Whose is the Conventional Thought?

Natasha Quadlin, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, UCLA

Abstract: When people form beliefs in social life, they often calibrate their own thinking against what they anticipate “most people” think about an issue. Although prior research has demonstrated the importance of these inferences, scholars have yet to examine who constitutes “most people.” Given persistent inequalities in American society that advantage White men at the expense of other social groups, we hypothesize that White men are the imagined actor in mind when thinking about “most people’s” beliefs, thus reflecting and reinforcing existing patterns of inequality. In this article, we test these ideas using an original, nationally representative survey experiment (N = 2,089) in which we adapt 64 core attitudinal items from the General Social Survey. One group of respondents answered these questions from the perspective of most people, while others answered from the perspective of designated race-gender groups. We find strong and consistent evidence that White men are not seen as the standard-bearers for most social issues. I will explain who constitutes “most people” in this talk, and will present quantitative and qualitative evidence to help explain our empirical patterns.

Natasha Quadlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. She also is a faculty fellow in the California Center for Population Research. Professor Quadlin’s research focuses on social inequality in the contemporary United States. She is especially interested in topics such as the social and economic dynamics of gender inequality; inequality in access and returns to higher education; and debt and the economics of higher education. Her research has appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Social Psychology Quarterly, Journal of Marriage and Family, and other outlets. Professor Quadlin’s first book, WHO SHOULD PAY? Higher Education, Responsibility, and the Public, co-authored with Brian Powell of Indiana University, examines Americans’ views regarding how parents, students, and government should contribute to the funding of college.

Professor Quadlin is an Associate PI for Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), an initiative that enables researchers to field experiments using high-quality population-based samples. She also is a member of the Technical Review Panel for the ongoing High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 2022 (HS&B:22), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. She is an elected council member of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility. Professor Quadlin has received numerous honors for her research, including the Doris Entwisle Early Career Award from the ASA Section on Sociology of Education; the Devah Pager Outstanding Article Award from the ASA Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility; the Distinguished Article Award from the ASA Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender; the James Coleman Award for Best Article from the ASA Section on Sociology of Education; and the Lupia-Mutz Outstanding Publication Award from Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. She is a former visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City (2022-23 cohort) and is a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Award (2024-29 cohort). Professor Quadlin was born in Los Angeles but raised in Indiana. She received a Ph.D. in sociology, M.S. in applied statistics, and M.A. in sociology, all from Indiana University, and B.S. in social policy from Northwestern University.

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