This paper asks how people form assumptions about who benefits from public policies and shows that concrete elements of policy design can change those assumptions. Using a pre-registered survey experiment, the author manipulates policy features (for example, whether a program includes a work requirement) and measures respondents’ assumptions about beneficiaries’ race and national origin and their policy evaluations. The study emphasizes that these design-driven assumptions influence policy attitudes even when respondents do not report stereotype-consistent beliefs.
Pre-registered survey experiment Assumptions about beneficiaries' race and origin Role of policy design (work requirement)
Data and methods
The study uses a pre-registered survey experiment in which respondents are exposed to policy descriptions that vary by design features (the abstract gives the example of a work requirement). The experiment elicits respondents’ assumptions about the likely beneficiaries of the policy (their race and national origin) and records respondents’ existing attitudes (including measures such as racial resentment) to examine conditional effects.
Main findings
The evidence reported in the abstract indicates that policy design elements significantly affect the assumptions respondents make about beneficiaries’ race and national origin. Those assumptions, in turn, shape respondents’ evaluations of the policy, conditional on their existing attitudes such as racial resentment. The author also reports that existing attitudes do not condition the effect at the assumption stage: even respondents who state they do not endorse racial stereotypes nevertheless infer that removing a work requirement makes a policy more likely to benefit Black people and immigrants.
- Design features (e.g., presence/absence of work requirement) alter assumed beneficiary race and origin.
- These altered assumptions mediate policy evaluations depending on respondents’ existing attitudes.
