M Abascal
Biographic Data
| ID | 55921 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Abascal |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Abascal |
| SIGNATURE | ABASCAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4102-9320 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 381 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Diversity and Prosociality in NYC Neighborhoods: Evidence from a Lost Wallet Experiment
Seen as Latino, Assumed Lower Class: Racialized Class and Immigrant Status Perceptions in the United States
Although racial and class stereotypes are intertwined, few studies have examined the degree to which racial perceptions are linked to assumptions about social class. Among Latinos, racial self-identities often do not align with racial classifications by others, complicating debates about their place in the U.S. racial order. This study draws on unique survey data in which respondents classify the race, immigrant status, and social class of people…
Who Counts as a “Person of Color”? The Roles of Ancestry, Phenotype, Self-Identification, and Other Factors
Use of the term people of color has grown. What factors do Americans weigh to classify others as people of color (PoC)? An original, preregistered conjoint experiment with two samples reveals that ancestry is the strongest predictor of classification as PoC. Self-identified race/ethnicity and phenotype also matter, though not as strongly. The results also refute the notion that all non-White Americans count equally as PoC: profiles with Black par…
Who Polices Which Boundaries? How Racial Self-Identification Affects External Classification
Cultural adaptation and demographic change: Evidence from Mexican-American naming patterns after the California Gold Rush
According to new assimilation theory, assimilation can entail not only the adoption, by immigrants, of the established population's cultural practices, but also the adoption, by the established population, of immigrants' cultural practices. However, empirical research on assimilation has either neglected adaptation on the part of the established population or identified only modest changes. We examine reactions to a massive and rapid inflow of im…
Getting the Race Wrong: A Case Study of Sampling Bias and Black Voters in Online, Opt-In Polls
Researchers are increasingly reliant on online, opt-in surveys. But prior benchmarking exercises employ national samples, making it unclear whether such surveys can effectively represent Black respondents and other minorities nationwide. This paper presents the results of uncompensated online and in-person surveys administered chiefly in one racially diverse American city-Philadelphia-during its 2023 mayoral primary. The participation rate for on…
Politics, not Vulnerability: Republicans Discriminated against Chinese-born Americans throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic
Asian Americans became targets of increasingly hostile behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. What motivated this? Fears of contagion arising from a behavioral immune system may have motivated hostility toward Asian Americans, especially among those Americans vulnerable to COVID-19. Additionally, stigmatizing rhetoric from right-wing figures may have legitimated anti-Asian behavior among those Americans who held stronger anti-Asian sentiments to …
Segregation
Greater Diversity or Fewer Whites? Disentangling Heterogeneity and Marginalized Group Share at Macro and Micro Levels
Scholarship claims that diversity undermines trust and cooperation. Critiques focus on studies' inability to discern diversity's causal effects. In fact, most studies are unable to distinguish diversity (i.e., mixture) and marginalized group share (e.g., percentage Black). The authors argue for preserving this distinction and identify obstacles to doing so. First, homogeneously disadvantaged communities are acutely underrepresented in North Ameri…
Latino Growth and Whites’ Anti-Black Resentment: The Role of Racial Threat and Conservatism
The size and especially the growth of the Latino population in the United States are associated with anti-Latino and anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings from a recent line of experimental work suggest that Latino growth may also be associated with Whites’ anti-Black attitudes. Racial status threat could account for this association if Whites view Latino growth as a potential challenge to their status within a multi-group system that includes Black…
Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets
Research has uncovered associations between skin color and myriad outcomes. What drives these associations? We develop a theoretical framework that synthesizes the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances. Skin color stratification should be conceptualized in historical, structural terms: as the result of unequal treatment and inherited (dis)advantage, that is, unequal resources transmitted by families with different skin tones. We …
Know It When You See It? The Qualities of the Communities People Describe as “Diverse” (or Not)
We explore what people mean by “diversity” when they use the term to describe real communities. “Diversity” can refer to multiple differences—ethnoracial, economic, and so on. It may also refer to multiple dimensions of the same difference, that is, heterogeneity or group representation. Analyzing a survey of Chicago-area residents, we ask: (1) When people describe a community as diverse, on which kinds of differences are they drawing? (2) Within…
