Opinion Science

#25: Geography of Bias with Eric Hehman

Nov. 23, 2020

Dr. Eric Hehman studies the geography of bias. Lots of research has looked at the prejudice that lives in an individual person’s head, but Eric looks at the average amount of bias in particular location. On average, some counties have more implicit bias than others, and some states have more bias than others. But what does it mean? That’s what Eric and I talk about this week!

Things we mention in this episode:

  • Zippia’s collection of fun maps, including Thanksgiving sides, pickle fandom, and sandwich preferences
  • Regional implicit biases are related to police use of force against African Americans in that region (Hehman, Flake, & Calanchini, 2018)
  • Inspiration for Eric’s focus on regional bias (Motyl et al., 2014; Rae & Olson, 2015; Rentfrow et al., 2013)
  • How same-sex marriage legislation affected anti-gay bias one state at a time (Ofosu, Chambers, Chen, & Hehman, 2019)
  • Validating region-based measures of bias (Hehman, Calanchini, Flake, & Leitner, 2019)
  • Searching for environmental features that relate a region’s level of bias (Hehman, Ofosu, & Calanchini, 2020)
  • The “bias of crowds” model of implicit bias (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017)


Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/geography-of-bias-with-eric-hehman/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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