Author: Karl Bates Page 4 of 18

Director of Research Communications, Duke University

Would You Expect a 'Real Man' to Tweet "Cute" or Not?

On November 16, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Field Research, Mathematics, Statistics

There’s nothing cute about stereotypes, but as a species, we seem to struggle to live without them.

In a clever new study led by Jordan Carpenter, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Duke, a University of Pennsylvania team of social psychologists and computer scientists figured out a way to test just how accurate our stereotypes about language use might be, using a huge collection of real tweets and a form of artificial intelligence called “natural language processing.”

Word clouds show the words in tweets that raters mistakenly attributed to Female authors (left) or Males (right). The larger the word appears, the more often the raters were fooled by it. Word color indicates the frequency of the word; gray is least frequent, then blue, and dark red is the most frequent. <url> means they used a link in their tweet.

Starting with a data set that included the 140-character bon mots of more than 67,000 Twitter users, they figured out the actual characteristics of 3,000 of the authors. Then they sorted the authors into piles using four criteria – male v. female; liberal v. conservative; younger v. older; and education (no college degree, college degree, advanced degree).

A random set of 100 tweets by each author over 12 months was loaded into the crowd-sourcing website Amazon Mechanical Turk. Intertubes users were then invited to come in and judge what they perceived about the author one characteristic at a time, like age, gender, or education, for 2 cents per rating. Some folks just did one set, others tried to make a day’s wage.

The raters were best at guessing politics, age and gender. “Everybody was better than chance,” Carpenter said. When guessing at education, however, they were worse than chance.

Jordan Carpenter is a newly-arrived Duke postdoc working with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in philosophy and brain science.

“When they saw the word S*** [this is a family blog folks, work with us here] they most often thought the author didn’t have a college degree. But where they went wrong was they overestimated the importance of that word,” Carpenter said. Raters seemed to believe that a highly-educated person would never tweet the S-word or the F-word. Unfortunately, not true! “But it is a road to people thinking you’re not a Ph.D.,” Carpenter wisely counsels.

The raters were 75 percent correct on gender, by assuming women would be tweeting words like Love, Cute, Baby and My, interestingly enough. But they got tricked most often by assuming women would not be talking about News, Research or Ebola or that the guys would not be posting Love, Life or Wonderful.

Female authors were slightly more likely to be liberal in this sample of tweets, but not as much as the raters assumed. Conservatism was viewed by raters as a male trait. Again, generally true, but not as much as the raters believed.

Youthful authors were correctly perceived to be more likely to namedrop a @friend, or say Me and Like and a few variations on the F-bomb, but they could throw the raters for a loop by using Community, Our and Original.

And therein lies the social psychology takeaway from all this: “An accurate stereotype should be one with accurate social judgments of people,” but clearly every stereotype breaks down at some point, leading to “mistaken social judgement,” Carpenter said. Just how much stereotypes should be used or respected is a hot area of discussion within the field right now, he said.

The other value of the paper is that it developed an entirely new way to apply the tools of Big Data analysis to a social psychology question without having to invite a bunch of undergraduates into the lab with the lure of a Starbucks gift card. Using tweets stripped of their avatars or any other identifier ensured that the study was testing what people thought of just the words, nothing else, Carpenter said.

The paper is “Real Men Don’t Say “Cute”: Using Automatic Language Analysis To Isolate Inaccurate Aspects Of Stereotypes.” You can see the paper in Social Psychology and Personality Science, if you have a university IP address and your library subscribes to Sage journals. Otherwise, here’s a press release from the journal. (DOI: 10.1177/1948550616671998 )

Post by Karl Leif Bates

Depression Screening Questions Seem to Miss Men

By Karl Bates

On November 10, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Medicine, Neuroscience

Women may be more likely to be diagnosed and treated for anxiety and depression not because they are, but because they’re more willing than men to honestly answer the questions used to diagnose mental health problems, a new Duke study finds.

Asking men about their drinking might identify more cases of the blues like this guy. (Blauwe Week 1936 advertisement against alcohol. From Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons)

Jen’nan Read, a Duke sociologist and lead-author of the study, said men seem to adhere to a societal stigma to remain “macho” and are less likely to open up about their feelings. Her findings appear in Sociological Forum available online now and will appear in print in December.

