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In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Code Switch

How To Fight Racial Bias When It's Silent And Subtle

On how to interpret the study's implications

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

Florida is home to the most expensive race in the country this midterm election — one of the nation's closest and nastiest gubernatorial contests.

incumbent Republican governor Rick Scott is facing former Florida governor Charlie Crist, a Democrat. Both candidates are well-known, both are prolific fundraisers and outside groups are pouring millions of dollars into the race. It's all combined to make it one of the nation's closest and nastiest gubernatorial races.

On paper, Scott has a lot going for him. He's an incumbent, with nearly unlimited money, in a state that's finally in economic recovery. But after four years of chronically low approval ratings, his bid for re-election is turning out to be anything but easy.

Politics

Gov. Scott, Ex-CEO, Aims To Run Fla. Like A Business

Florida is a state almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans control the legislature and all the top state offices, but in the last two Presidential elections, Barack Obama mobilized Democrats and carried the state.

And Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor, is hoping to replicate that in this election.

At a campaign stop in a Miami suburb recently, Crist met with Marcela Parra, a college student upset about recent cuts in Florida's "Bright Futures" scholarship program.

"Four years ago, you would have qualified for a Bright Futures scholarship, back when I was governor, essentially," he says, as she agrees. "Now with Rick Scott and a change in policy, you don't qualify anymore."

Charlie Crist is the challenger in the race, but to Floridians, he's a familiar face. He was a Republican when he served as governor. But a lot has changed since then. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate, first as a Republican, and then as an independent. Now, Crist is a Democrat, running for a seat he left behind just four years ago.

YouTube

It's a remarkable political transformation — one the Scott campaign lampoons in TV ads. One ad shows Crist announcing his various campaigns: as a Republican, an independent and then a Democrat. "Flippin' unbelievable," says the voiceover.

Crist often paraphrases Ronald Reagan, saying, "I didn't leave the Republican party. It left me." And he quotes another Republican popular in Florida.

"Jeb Bush said it better than I could ever say it. He said, 'Today's Republican Party appears to be anti-women, anti-minority, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-education, anti-environment — the list goes on,' " he's said.

Crist is being outspent by Scott in the race, but has mounted his own relentless barrage of attack ads. Many hark back to Scott's tenure as head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., a hospital chain hit with what at the time was the nation's largest-ever fine for Medicare fraud.

YouTube

"Taxpayers and seniors got cheated," says the voiceover on one Crist ad. "But Rick Scott walked away with millions."

They're charges that were leveled against Scott when he first ran for governor. Scott overcame them in that race and is working to do so again, by turning them around and attacking Crist.

"In 2010, the Democrats attacked me. And I said, when I ran a company, I will take responsibility for the actions while I was the CEO," Scott said during the debate. "In contrast, Charlie's never taken responsibility for anything."

Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida, says after months of wall-to-wall negative ads, many voters are dazed and confused.

"If you're a person who doesn't really follow politics 24/7, you're having a very difficult time figuring which of these is telling the truth," MacManus says. "We have had more negative ads, longer. It's been almost non-stop."

Last week, in their first debate, Scott and Crist laid out their positions on a series of issues. On many there's a stark difference.

On the five-decade long Cuba embargo — a perennial Florida issue — Scott supports it. Crist wants to lift it. On gay marriage, Crist is for it. Scott opposes it and reminded debate viewers not so long ago, Crist did also. Crist supported a state ban on same-sex marriage but later said that position was a mistake.

It's All Politics

Now A Democrat, Ex-Florida Gov. Crist Tries To Get Old Job Back

"Charlie said he took that position for political expediency," Scott said in the debate. "So, my concern today is, what positions has he taken today for political expediency?"

It's a charge that fires up Republicans — many of whom feel betrayed by Crist's switch in political parties. But it's also aimed at independent voters who may wonder, after his political transformation, what exactly Charlie Crist stands for.

Crist's campaign, for its part, hopes to win over independents, but is putting much of its focus on getting Democrats out to vote.

Crist is one of the few Democrats running this election not distancing himself from President Obama; first lady Michelle Obama will be campaigning for him in Florida later this week.

