries (Chiozza Reference Chiozza2010). Scholars call these impressions ‘national stereotypes’ or ‘country images’ (Chattalas, Kramer, and Takada Reference Chattalas, Kramer and Takada2008; Han Reference Han1989). A person's image of country x emerges from ongoing information gathered about that country. With this in mind, we propose two sets of reasons, both related to contemporary politico-economic features, in support of an admiration hypothesis – the claim that today's individuals should extend more goodwill to their former colonizers than they do to other countries.

The first set of reasons invokes former metropoles' contemporary monadic traits, meaning country-level attributes they broadcast to all countries. Former colonizers are more democratic (for example, Spain and the UK), larger in brute economic size (for example, Russia and Turkey), and richer on a per capita basis (for example, France) than the average country. According to research on international soft power, these are attractive monadic traits to have (Nye Reference Nye2004). For example, a growing body of experimental evidence shows that individuals evaluate autocratic and rights-violating countries more harshly than they do democracies (Chu Reference Chu2021; Goldsmith and Horiuchi Reference Goldsmith and Horiuchi2021; Putnam and Shapiro Reference Putnam and Shapiro2017; Tomz and Weeks Reference Tomz and Weeks2013, Reference Tomz and Weeks2020). Similarly, wealth promotes a country's brand, conveying status and competence while also affording it economic outflows and the tools of public diplomacy (Larson, Paul, and Wohlforth Reference Larson, Paul, Wohlforth, Paul, Larson and Wohlforth2014; Verlegh and Steenkamp Reference Verlegh and Steenkamp1999).

A second set of reasons speaks to unique elements of modern dyadic relationships between former metropoles and their former colonies (Chacha and Stojek Reference Chacha and Stojek2019). Most importantly, trade and investment flows tend to be greater, all things being equal, between a former colony and its former colonizer than they are between other dyads (Goldstein, Rivers, and Tomz Reference Goldstein, Rivers and Tomz2007), and these forms of economic exchange can boost mutual goodwill between countries (Baker and Cupery Reference Baker and Cupery2013). Additionally, former colonies sometimes share important cultural similarities – most notably in language and religion – with their erstwhile metropoles. Cultural similarities tend to boost mutual understanding, casting residents of former metropoles as in-group members to individuals in the former colonies (Khalid, Okafor, and Sanusi Reference Khalid, Okafor and Sanusi2022). Finally, some European countries make active diplomatic efforts – exemplified by the British Commonwealth, the Organization of Ibero-American States (Spain and Portugal), the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia), and the International Organization of La Francophonie – to foster ties with former colonies, and donor countries tend to favour former colonies with their foreign aid outflows (Alesina and Dollar Reference Alesina and Dollar2000; Chiba and Heinrich Reference Chiba and Heinrich2019).

Overall, we hypothesize that citizens will be more supportive, on average, of their former colonizer than they are of other countries, but for spurious reasons. We expect to find that this relationship is explained by the contemporary monadic traits of former metropoles and the contemporary aspects of relationships between former metropoles and their colonies. In other words, because citizens tend to have short memories, they extend greater goodwill to their former colonizer, not because of the colonial experience per se but because there are important contemporary factors that are correlated with the past presence of a colonial relationship.

Pigeons can helps us model gambling behavior; they too choose suboptimally, especially when they are hungry or isolated

An Animal Model of Human Gambling Behavior. Thomas R. Zentall. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, February 26 2023, 100101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crbeha.2023.100101

Abstract: Human gambling almost always results in a loss. Thus, it is generally assumed that humans gamble for enjoyment and the enticement of winning. Although animals are purported to engage in optimal foraging behavior and should be sensitive to the probability of reinforcement, similar suboptimal behavior can be found in pigeons and other animals. They show a preference for an alternative that is associated with a signal for a low probability of a large reward (e.g., 20% probability of 10 pellets – a mean of 2 pellets) over an alternative that is associated with a signal for a high probability of a smaller reward (100% probability of 3 pellets). This effect may result from the strong conditioned reinforcement associated with a stimulus that is always followed by a reinforcer, but surprisingly, little conditioned inhibition associated with the signal for the absence of a reinforcer. A similar mechanism appears to be responsible for human gambling (gamblers tend to overvalue wins and undervalue losses). We have also found that for pigeons (and perhaps humans as well), the probability of the conditioned reinforcer is relatively unimportant, it is primarily the value of the reinforcer when it does occur (e.g., 10 pellets vs. 3 pellets) that is important. Interestingly, pigeons show several other parallels to human gambling behavior. For example, hungrier pigeons show a greater tendency to choose suboptimally. Also, pigeons that have had enrichment in the form of social experience in a larger cage show a reduced tendency to choose suboptimally. This animal model may provide a useful analog to human gambling behavior, one that is free from the influence of human culture, language, social reinforcement, and other experiential biases that may encourage human gambling.