Read’s study examines connections between mental and physical health in both men and women and suggests that the criteria used to examine mental health should be expanded beyond depression to include questions on substance abuse, which is another form of expressing mental distress, and more common among men.

The study finds that while depression is often how women express problems with mental health, men do so by drinking alcohol. The Duke study found that questioning men about alcohol use is a better way to diagnose both mental and physical health problems.

“Depression gives a lopsided picture,” Read said. “It makes mental health look like a women’s issue.”

A common set of questions include asking how often people have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, felt sad, lonely or like ‘you couldn’t shake the blues.’

Jen’nan Read is a Duke sociologist

“It’s more acceptable for women to answer affirmatively to these questions,” Read said. “Men are less likely to say they have feelings of anxiety. Issues of masculinity lead many to mask their problems.”

The result is often missed diagnoses of mental health problems in men.

The study crunches data from the Aging Status and Sense of Control Survey, in which people answer questions about their mental and physical health, diet, family situation, access and use of health care and other life factors. The average of women surveyed is about 54, and the average age of men was about 51.

Read’s study found that both men and women suffering from poor mental health are likely to suffer physical problems as well, like high blood pressure, diabetes and other issues.

The study was conducted by Read, Jeremy R. Porter, a sociologist with the City University of New York – Brooklyn College, and Bridget K. Gorman, a sociologist at Rice University.

Guest Post by Eric Ferreri, Duke News and Communications

Walla Scores Grand Prize at 17th Annual Start-Up Challenge

By Karl Bates

On October 3, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Biomedical Engineering, Business/Economics, Computers/Technology, Data, Statistics

The finalists of Duke’s 17th Annual Start-Up Challenge have found time between classes, homework, and West Union runs to research and develop pitches aiming to solve real-world problems with entrepreneurship. The event, hosted last week at the Fuqua School of Business, featured a Trinity alum as the keynote speaker. Beating out the other seven start-up pitches for the $50,000 Grand Prize was Walla, an app founded by Judy Zhu, a Pratt senior.

Judy Zhu and the Walla team pose with their $50,000 check, which is giant in more ways than one.

Walla aims to create a social health platform for college students by addressing widespread loneliness and creating a more inclusive campus community. The app’s users post open invitations to activities, from study groups to pick-up sports, allowing students to connect over shared interests.

Walla is closely tied with Duke Medicine by providing data from user activity to medical researchers. User engagement is analyzed to supply valuable information on mental health in young adults to professionals. The app currently features 700 monthly active users, with 3000 anticipated within the next month, and many more as the app opens to other North Carolina colleges.

Tatiana Birgisson returned to Duke to talk about her own experiences creating a business while an undergrad that won the Start-Up Challenge in 2013. Birgisson’s venture, MATI energy drink, was born out of her Central Campus dorm room and, through the support of Duke I&E resources, became the major energy drink contender it is today, as a healthy alternative to Monster or Red Bull.

The $2,500 Audience Choice award went to Ebb, an app designed to empower women on their periods by keeping them informed of physical and emotional symptoms throughout the course of their cycles, and creating a community through which menstruating women can receive support from those they choose to share information with.

Tatiana Birgisson won the 2013 startup challenge with an energy drink brewed in her dorm room, now sold as MATI.

Other finalists included BioMetrix, a wearable platform for injury prevention; GoGlam, an application to connect working women with beauticians in Latin America; Grow With Nigeria, which provides engaging STEM experiences for students in Nigeria; MedServe; Tiba Health; Teraphic.

This year’s Start-Up Challenge was a major success, with innovative entrepreneurs coming together to share their projects on changing the world. Be sure to come out next year; I’ll post an invite on Walla!

devin_nieusma_100 Post by Devin Nieusma

Aging Gracefully, and Cheaply, in a Small Space

By Karl Bates

On September 23, 2016

In Animals, Biology, Lemurs, Medicine, Neuroscience

The old joke is, “We’ve cured cancer several times — in mice!”

But the trouble with our favorite lab animal is that they aren’t nearly as close to humans as we had hoped.

Researchers who are working on human longevity obviously need a model organism — they can’t keep their funding going for 100 years to see how a person dies. And other primates aren’t ideal, either; they’re also pretty long-lived and expensive to house, besides.

