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Judgements of bias vary with observers’ political ideology and targets’ characteristics

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Whether conservatives or liberals have higher sensitivity towards underrepresentation depends on the target of the judgement: conservatives are shown to have higher thresholds than liberals for indicating bias against traditionally nondominant groups, whereas liberals have higher bias thresholds regarding dominant groups. However, such relationships weaken when the targets of bias are unknown or ideologically irrelevant to the observer, which emphasizes the context-dependency of such bias judgements.

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Fig. 1: Bias thresholds vary with observers’ political ideology and the target of judgments.

References

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This is a summary of: Kim, J. & Zauberman, G. The relationship between political ideology and judgments of bias in distributional outcomes. Nat. Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01779-3 (2024).

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Judgements of bias vary with observers’ political ideology and targets’ characteristics. Nat Hum Behav 8, 203–204 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01780-w

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