Keywords: gamblingsuboptimal choiceimpulsivitypigeonshumans

Is Human gambling different from animal suboptimal choice?

The suboptimal choice procedures with pigeons differ somewhat from typical human gambling conditions. It could be argued, for example, that humans choose to bet with money that they already have, whereas pigeons choose between two alternatives, in either case the outcome of which is a gain. This means that for humans, a loss is a real loss, whereas for pigeons, it is a lost opportunity or an opportunity cost. In the case of human gambling, the choice is between a probable loss (the gamble) and no loss (refraining from the gamble), whereas for pigeons the suboptimal choice it is between less gain (suboptimal choice) and more gain (optimal choice). Thus, for the pigeon there is no actual cost. For this reason, however, one would think that for humans who gamble, an actual loss would be more aversive than a lost opportunity, and therefore, humans should be less likely to choose to gamble. In fact, as noted earlier, proportionally, humans are generally less likely to gamble (Molet et al., 2012) than pigeons are to choose suboptimally.

Second, in the pigeon task, there is typically a 10-s delay between the choice and the outcome of that choice (a reinforcer or its absence). However, for pigeons, it is not primarily the delay to the primary reinforcer that is critical, rather it is the immediacy of the appearance of the conditioned stimulus, and typically the conditioned stimulus appears immediately following the choice - if the conditioned stimulus does not appear immediately following choice, suboptimal choice is greatly reduced (McDevitt et al., 1997).

Third, the gambling task can be thought of as a go/no-go task (to gamble or not gamble), whereas the pigeon suboptimal choice task involves a simultaneous two-alternative choice. In fact, however, the human choice can be thought of as between the act of gambling and engaging in some other activity (e.g., going out to dinner or seeing a film). Thus, a clear distinction between the go/no-go task and the two-alternative choice task is not always easy to make.

One might suggest that another difference between the pigeon suboptimal choice task and human gambling is the importance of the post choice conditioned stimulus for the pigeon. If the signal for reinforcement is missing, pigeons generally choose optimally (Spetch et al., 1990; Spetch et al., 1994). Rats too chose risky options significantly more when win-associated audiovisual cues are added to the task (Barrus & Winstanley, 2016)

Although perhaps not as obvious as it is with pigeons, conditioned stimuli also play an important role in human gambling. For example, there are symbols that show up on the reels of a slot machine, numbers on the lottery ticket, and the ball falling into a winning number (or color) in roulette. If the only feedback gamblers received when they win or lose is receiving money or not, (imagine covering the symbols on a slot machine), it is unlikely that humans would be as inclined to gamble as they are. Evidence that conditioned stimuli play an important role for humans has been found by Cherkasova et al. (2018). Furthermore, Spetch et al. (2020) found that humans chose more risky slot machines when casino-related cues were associated with payouts.

Another difference between human gambling and pigeon suboptimal choice is that humans often describe gambling as an enjoyable activity (entertainment) rather than as a chance to make money. This difference is difficult to address directly because the emotion of a pleasurable activity is hard to measure (especially in pigeons). The question is, do humans gamble for the enjoyment of gambling rather than for the money? When it comes to games of chance, would humans be as likely to gamble if it were not possible to win money (or a prize)? The possibility of winning money (or the anticipation of the possibility of winning money) certainly contributes to what makes the game enjoyable. People may sometimes gamble for social rewards (being the best, earning the most points), but even with many social games (e.g., poker), humans often prefer to play for money rather than points alone.

