Congratulations! I look forward to citing it!

Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026. Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.

Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics!

Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper.

More soon!

Don’t know if it’s still there, but several years ago SPSP had one that was available online

Congratulations!

Today in class I made a pun and the students laughed

I have done the impossible

Best part of this job students waving to you as they pass your office or on the way to class

Mayflower Movers

Good overall, very little damage (some cheap grad school furniture didn’t make it)

I have some water colors that my late grandmother painted and they did a great job moving them from WI to OH

Thank you!

Would love to learn there is a real reason! But yeah I don’t have one

Tbh I think it’s mostly vibe-based

Probably somewhere in the logic is that you can impute scores if you have that much data per person (and enough scale items)

There may be a better answer but I don’t remember a super strong argument one way or another

Working on a meta-analysis and my number 1 piece of advice for anyone else considering doing their first meta-analysis is that there ARE other types of studies that one can conduct… you don’t have to suffer

📢 PhD position in the @cognition-zurich.bsky.social at University of Zurich

I’ve been part of the lab for 7+ years, and it’s a genuinely collaborative and supportive place to grow as a researcher and do research on working memory and cognition 👇

We are recruiting a PhD researcher to study how flushed/poured medicines affect our water systems, and how to shift those behaviours - combining behavioural insights and applied environmental research

🔗 Full project details & how to apply: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Deadline: 28 April 2026

Ooh I like this one!!

Here is a link where you can download a version of a Qualtrics survey that already has the needed code for keystroke tracking built into it (code developed by Asher et al., 2026)

The survey was made by my student researcher, Luke Nelson

benjaminddouglas.com/code

Here is a link where you can download a version of a Qualtrics survey that already has the needed code for keystroke tracking built into it (code developed by Asher et al., 2026)

The survey was made by my student researcher, Luke Nelson

benjaminddouglas.com/code

Does anyone have a good recommendation for measuring political orientations internationally? Hoping to conduct a study across multiple countries and want my political affiliation questions to be relevant to each location

Thanks!

I’ll link it here for anyone who wants it once we can confirm that we understand how it works

I actually have a team of RAs implementing this into a survey right now (didn’t post about it cause I haven’t tested it myself yet and don’t yet know how to read the data)

Would be happy to share a survey where we implement it, once we are set up with the tool

Depends on what you mean by bot detection

I have a paper on data quality which might be helpful, but my guess is you are running into issues with AI

I am about try mouse movement detection in an upcoming paper for detecting AI, which is what platforms like CloudResearch use to detect AI

I’ve used motion sensing trap cameras before. Not super difficult to set up and can be found easily (Amazon sells them). They do take a fair amount of power, so you might want to search for ones that can plug in rather than use batteries

Bluesky, we need your help to count walrus! 🦭

Previously on "Walrus from Space", volunteers like you sifted through around 500,000 satellite images to support our conservation research.

Now we're asking the you to help us count the walrus in those images 👀

➡️ geohive.vantor.com/walrus/login

*screams in unemployed postdoc*
THE STUDENTS ARE THE BEST PART OF THIS ENTIRE FREAKING RIDICULOUS JOB. WHY WOULD YOU GET RID OF THE GOOD BIT?? They're kind, they're funny, they'll sniff out every hole in your knowledge like a pack of foxhounds given a scent to chase.

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 | Careers at UC San Diego

I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu

Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit!

Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

That sounds fantastic. I sometimes write to that score (in addition to when I play the game)

‪
🌳 Do you want to contribute to research on how humans perceive forests? Take this quick, anonymous 10-min survey 🌲

👉 www.biodiful.org#/forest

This will help us explore how people experience forest biodiversity!

Please share on 🦋 & tag @biodiful.bsky.social to reach more participants 🙏💚

🌐🌍🦤🦑🪴🍁🧪

Four more days left to apply for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Social Science Collaborartory.

For the right candidate, I'm upping the offer: I will double the supply of toy dinosaurs that come with this position 🦕

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

Karpf: "If you think Claude Code is a better social scientist than you, then you’re probably right. But that means, at some point, you stopped trying to answer interesting/puzzling questions and started trying to win the publish-the-most-articles race." davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

Still very cool!

In what event?