2014 governors races

Midterm elections

Rick Scott

Democrats

Florida

Charlie Crist

Republicans

HBO has built a robust and popular online presence over the past couple of years with its app, HBO GO. But to get it — as is the case with many streaming services that offer television over the Internet — you've needed a cable subscription. In other words, HBO GO was an add-on for people who already had HBO, not an alternative way of getting shows for people who didn't. (Although it should be noted: Wide sharing of HBO GO logins with friends and family who don't have HBO has been an open secret that the network hasn't appeared to care about, particularly.)

But today, HBO Chairman and CEO Richard Plepler announced the news that fans of the network's programming but not of cable packages have been waiting to hear: Beginning in 2015, HBO will offer a streaming service to cord-cutters and other nonsubscribers on an a la carte basis. It should be noted that the announcement HBO released to the media does not explicitly say the service will be HBO GO (or that it won't), only that it will be "a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service." And, of course, it doesn't say how much the service will cost. It doesn't even say it will carry every HBO show, let alone what archival material will be available — HBO GO has a lot. Those who are currently jumping up and down and declaring their independence from their cable provider may or may not be as happy when more details emerge.

The move, though, would seem to be a big one, given that requiring a cable subscription is standard on many services besides HBO that provide streaming access to cable programming (without requiring episode-by-episode purchase through services like iTunes or Amazon). The announcement says HBO will "work with our current partners" and "explore models with new partners," but it seems inevitable that an arrangement like this will unsettle cable providers who have been able to use legitimate access to premium networks like HBO as one of the remaining barriers against cord-cutting, the practice of declining to have a cable subscription in favor of watching online. (Others remain, including live sports broadcasts on cable.)

Many observers have expected an eventual full or partial decoupling of premium programming — and perhaps all programming — from the cable television subscription model beyond what has already happened (remember, Emmy nominations are now going to shows like Netflix's Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards, which are television shows that never aired on either broadcast or cable television). How large a step in that direction the HBO service will represent remains to be seen, but some version of a service people have been demanding for a very long time is in the near, and increasingly complex, future.

What separates Americans the most?

Race ... religion ... gender ...

According to Shanto Iyengar, a political scientist at Stanford University, often the most divisive aspect of contemporary society is: politics.

Divided We Stand

"Unlike race, gender and other social divides where group-related attitudes and behaviors are constrained by social norms," writes Shanto — with co-author Sean J. Westwood of Princeton University — in the recently published report Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization, "there are no corresponding pressures to temper disapproval of political opponents. "

Political contentiousness — establishing differences and distinctions between people of opposing parties — is often encouraged. "In fact, political hostility toward the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate," the political scientists discovered. "Partisans therefore feel free to express animus and engage in discriminatory behavior toward opposing partisans."

The findings reveal that political partisanship influences decisions and behavior not only inside the voting booth, but outside it as well. Partisanship, the authors contend, "is a political and social divide."

Research shows: More and more residential neighborhoods are politically homogenous. Partisan politics has become a key indicator in interpersonal relations.There is a greater tendency by parents these days to raise objections to a son or daughter marrying someone who supports the opposing political party. "Actual marriage across party lines is rare," the report points out. "In a 2009 survey of married couples, only nine percent consisted of Democrat-Republican pairs."

Political Profiling

Apparently, political affiliation sometimes trumps racial preference.

The researchers asked 1,000 participants — some African-American, some white — to read through several resumes of high school seniors who were competing for scholarships. The resumes included certain racial cues, such as "president of the African-American Student Association," and certain political cues, such as "president of the Young Republicans."

Race was important, research showed. African-American resume-readers exhibited a preference — 73 percent to 27 percent — for African-American applicants. White readers also displayed a slight preference for African-American candidates.

But when it came to political preference, Democratic and Republican readers chose in-party applicants some 80 percent of the time — even if academic credentials were weaker.

"We were quite surprised at the outcome of the party versus racial divide comparison," Shanto tells NPR.

Conclusion

In the university's summary, Shanto says, "While Republicans view fellow partisans as patriotic, well-informed and altruistic, Democrats are judged to exhibit precisely the opposite traits."

When asked about ways to alleviate the conflict, Shanto tells NPR that his study "does not deal with mechanisms for reducing the divide."

So it's up to us. Maybe that's why we call it the U.S.

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The Protojournalist: An experimental storytelling project for the LURVers — Listeners, Users, Readers, Viewers — of NPR. @NPRtpj