Intervening in Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The Causal Effects of Factual Information on Attitudes toward Immigration
If preferences on immigration policy respond to facts, widespread misinformation poses an obstacle to consensus. Does factual information about immigration indeed affect policy preferences? Are beliefs about immigration's societal impact the mechanism through which factual information affects support for increased immigration? To address these questions, we conducted an original survey experiment, in which we presented a nationally representative…
Diversity and prosocial behavior
Immigration and globalization have spurred interest in the effects of ethnic diversity in Western societies. Most scholars focus on whether diversity undermines trust, social capital, and collective goods provision. However, the type of prosociality that helps heterogeneous societies function is different from the in-group solidarity that glues homogeneous communities together. Social cohesion in multiethnic societies depends on whether prosocial…
Durable Ethnicity
Contraction as a Response to Group Threat: Demographic Decline and Whites’ Classification of People Who Are Ambiguously White
How do members of dominant groups, like White people in the United States, react when their privileged social status is threatened, for example, by the prospect of numeric decline? Prior studies identify two sets of reactions: (1) White people identify more strongly with ingroup members, and (2) they withhold material and symbolic resources from outgroup members. This study explores another possibility: White people may alter the boundary around …
Tu Casa, Mi Casa: Naturalization and Belonging among Latino Immigrants
Previous studies reach contradictory conclusions regarding the relationship between residential concentration and naturalization. This paper tackles the impasse by exploring the pathways through which immigrant communities influence individual naturalization. Specifically, this study examines naturalization among Latino immigrants using the 2006 Latino National Survey linked to county data. Multilevel model results indicate that the county concen…
Partners or Rivals? Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century
Who Gives, Who Takes? "Real America" and Contributions to the Nation-State
Although service to the nation-state features in academic and lay understandings of patriotism, claims of patriotism are rarely examined alongside contributions to the nation-state. The present study examines four behaviors-military enlistment, voting, monetary contributions, and census response-to evaluate the claim that certain parts of the United States, and specifically the communities of "real America," contribute more than others to the cou…
Field Experiments Across the Social Sciences
Using field experiments, scholars can identify causal effects via randomization while studying people and groups in their naturally occurring contexts. In light of renewed interest in field experimental methods, this review covers a wide range of field experiments from across the social sciences, with an eye to those that adopt virtuous practices, including unobtrusive measurement, naturalistic interventions, attention to realistic outcomes and c…
Colored Perceptions: Racially Distinctive Names and Assessments of Skin Color
Scholars are increasingly employing skin color measures to investigate racial stratification beyond the dimensions of self- or other-classification. Current understandings of the relationship between phenotypic traits, like skin color, and racial classification are incomplete. Scholars agree that perceptions of phenotypic traits shape how people classify others; it remains to be seen, however, whether racial classification in turn shapes people's…
Us and Them: Black-White Relations in the Wake of Hispanic Population Growth
How will Hispanic population growth affect black-white relations in the United States? Research on intergroup relations operates within a two-group paradigm, furnishing few insights into multi-group contexts. This study is based on an original experiment that combines behavioral game and survey methods to evaluate the impact of perceived Hispanic growth on attitudes and behavior. Results reveal opposite reactions among blacks and whites. Whites i…
Love Thy Neighbor? Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Reexamined
According to recent research, ethnoracial diversity negatively affects trust and social capital. This article challenges the current conception and measurement of "diversity" and invites scholars to rethink "so-cial capital" in complex societies. It reproduces the analysis of Putnam and shows that the association between diversity and self-reported trust is a compositional artifact attributable to residential sorting: non-whites report lower trus…
A Holistic Approach to Language, Religion, and Ethnicity
Love Thy Neighbor? Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Reexamined
According to recent research, ethnoracial diversity negatively affects trust and social capital. This article challenges the current conception and measurement of "diversity" and invites scholars to rethink "so-cial capital" in complex societies. It reproduces the analysis of Putnam and shows that the association between diversity and self-reported trust is a compositional artifact attributable to residential sorting: non-whites report lower trus…
