Do daughters change politicians’ minds? New study finds little evidence in Finland

In “Politicians and Daughters: A Large-Sample Preregistered Multiverse Test”, accepted for publication in the Journal of Politics, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Jaakko Meriläinen (all Stockholm School of Economics) and Janne Tukiainen (University of Turku) revisit the question at scale, examining the policy views of some 8,500 candidates in the 2017 Finnish municipal elections.

 

The authors find little​ support for the hypothesis in their sample of Finnish local politicians. “We don’t see meaningful shifts in politicians’ positions on issues like gender equality, redistribution, gay and lesbian rights, or the environment,” says Jaakko Meriläinen.

 

The analysis was preregistered and carried out as a multiverse. Instead of reporting a single specification, the authors estimate multiple defensible combinations of analytical choices and report the full distribution of results.

 

Dreber and Johannesson, who last year published a book on credibility in social science research entitled "The Credibility Gap: Evaluating and Improving Empirical Research in the Social Sciences", note that this type of analysis is the state of the art for generating reliable results.

 

Read the article here.