INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

A Small Amount of Funding Helps Novel Projects to Grow

IPR’s seed grant program will jumpstart six new research projects

 

Seven IPR faculty received seed grant funding to launch their research in new directions, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations.

A small committee of IPR fellows awarded six grants to IPR fellows Daniel Galvin and Chloe Thurston, Sandra Waxman, Silvia Vannutelli, Sylvia Perry, Eli Finkel, and Elisa Jácome. The award amount for the projects totaled $20,000.

“The funding—which came just at the right time—will permit us to get this fledgling collaborative project off the ground,” IPR psychology Sandra Waxman said about the funding.

Waxman’s research to understand students’ and non-profits’ social policy goals is just one of several interdisciplinary research projects funded by the grants.  

"The interdisciplinary focus of these projects fosters conversations and collaborations that cut across traditional academic boundaries and bring fresh perspectives to societal issues," said IPR psychologist Robin Nusslock, a seed grant committee member.  "A strength of the program is that it focuses on funding early career scholars to help them launch their research programs and careers." 

Below is a list of IPR-led projects that received grants.

The Politics of Industrial Policy in the United States

In new research, IPR political scientists Daniel Galvin and Chloe Thurston will investigate the politics of U.S. industrial policy, or the government’s efforts to shape the economy by targeting specific industries, since the early 20th century. It has been openly embraced by the Biden administration after falling out of favor for several decades. They will study issues like how political parties have influenced industrial policy and whether relative weakness of industrial policy in the U.S. can be simply be explained by shifts in political culture and the rise of “neoliberalism.”

Bringing Students’ Commitment to Social Justice into Closer Alignment with Non-Profits’/NGOs’ Aspirational Goals

Many college students want to make the world a better place. So, why do so many talented students, including those at Northwestern, choose careers that do not advance their commitment to social justice and change? To forge a stronger link between students’ social justice goals and career paths, IPR psychologist Sandra Waxman and Medill professor Candy Lee will survey Northwestern students about these commitments and their careers, as well as Chicago nonprofits about their social justice missions and obstacles to achieving them. They also plan to interview a handful of major for-profits to identify how they might align their social justice missions to better support student career goals. Ultimately, the researchers hope to develop programming for all three groups to support commitments to social policy and justice. 

Gender Gaps in Policy Knowledge 

Policy knowledge enables citizens to make informed decisions and evaluate politicians’ performance, ensuring accountability. IPR economist Silvia Vannutelli and her colleagues are using survey data to understand socio-economic heterogeneity in policy knowledge, by looking at Europe’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), a policy similar to the Biden Rescue Plan. Their preliminary findings show that most surveyed knew of the RRP but were not familiar with its details. Their seed grant will help fund an extended survey assessing who gets information about politics in households, who might be more willing to pay for policy information, and how policy knowledge affects trust and attitudes toward the European Union.

How Does Being Defensive and Bias Affect Prejudice?

Many companies have turned to DEI workshops to help their employees better understand their biases and reduce prejudice, but many of these fail due to employee attitudes. In their project, IPR psychologist Sylvia Perry and IPR graduate research assistant Jonathan Doriscar will explore how defensiveness, negative moral behaviors, and bias awareness affect prejudice and influence interpersonal relationships. The researchers will run a set of observational studies over Zoom investigating how White people respond in difficult conversations about personal and systemic racism. They will also study how participants’ responses influence the Black individuals with whom they will be discussing racism.

Overestimating the Social Costs of Changing Political Beliefs

Do you wonder what your family would think if you changed your political beliefs? IPR social psychologist Eli Finkel and Northwestern PhD student Trevor Spelman will launch a project to find out. Previously, they showed that people overestimate how much their fellow Democrats or Republicans would reject them for being persuaded by arguments from the opposite side. In all six of these studies, however, the fellow partisans were strangers. The new study will look at their family and close colleagues, instead. The researchers seek to reveal key factors driving changes in political belief and self-censorship in close relationships and to provide ways to enhance the quality of political discussions.

The Broader Effects of Mental Illness on Families and Peers

To deepen our understanding of the far-reaching effects of mental illness on families and peers, IPR economist Elisa Jácome and her colleagues will examine hospitalizations and deaths from mental illness, including overdoses and self-harm. With Swedish register data and rigorous econometric methods, they seek to estimate the causal effect of these events on the health, economic, and social outcomes of close family members and peers—like spouses, children, and co-workers, of people with mentally illnesses. This research can help shed light on the economic costs of mental illness to society, as well as the cost-effectiveness of specific interventions.

Published: February 16, 2024.