8e99aa54fe47daf8…

Preprint
ID: 5e15e5d55ad14f001ba14b532,974 bytesFirst seen Jun 24, 20261 collection

Fields

NameValue
abstractDescriptive representation in public goods provision is associated with enhance services, and increased institutional trust amongst minorities. Nonetheless, whether such representation shapes majority citizens’ attitudes towards minorities is unclear. Building on the representative bureaucracy and intergroup contact literatures, I develop a theory of prejudice reduction through descriptive representation, which I test with a natural experiment leveraging the random assignment of Jewish patients to Arab doctors across 21 medical clinics in Israel. I demonstrate that representative institutions facilitating intergroup contact between doctors and patients improve majority-group perceptions of minorities. Contact with an Arab doctor reduces Jewish patients’ social distance preference towards Arabs by approximately a fifth of a standard deviation, and increases Jewish patients’ perceptions about the feasibility of peace by approximately a tenth of a standard deviation. My theory and evidence demonstrate how descriptive representation in public goods provision can improve intergroup relations through a mechanism of positive intergroup contact.
abstractViews4148
approvedDate2020-01-08T19:27:24.488Z
assetFileNamev4.pdf
assetFileSizeBytes867491
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contentTypeWorking Paper
contentTypeId5ce663395846762193c9c430
doi10.33774/apsa-2019-jzwtg-v2
doiUrlhttps://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2019-jzwtg-v2
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keywords["Prejudice Reduction","Intergroup Contact","Descriptive Representation","Public Health","Natural Experiment"]
licenseId5cc9d9bf7d4e0000ac04ef27
publishedDate2020-01-08T19:27:24.501Z
statusPUBLISHED
statusDate2020-01-08T19:27:24.502Z
subjectId5e68cb1bd1f19d49ce3ac752
submittedDate2020-01-08T14:27:09.150Z
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titleREDUCING PREJUDICE THROUGH DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION: Evidence From A Natural Experiment in Israeli Medical Clinics
version2
vornull
webLinks[]

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Appears in 1 collection

cambridge-up/open-engage1 version · Jun 24, 2026

Full hash:8e99aa54fe47daf8d5cd4416d8a3e3703e50acdb678ecefb7426af6766c5fbb1