Research

We conduct a novel experiment to investigate whether football superstars consistently receive more favorable evaluations than non-superstars. Engaging 500 participants from Prolific, we randomly assign them to evaluate the same football videos with either visible or obscured players. In the control group, where players are visible, superstars receive lower performance ratings than non-superstars, challenging common perceptions. This trend is more intensified in the treatment group, where obscured identities result in even lower ratings for superstars, relative to non-superstars, suggesting a diminished superstar premium. These findings provide causal experimental evidence contributing to the literature on evaluation bias and the superstar effect.

We employ a novel experimental design to investigate how gender operates through distinct mechanisms in evaluating professional success versus failure. Using advanced artificial intelligence computer-generated imagery and motion capture techniques, we manipulate the perceived gender of tennis players while maintaining identical performances. Involving 3,755 representative U.S. Prolific participants, our experiments reveal how gender transforms between serving as a reference point in success evaluation and becoming a source of attribution bias in failure assessment. Study 1 examines physically demanding successful performances, showing that evaluators appropriately use gender as a reference point for calibrating expectations based on relevant group-level differences. Study 2 investigates basic execution errors where such differences are irrelevant, uncovering how gender becomes a mechanism for discrimination: identical mistakes receive significantly different evaluations based solely on perceived gender - errors are judged more harshly when perceived as made by women and more leniently when perceived as made by men. These findings advance our understanding of when gender appropriately informs versus inappropriately biases performance evaluations, extending regulatory focus theory’s prevention-focus expectations and role congruity theory’s status beliefs to explain this contextual transformation. (Draft available upon request)

Previously limited to mechanical tasks, robots are increasingly performing tasks that require human-like cognitive and emotional capabilities. However, how these anthropomorphized roles impact perceived trustworthiness remains unclear. We examine when and why humans trust robots, using advanced AI-generated video simulations across three service industries. In a large online experiment (N = 2,309), we randomized the presence of robots, the task performed and human supervision. Our systematic investigation of task anthropomorphism establishes that robots performing mechanical tasks are trusted more than those performing thinking/feeling tasks requiring higher anthropomorphism. Our analysis of robot appearance demonstrates that physical design does not influence trust in fully-automated environments. Furthermore, we find that emphasizing human supervision mitigates the lack of trust associated with robotization. These findings extend the uncanny valley theory beyond physical appearance to cognitive and emotional anthropomorphism, challenge linear conceptions of anthropomorphism, and underscore the importance of human presence in fostering trust in service environments. Our results provide critical insights for creating more trustworthy and socially beneficial AI systems, suggesting that a gradual introduction of anthropomorphized AI into complex roles, combined with appropriate human supervision, can help organizations deploy robotic systems in ways that enhance rather than diminish service experiences. (Draft available upon request)

We study whether work practices adopted in recent history in agriculture influence the political empowerment of women in a European country. Focusing on Italy, we study the case of female rice weeders and their successful history of unionization and mobilization for better working conditions. Relying on an instrumental variable strategy to predict quasi-exogenous variation in rice production, we test whether the historical presence of female rice weeders predicts differences in measures of political empowerment during the second half of the XX century. We find that towns where rice production was historically relevant had higher support for divorce in the 1974 referendum, have more women in politics, and are more likely to have a nursery school. Our results suggest the importance of collective action of working women to achieve persistent female political empowerment. (Draft available upon request)