Us and Them: Black-White Relations in the Wake of Hispanic Population Growth
How will Hispanic population growth affect black-white relations in the United States? Research on intergroup relations operates within a two-group paradigm, furnishing few insights into multi-group contexts. This study is based on an original experiment that combines behavioral game and survey methods to evaluate the impact of perceived Hispanic growth on attitudes and behavior. Results reveal opposite reactions among blacks and whites. Whites i…
Contraction as a Response to Group Threat: Demographic Decline and Whites’ Classification of People Who Are Ambiguously White
How do members of dominant groups, like White people in the United States, react when their privileged social status is threatened, for example, by the prospect of numeric decline? Prior studies identify two sets of reactions: (1) White people identify more strongly with ingroup members, and (2) they withhold material and symbolic resources from outgroup members. This study explores another possibility: White people may alter the boundary around …
Field Experiments Across the Social Sciences
Using field experiments, scholars can identify causal effects via randomization while studying people and groups in their naturally occurring contexts. In light of renewed interest in field experimental methods, this review covers a wide range of field experiments from across the social sciences, with an eye to those that adopt virtuous practices, including unobtrusive measurement, naturalistic interventions, attention to realistic outcomes and c…
Colored Perceptions: Racially Distinctive Names and Assessments of Skin Color
Scholars are increasingly employing skin color measures to investigate racial stratification beyond the dimensions of self- or other-classification. Current understandings of the relationship between phenotypic traits, like skin color, and racial classification are incomplete. Scholars agree that perceptions of phenotypic traits shape how people classify others; it remains to be seen, however, whether racial classification in turn shapes people's…
Tu Casa, Mi Casa: Naturalization and Belonging among Latino Immigrants
Previous studies reach contradictory conclusions regarding the relationship between residential concentration and naturalization. This paper tackles the impasse by exploring the pathways through which immigrant communities influence individual naturalization. Specifically, this study examines naturalization among Latino immigrants using the 2006 Latino National Survey linked to county data. Multilevel model results indicate that the county concen…
Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets
Research has uncovered associations between skin color and myriad outcomes. What drives these associations? We develop a theoretical framework that synthesizes the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances. Skin color stratification should be conceptualized in historical, structural terms: as the result of unequal treatment and inherited (dis)advantage, that is, unequal resources transmitted by families with different skin tones. We …
Intervening in Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The Causal Effects of Factual Information on Attitudes toward Immigration
If preferences on immigration policy respond to facts, widespread misinformation poses an obstacle to consensus. Does factual information about immigration indeed affect policy preferences? Are beliefs about immigration's societal impact the mechanism through which factual information affects support for increased immigration? To address these questions, we conducted an original survey experiment, in which we presented a nationally representative…
Greater Diversity or Fewer Whites? Disentangling Heterogeneity and Marginalized Group Share at Macro and Micro Levels
Scholarship claims that diversity undermines trust and cooperation. Critiques focus on studies' inability to discern diversity's causal effects. In fact, most studies are unable to distinguish diversity (i.e., mixture) and marginalized group share (e.g., percentage Black). The authors argue for preserving this distinction and identify obstacles to doing so. First, homogeneously disadvantaged communities are acutely underrepresented in North Ameri…
Know It When You See It? The Qualities of the Communities People Describe as “Diverse” (or Not)
We explore what people mean by “diversity” when they use the term to describe real communities. “Diversity” can refer to multiple differences—ethnoracial, economic, and so on. It may also refer to multiple dimensions of the same difference, that is, heterogeneity or group representation. Analyzing a survey of Chicago-area residents, we ask: (1) When people describe a community as diverse, on which kinds of differences are they drawing? (2) Within…
Cultural adaptation and demographic change: Evidence from Mexican-American naming patterns after the California Gold Rush
According to new assimilation theory, assimilation can entail not only the adoption, by immigrants, of the established population's cultural practices, but also the adoption, by the established population, of immigrants' cultural practices. However, empirical research on assimilation has either neglected adaptation on the part of the established population or identified only modest changes. We examine reactions to a massive and rapid inflow of im…
