Previous research has documented that the public often views women candidates through the lens of gender stereotypes. However, as much of this work draws on experimental designs and hypothetical candidates, we have less information about whether and how voters employ stereotypes in the face of real candidates for office. This project examines one important aspect of the impact of stereotypes on the fate of actual women candidates: whether gender stereotypes have a different influence on elections for different levels and types of offices. Previous research suggests that voters are more likely to apply male stereotypes and evaluate candidates differently as the level of office increases and as we consider executive versus legislative office. The research reported here draws on new data that capture voter attitudes and behaviors in real-world elections to test a series of hypotheses related to when and how gender stereotypes affect candidates for the U.S. Congress and governorships. In general, we find little evidence to support claims that voters stereotype women candidates differently when they seek different kinds of offices.

A significant body of previous research demonstrates that the public holds stereotyped views about the abilities and personal traits of women and men who run for office. However, because much of this work is based on experimental designs or hypothetical candidates, we have relatively little information about whether and how gender stereotypes matter in real election situations. In an effort to determine whether people draw on stereotypes in evaluating women in political life, we use data from a survey of people who experienced races for the U.S. House in 2010 in which women candidates ran against men. We analyze two sets of dependent variables—(a) abstract attitudes about women and men as candidates and officeholders and (b) vote choice in the actual House elections. In line with previous experimental work, we find that gender stereotypes are important to people’s abstract evaluations of candidates and election situations. However, we find little evidence that gender stereotypes matter to the same degree in shaping vote choice decisions involving actual candidates.

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The authors describe the importance of trust in health care, while noting with concern the documented decline in Americans’ trust in the medical system, its leaders, and to a lesser degree, physicians themselves. They examine a number of reasons for this decline, including both larger societal trends and elements that are specific to health care. They then link trust to medical professionalism, explaining why the ABIM Foundation has decided to champion trust as an issue in the coming years. Finally, they offer thoughts on the specific actions the ABIM Foundation may take, including the launch of a Trust Practice Challenge designed to uncover practices that are currently working to build trust in a variety of practice settings and health care relationships, and the exploration of potential avenues to combat medical misinformation.

Understanding the local environment of the metal atoms in salt melts is important for modeling the properties of melts and predicting their behavior and thus helping enable the development of technologies such as molten salt reactors and solar-thermal power systems and new approaches to recycling rare-earth metals. Toward that end, we have developed an in situ approach for measuring the coordination of metals in molten salt coupling X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and Raman spectroscopy. Our approach was demonstrated for two salt mixtures (1.9 and 5 mol % SrCl2 in NaCl, 0.8 and 5 mol % ZrF4 in LiF) at up to 1100 °C. Near-edge (X-ray absorption near-edge structure, XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra were measured. The EXAFS response was modeled using ab initio FEFF calculations. Strontium’s first shell is observed to be coordinated with chlorine (Sr2+–Cl–) and zirconium’s first shell is coordinated by fluorine (Zr4+–F–), both having coordination numbers that decrease with increasing temperature. Multiple zirconium complexes are believed to be present in the melt, which may interfere and distort the EXAFS spectra and result in an anomalously low zirconium first shell coordination number. The use of boron nitride (BN) powder as a salt diluent for XAFS measurements was found to not interfere with measurements and thus can be used for investigations of such systems.

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