I have suggested that the mechanism responsible for the pigeons’ suboptimal choice is the value of the outcome predicted by the conditioned stimulus, together with the difference between reward expected and reward obtained. An important component of this theory is the absence of inhibition-associated signals for the absence of reward. That is, the pigeons’ suboptimal choice is not inhibited by the frequent signals for the absence of reward. Consider the procedure used by Vasconcelos et al. (2015) in which starlings preferred the signaled alternative over the 50% unsignaled alternative. The signaled reinforcement was selected even when the signal for the absence of a reinforcer appeared 19 out of 20 times that the suboptimal alternative was selected, whereas reinforcement followed the unsignaled alternative half of the time. Thus, an important similarity between human gambling and pigeon suboptimal choice is the fact that, based on traditional reinforcement theory, losses contribute much less to conditioned inhibition than one might expect that they should, (Holst et al., 2010).

The cost of the relative absence of conditioned inhibition in the suboptimal choice procedure can be easily calculated. For pigeons, in the Case and Zentall (2018) experiment, choice of the optimal alternative would have resulted in twice as much food (50% vs. 100% reinforcement), in the Stagner and Zentall (2010) experiment, choice of the optimal alternative would have resulted in 2.5 times as much food (20 % vs. 50% reinforcement), and in the Vasconcelos et al, (2015) experiment, in the extreme condition, choice of the optimal alternative would have resulted in 10 times as much food (5% vs. 50% reinforcement). In these experiments, choice of the suboptimal alternative represents a considerably greater opportunity cost than the near-even chance of winning in many casino games (e.g., roulette or blackjack), although perhaps not as costly as the return on buying a lottery ticket.

Although the research with animals may appear to be different from human gambling, as noted earlier, not unlike pigeons, human gamblers are rarely aware of the probabilities of winning, but they are more likely to be aware of amount of money they would obtain if they won (billboards often announce the winning amount).

The research with pigeons suggests as well that there is an additional factor that may contribute to human gambling, positive contrast (or relative delay reduction), the positive feeling that gamblers may get when they expect a loss, but they experience a win. The results of the research on suboptimal choice with pigeons suggest that these tasks may provide a viable analog of unskilled gambling by humans. They may be useful in understanding the mechanisms responsible for human gambling behavior, as well as suggesting a possible treatment of problem gambling, the substitution of other pleasurable activities that do not have the negative social or economic implications that often accompany pathological gambling.

The belief in repressed memories of trauma (and multiple personality syndrome) has become a zombie idea, so seductive that it lives on despite long since being discredited

The Memory Wars Then and Now: The Contributions of Scott O. Lilienfeld. Steven Jay Lynn, Richard J. McNally, and Elizabeth F. Loftus. Clinical Psychological Science, February 24, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026221133034

Abstract: In this review, honoring Scott O. Lilienfeld, we reflect on key conflicts, controversies, and flash points in the so-called memory wars that have captured headlines, affected legislative action, and influenced civil suits and criminal trials. We trace the memory wars, beginning in the 1990s to the present. From the outset, the memory wars featured debates regarding repressed memories, recollections of trauma, and the hazards of memory recovery therapy, and these disagreements persist today in controversies concerning dissociative amnesia, beliefs about memory, suggestive psychotherapies, and the genesis of dissociative identity disorder (DID). We acknowledge Lilienfeld’s contributions, particularly to the sociocognitive model of DID, reviewed in the second half of the article, and to a recent transtheoretical framework that contrasts sharply with the posttraumatic view of DID. The memory wars greatly enhanced scientific understanding of memory, trauma, iatrogenic psychotherapies, and dissociative disorders. We conclude with suggestions for future research to deepen understanding of issues stimulated by the memory wars.

Black-White Differences in Parental Happiness

Black-White Differences in Parental Happiness. Jennifer Augustine, Mia Brantley. Socius, February 23, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231231153617

Abstract: Lower levels of happiness among Blacks compared with Whites are well documented, as are lower levels of happiness among parents compared with nonparents. Yet it remains unclear whether the parenting happiness gap is larger among Blacks compared with Whites. Drawing on the General Social Survey (2010–2018), the authors investigate this question. The authors find that White mothers reported less happiness compared with their White female nonparent counterparts, but contrary to research highlighting the profound challenges of parenting for Black women, a parental happiness gap among Black women was not observed. Among Black men, parents reported a much higher probability of being very happy than their nonparent counterparts, whereas White fathers’ happiness was no different from that of their male counterparts without children. These findings are discussed in view of stereotypes about Black mothers and fathers, their resilience to stressors such as racism and discrimination, and emerging research on the salience of fatherhood for Black men.

