6 - How Preferences Differ by Political Beliefs

Summary

This chapter shows that, even across our deepest political divides, we find little polarization of preferences on admissions and faculty recruitment. Breaking out participants by party, preferences differ, with Democrats favoring all underrepresented minority groups whereas Republicans are, statistically, indifferent toward non-whites and women (although they disfavor gender non-binary applicants). Most surprisingly, when we break out participants by whether they state support for, or opposition to, consideration of race in college admissions on a conventional survey question, both groups give preference to members of underrepresented minority racial/ethnic groups relative to whites, and to women relative to men, in our conjoint experiments. Preferences as revealed in holistic choices differ from those as revealed in standard surveys.