Getting the Race Wrong: A Case Study of Sampling Bias and Black Voters in Online, Opt-In Polls
Researchers are increasingly reliant on online, opt-in surveys. But prior benchmarking exercises employ national samples, making it unclear whether such surveys can effectively represent Black respondents and other minorities nationwide. This paper presents the results of uncompensated online and in-person surveys administered chiefly in one racially diverse American city-Philadelphia-during its 2023 mayoral primary. The participation rate for on…
Durable Ethnicity
A Holistic Approach to Language, Religion, and Ethnicity
A Holistic Approach to Language, Religion, and Ethnicity
Us and Them: Black-White Relations in the Wake of Hispanic Population Growth
How will Hispanic population growth affect black-white relations in the United States? Research on intergroup relations operates within a two-group paradigm, furnishing few insights into multi-group contexts. This study is based on an original experiment that combines behavioral game and survey methods to evaluate the impact of perceived Hispanic growth on attitudes and behavior. Results reveal opposite reactions among blacks and whites. Whites i…
Love Thy Neighbor? Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Reexamined
According to recent research, ethnoracial diversity negatively affects trust and social capital. This article challenges the current conception and measurement of "diversity" and invites scholars to rethink "so-cial capital" in complex societies. It reproduces the analysis of Putnam and shows that the association between diversity and self-reported trust is a compositional artifact attributable to residential sorting: non-whites report lower trus…
Colored Perceptions: Racially Distinctive Names and Assessments of Skin Color
Scholars are increasingly employing skin color measures to investigate racial stratification beyond the dimensions of self- or other-classification. Current understandings of the relationship between phenotypic traits, like skin color, and racial classification are incomplete. Scholars agree that perceptions of phenotypic traits shape how people classify others; it remains to be seen, however, whether racial classification in turn shapes people's…
Tu Casa, Mi Casa: Naturalization and Belonging among Latino Immigrants
Previous studies reach contradictory conclusions regarding the relationship between residential concentration and naturalization. This paper tackles the impasse by exploring the pathways through which immigrant communities influence individual naturalization. Specifically, this study examines naturalization among Latino immigrants using the 2006 Latino National Survey linked to county data. Multilevel model results indicate that the county concen…
Partners or Rivals? Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century
Who Gives, Who Takes? "Real America" and Contributions to the Nation-State
Although service to the nation-state features in academic and lay understandings of patriotism, claims of patriotism are rarely examined alongside contributions to the nation-state. The present study examines four behaviors-military enlistment, voting, monetary contributions, and census response-to evaluate the claim that certain parts of the United States, and specifically the communities of "real America," contribute more than others to the cou…
Field Experiments Across the Social Sciences
Using field experiments, scholars can identify causal effects via randomization while studying people and groups in their naturally occurring contexts. In light of renewed interest in field experimental methods, this review covers a wide range of field experiments from across the social sciences, with an eye to those that adopt virtuous practices, including unobtrusive measurement, naturalistic interventions, attention to realistic outcomes and c…
Diversity and prosocial behavior
Immigration and globalization have spurred interest in the effects of ethnic diversity in Western societies. Most scholars focus on whether diversity undermines trust, social capital, and collective goods provision. However, the type of prosociality that helps heterogeneous societies function is different from the in-group solidarity that glues homogeneous communities together. Social cohesion in multiethnic societies depends on whether prosocial…
Durable Ethnicity
Contraction as a Response to Group Threat: Demographic Decline and Whites’ Classification of People Who Are Ambiguously White
How do members of dominant groups, like White people in the United States, react when their privileged social status is threatened, for example, by the prospect of numeric decline? Prior studies identify two sets of reactions: (1) White people identify more strongly with ingroup members, and (2) they withhold material and symbolic resources from outgroup members. This study explores another possibility: White people may alter the boundary around …
Intervening in Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The Causal Effects of Factual Information on Attitudes toward Immigration
If preferences on immigration policy respond to facts, widespread misinformation poses an obstacle to consensus. Does factual information about immigration indeed affect policy preferences? Are beliefs about immigration's societal impact the mechanism through which factual information affects support for increased immigration? To address these questions, we conducted an original survey experiment, in which we presented a nationally representative…