Discussion

Race differences in happiness among Americans are well documented, as are differences in happiness between parents and nonparents (Herbst and Ifcher 2016; Iceland and Ludwig-Dehm 2019). Yet few studies have aimed to bridge these literatures by examining whether differences in parental happiness are the same across racial groups. This oversight is noteworthy, given the various strands of research highlighting the ways that parenting creates additional challenges for Black parents compared with White parents. It is also surprising, given the broader literature on parental happiness and its emphasis on how demographic factors moderate the “costs” of parenthood (Nomaguchi and Milkie 2020), as well as the profundity of race in stratifying other forms of well-being. Thus, in this study, we take steps to fill this important gap in knowledge by drawing on a seminal source of research on happiness, the GSS, to investigate racial disparities in the parental happiness gap for men and women. Our findings provide several fresh insights, several of which ran counter to our expectations.

To begin, we found that the happiness gap among parents compared with nonparents was observed for White women, but not Black women. These results suggest that despite the challenges that Black mothers face—such as stereotyping around motherhood, fears around their children’s well-being, and the need to contend with hostile environments (Dow 2019; Elliott and Aseltine 2013)—they may be exceptionally resilient in terms of their happiness. This pattern is consistent with other research on resiliency among Black Americans. For example, numerous studies find that Blacks suffer no worse mental health disorders than Whites, a phenomenon sometimes called the Black-White mental health paradox (Erving, Thomas, and Frazier 2019). Although the reasons for this phenomenon remain unclear, some have argued that Blacks promote a type of racial socialization that celebrates overcoming adversity and a strong sense of group identity, both of which may enhance the positive emotional aspects of parenting, despite its challenges. In further support of this view, studies have suggested that Blacks are more likely to view themselves than Whites as role models to their children (Hart et al. 2001). Doing so in the face of challenges may thus enhance meaning and the positive emotional experience Black mothers derive from parenting in ways that help offset some (albeit not all, given that Black women in general reported less happiness than White women) of the factors that would potentially undermine Black mothers’ well-being. Other explanations for why we did not observe lower levels of happiness among Black mothers compared with Black nonmothers include that Black mothers often experience high levels of community support-in contrast to mothers in White communities, which embrace a more individualist approach to family life (Collins 2002; Dow 2019)-which may promote greater subjective well-being. Black mothers also spend more time in the company of their children (Nomaguchi et al. 2022) than White mothers, which has been associated with greater happiness among parents (Negraia and Augustine 2020). More broadly, these findings also indicate that parental status does not play a role in Black-White differences in women’s happiness.

For men, we found that parental status also did not differentiate the happiness of Whites, perhaps because White fathers share less responsibility for more time-intensive and stressful caregiving than their partners (Musick et al. 2016). An alternative set of explanations, which are informed by and evoked in studies showing that the parental happiness gap has grown smaller (Herbst and Ifcher 2016; Preisner et al. 2020), are that the relative happiness advantage of men without children may have declined in the context of growing social disconnectedness, which parenthood helps buffer. At the same time, the happiness of men with children has grown as gendered norms around fathers’ caregiving have allowed fathers to experience more time in play, leisure, and other enjoyable family activities (Negraia et al. 2018).

For Black men, those with children were substantially more likely to report being very happy, and far less likely to report being not very happy, than their nonparent male counterparts. These results suggest that fathering is a far more salient experience for Black men than prior research has recognized. Results also extend a handful of ethnographic studies on lower income, generally noncustodial Black fathers (who are of note far more involved with their children than commonly assumed; Abdill 2018), which indicate that Black men may subscribe to a different view of fatherhood borne out of structural barriers that have historically hindered Black fathers from providing financially in the same way as White fathers (Bloome 2014). Specifically, Black fathers reject traditional notions of the package deal, in which satisfaction from fathering is derived from one’s ability to financially provide (Townsend 2002) and instead endorse a model of “relational fathering” or “new package deal” that celebrates the joys of fathering (see Edin and Nelson 2013). For example, as many of the men in the study by Edin and Nelson (2013) recounted, fatherhood “made life worth living,” children were viewed as the ultimate gift, and many of the banal aspects of basic care in which White fathers engage less frequently than White mothers—such as teaching children and helping them dress—were described as “priceless and a treasure any man would want to claim” (p. 221). In this way, these findings also serve to contradict stereotypical notions of Black fathers as being uninterested in fathering. More broadly, these findings also indicate that parental status does not explain Black men’s lower levels of happiness compared with White men’s, as observed in prior studies (e.g., Cummings 2020; Iceland and Ludwig-Dehm 2019).

