dissertation: Deconstructing Workplace bias
My dissertation, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines the effects of partnership status (whether a job candidate is married or single) on perception, salary, and employment outcomes for mothers and fathers.
I was recently honored to win the 2017 Raymond V. Bowers Award for excellence in graduate student research in the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona for the manuscript based on the experimental part of my dissertation research (currently in preparation for submission), where I
recreated theoretically relevant aspects of the hiring situation while controlling for confounding variables that make causal inference difficult in natural settings.
In the experiment, undergraduate volunteers rated a pair of ostensibly real candidates for a job position. The two candidates were equally qualified, of the same gender (male or female) and same parental status (children or no children), and varied only on partnership status (married or single).
The experimental results revealed that partnership status operates as moderating characteristic that significantly interacts with gender and parenthood status. Specifically, I found that while married
women are discriminated against for being mothers, and married men reap benefits for being fathers in terms of a wide range of workplace outcomes, the gender gap disappears when mothers and fathers are known to be single. Furthermore, perceived competence and commitment mediate the relationship between the gender and parenthood interaction and other workplace outcomes for the subsample of married applicants, but not for the subsample of single applicants.
In addition to the experiment, I interviewed 40 single parents about their workplace experiences. Preliminary interview analyses align with my experimental findings. Single mothers tend to have positive perceptions on how they are treated in their current jobs – many feel valuable, respected, and report having career opportunities. However, one of the prominent findings from the qualitative portion of my dissertation is that single parents, regardless of gender, deliberately gravitate towards careers and job positions that allow maximum flexibility. Some of the most seemingly successful single working mothers were upfront about their status and necessary accommodations in their hire interviews, while emphasizing their dedication to career and quality of work. The interviews with single fathers reveal similar experiences to those of single mothers – they tend to self-select into jobs that allow flexible work arrangements.
Published work
The Implications of Social Neuroscience for Expectation States Theories
Melamed, David and Jurgita Abromaviciute. 2013. “The Implications of Social Neuroscience for Expectation States Theories.” Sociology Compass.
In this article, we review recent findings from the social neuroscience literature that link status differentiation between individuals to neurological processes. Our underlying assumption and implicit argument is that social neuroscience research is useful for both bolstering and corroborating some core sociological claims. In addition, it sheds light on some of the ongoing theoretical debates within sociology. We highlight and discuss the following four social neuroscience findings: 1) neural activity varies depending on whether an individual is interacting with someone of a lower, equal, or higher status, 2) there is an interplay between status and affect such that status processes may promote the control of emotional reactions, 3) both men and women are neurologically attuned to high status opposite sex conspecifics, and, 4) status differences are processed in the same region of the brain as numerical or size differences, and this region is responsible for the coding of information along continuous dimensions. We analyze and discuss the implications of these points with respect to sociological theories.
R&R
Which Resources Matter for What Impacts? Resource Mobilization and Impacts of Local SMOs in Rural Lithuania, 2004-2006
-with Ryan Seebruck and Bob Edwards, 2017, resubmitted in Journal of Rural Studies
Using original data collected in 2004 and 2006 we analyze three types of organizational impacts of rural community organizations: issue awareness, local support, and media coverage. We find that different resources matter differently for the organizational impacts examined. Regarding human resources, the ability to mobilize people for activities as well as the number of dedicated volunteers supersede the sheer number of members when predicting issue awareness. Similarly, for material resources, an organization’s ability to maintain diversified funds is more important than the sheer size of the annualized budget in predicting both issue awareness and local support. Social resources have no effect on issue awareness, yet they related negatively to gaining support and positively to garnering media coverage. In conclusion of our findings, we call for differentiation between the unique relationships of resource types and various impacts as well as making distinctions within specific types of resources.
other projects
The Effects of Gender and Perceived Parental Expectations on Adolescent Expectations for Graduate and Advanced Degrees
-with Kendra Thompson-Dycke, 2017, in preparation for submission
Using data from the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study, we examine the role of perceived maternal and paternal expectations for educational attainment on students’ own expectations for how far in school they expect to go. In addition to exploring gender effects, our study contributes to education scholarship by focusing on expectations for advanced-degree attainment as a new differentiating educational status mark in the “college-for-all” era. Our results suggest that both parents’ perceived expectations are important. However, perceived (or second-order) maternal expectations have a significantly stronger effect on girls’ than boys’ expectations for advanced degree attainment. Fathers’ second-order expectations do not have the same boosting effect for boys; however, the effect of fathers’ second-order expectations becomes stronger when fathers are highly educated.