Latino Growth and Whites’ Anti-Black Resentment: The Role of Racial Threat and Conservatism
The size and especially the growth of the Latino population in the United States are associated with anti-Latino and anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings from a recent line of experimental work suggest that Latino growth may also be associated with Whites’ anti-Black attitudes. Racial status threat could account for this association if Whites view Latino growth as a potential challenge to their status within a multi-group system that includes Black…
Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets
Research has uncovered associations between skin color and myriad outcomes. What drives these associations? We develop a theoretical framework that synthesizes the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances. Skin color stratification should be conceptualized in historical, structural terms: as the result of unequal treatment and inherited (dis)advantage, that is, unequal resources transmitted by families with different skin tones. We …
Know It When You See It? The Qualities of the Communities People Describe as “Diverse” (or Not)
We explore what people mean by “diversity” when they use the term to describe real communities. “Diversity” can refer to multiple differences—ethnoracial, economic, and so on. It may also refer to multiple dimensions of the same difference, that is, heterogeneity or group representation. Analyzing a survey of Chicago-area residents, we ask: (1) When people describe a community as diverse, on which kinds of differences are they drawing? (2) Within…
Politics, not Vulnerability: Republicans Discriminated against Chinese-born Americans throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic
Asian Americans became targets of increasingly hostile behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. What motivated this? Fears of contagion arising from a behavioral immune system may have motivated hostility toward Asian Americans, especially among those Americans vulnerable to COVID-19. Additionally, stigmatizing rhetoric from right-wing figures may have legitimated anti-Asian behavior among those Americans who held stronger anti-Asian sentiments to …
Segregation
Greater Diversity or Fewer Whites? Disentangling Heterogeneity and Marginalized Group Share at Macro and Micro Levels
Scholarship claims that diversity undermines trust and cooperation. Critiques focus on studies' inability to discern diversity's causal effects. In fact, most studies are unable to distinguish diversity (i.e., mixture) and marginalized group share (e.g., percentage Black). The authors argue for preserving this distinction and identify obstacles to doing so. First, homogeneously disadvantaged communities are acutely underrepresented in North Ameri…
Cultural adaptation and demographic change: Evidence from Mexican-American naming patterns after the California Gold Rush
According to new assimilation theory, assimilation can entail not only the adoption, by immigrants, of the established population's cultural practices, but also the adoption, by the established population, of immigrants' cultural practices. However, empirical research on assimilation has either neglected adaptation on the part of the established population or identified only modest changes. We examine reactions to a massive and rapid inflow of im…
Getting the Race Wrong: A Case Study of Sampling Bias and Black Voters in Online, Opt-In Polls
Researchers are increasingly reliant on online, opt-in surveys. But prior benchmarking exercises employ national samples, making it unclear whether such surveys can effectively represent Black respondents and other minorities nationwide. This paper presents the results of uncompensated online and in-person surveys administered chiefly in one racially diverse American city-Philadelphia-during its 2023 mayoral primary. The participation rate for on…
Who Counts as a “Person of Color”? The Roles of Ancestry, Phenotype, Self-Identification, and Other Factors
Use of the term people of color has grown. What factors do Americans weigh to classify others as people of color (PoC)? An original, preregistered conjoint experiment with two samples reveals that ancestry is the strongest predictor of classification as PoC. Self-identified race/ethnicity and phenotype also matter, though not as strongly. The results also refute the notion that all non-White Americans count equally as PoC: profiles with Black par…
Who Polices Which Boundaries? How Racial Self-Identification Affects External Classification
Diversity and Prosociality in NYC Neighborhoods: Evidence from a Lost Wallet Experiment
Seen as Latino, Assumed Lower Class: Racialized Class and Immigrant Status Perceptions in the United States
Although racial and class stereotypes are intertwined, few studies have examined the degree to which racial perceptions are linked to assumptions about social class. Among Latinos, racial self-identities often do not align with racial classifications by others, complicating debates about their place in the U.S. racial order. This study draws on unique survey data in which respondents classify the race, immigrant status, and social class of people…
Sociology (18 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Ethnic group (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (8 works)