Of course, at this time, many of the inferences based on these patterns of results are conjecture. It remains unclear how Black mothers blunt the potentially negative impact that “mothering while black” (Dow 2019) has on their subjective well-being or why fathering has such a positive impact on Black men. However, this study underscores the importance of exploring such questions in future research. At the same time, this study has several other limitations that should be noted. First, the validity and reliability of self-assessed generalized measures of happiness, including the happiness measure the GSS, continue to be debated. Some have argued that a more nuanced scale of happiness is preferable (Lyubomirsky and Lepper 1999). Others argue in support of a conceptually distinct way of measuring well-being through momentary measures (Negraia and Augustine 2020). Future studies should therefore also replicate the present study using other measures of happiness. At the same time, the use of the GSS measures provide a strong connection to past research on happiness, and our within-race estimation procedure accounts for race differences in the interpretation and conceptualization of happiness that challenge reliability.

Second, we also must acknowledge that it is likely that the patterns we observed are further differentiated by adults’ education, income, and marital status, as well as characteristics of parents’ children (e.g., ages, gender). Although an exploration of such factors is beyond the scope of the present study, and in many cases is limited by small sample sizes, particularly among Black fathers, future studies based on other data should consider these sources of variability as well. Last, consistent with prior research, we focused on parents who were coresidential and caring for minor children. Yet the experiences of nonresidential parents, and particularly of fathers, are also important to recognize, as highlighted in recent ethnographic accounts of minority fathers, and should be considered more carefully in future research as well, as should the experiences of other parents, such as step and social parents as well as parents who are empty nesters or caring for household adult children. Doing so, however, would also require other data.

In sum, the aim of this study was to address an important question that had yet to be answered: whether parenting (vs. not caring for minor household children) is negatively associated with the happiness of Blacks more so than that of Whites. Our results indicated a surprising pattern of results. Among women, White mothers were less happy than female nonmothers, but this was not the case for Black women. These results suggest that Black mothers’ levels of happiness were resilient to the numerous well-documented challenges they face protecting and promoting the welfare of their children. For men, Black fathers were far more likely to be happy than their nonparent counterparts, although this was not true for White men, for whom we did not observe any differences in happiness by parental status. These results highlight the profundity of the father role for Black men and controvert much conventional thinking and stereotyping and Black men’s experiences of fatherhood.

Miscitation in Psychology: About 19% of citing claims either failed to include important nuances of results (9.3%) or completely mischaracterized findings from prior research altogether (9.5%)

Cobb, C. L., Crumly, B., Montero-Zamora, P., Schwartz, S. J., & Martínez, C. R., Jr. (2023). The problem of miscitation in psychological science: Righting the ship. American Psychologist, Feb 2023. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001138

Abstract: Scholarly citation represents one of the most common and essential elements of psychological science, from publishing research, to writing grant proposals, to presenting research at academic conferences. However, when authors mischaracterize prior research findings in their studies, such instances of miscitation call into question the reliability and credibility of scholarship within psychological science and can harm theory development, evidence-based practices, knowledge growth, and public trust in psychology as a legitimate science. Despite these implications, almost no research has considered the prevalence of miscitation in the psychological literature. In the largest study to date, we compared the accuracy of 3,347 citing claims to original findings across 89 articles in eight of top psychology journals. Results indicated that, although most (81.2%) citations were accurate, roughly 19% of citing claims either failed to include important nuances of results (9.3%) or completely mischaracterized findings from prior research altogether (9.5%). Moreover, the degree of miscitation did not depend on the number of authors on an article or the seniority of the first authors. Overall, results indicate that approximately one in every 10 citations completely mischaracterizes prior research in leading psychology journals. We offer five recommendations to help authors ensure that they cite prior research accurately.

Impact Statement: This article suggests that approximately one in every 10 citations across leading psychology journals is inaccurate. Such instances of miscitation may call into question the reliability and credibility of scholarship within psychological science. Scholars in psychology should be careful to ensure that they cite and characterize findings from prior research accurately in their studies.