Mouse lemurs at a lab outside Paris eagerly lap up their calories. Sometimes it’s great being in the control group. (CNRS photo)

So what if you had a primate that was relatively short-lived, say 13 years tops, and quite small, say 100 grams, a bit bigger than a mouse? Behold the Mouse Lemur, Microcebus, the smallest member of the primate family.

In a pair of presentations Friday during the Duke Lemur Center’s 50^th Anniversary scientific symposium, gerontologists Fabien Pifferi of the French national lab CNRS, and Steven Austad, chair of biology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), made their arguments for how well “le microcèbe” might work in studying aging in humans.

Pifferi works at one of two mouse lemur breeding colonies in France, which is housed in an elegant old chateau in Brunoy, a suburb southeast of Paris. There, a 450-member breeding colony of grey mouse lemurs produces about 100 pups a year, and the scientists have devised many clever, non-invasive ways to test their physical and mental abilities as they age.

“It seems like their normal aging is very similar to humans,” Pifferi said. But about 20 percent of the tiny lemurs follow a different trajectory, marked by the formation of brain plaques, atrophy of the brain and cognitive declines. It’s not exactly Alzheimer’s disease, he said, but it may be a useful scientific model of human aging.

Aging, UAB’s Austad began, is already the number one health challenge on the planet and will remain so for the foreseeable future. We need a good research model to understand not just how to achieve longevity, but how to live healthy longer, he said.

Filbert, a grey mouse lemur, was born at the Duke Lemur Center in June 2013, weighing less than two cubes of sugar.

Citing some early studies on using calorie restriction and rapamycin to increase longevity, Austad said mouse lemurs may be “a mid-way model between mice and humans.”

The CNRS colony at Brunoy tried to replicate a study on calorie restriction and longevity that had yielded mixed results in other animals. The mouse lemurs in the experimental condition thrived.

“I saw this colony last year,” Lemur Center Director Anne Yoder said. “The one remaining control animal was old and feeble and sort of pathetic. The four calorie-restricted animals were bouncing around, they were glossy.” Though suffering age-related blindness at that point, they were very much alive and frisky, Pifferi added.

“I think the mouse lemur is a great intermediate to do these sorts of studies,” Austad said.

But, as you may imagine, some members of the lemur community who have dedicated their lives to preserving rare and critically endangered lemurs might struggle with the idea of breeding up mouse lemurs to use as lab animals, even if the tests are non-invasive. Nobody asked hostile questions, but the discussion is sure to continue.

Post by Karl Leif Bates

Beauty is in the Ear of the Beholder Too

By Karl Bates

On August 10, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Business/Economics, Guest Post

Just the suggestion that an African-American person is of mixed-race heritage makes that person more attractive to others, research from Duke University concludes.

Reece_image This holds true even if the people in question aren’t actually of multiracial heritage, according to the peer-reviewed study, published in the June 2016 issue of Review of Black Political Economy.

The simple perception of exoticism sways people to see multiracial blacks as better-looking, says study author Robert L. Reece, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Duke.

“Being exotic is a compelling idea,” Reece says. “So people are attracted to a certain type of difference. It’s also partially just racism – the notion that black people are less attractive, so being partially not-black makes you more attractive.”

Reece used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. He examined the results of in-person interviews of 3,200 black people conducted by people of varying races. The interviewees were asked a series of questions that included their racial backgrounds. The questioners then ranked each person’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the least attractive and 5 being the most attractive. The interviewees who identified as mixed race were given an average attractiveness rating of 3.74; those who identified as black were given a 3.47 score – a statistically significant difference that points to the power of perception, Reece says. (The study controlled for a number of factors such as gender, age, skin tone, hair color and eye color)

“Race is more than we think it is,” he says. “It’s more than physical characteristics and ancestry and social class. The idea that you’re a certain race shapes how people view you.”

And attractiveness matters. Previous research has drawn correlations between physical beauty and professional success.

Robert Reece is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Duke.

Reece’s findings bolster a viewpoint that lighter-skinned blacks are considered more physically striking than their darker-skinned counterparts. But his research also found that blacks with darker skin who identified as mixed-race were considered better looking than those with lighter skin who identified simply as black. This further emphasizes the power of suggestion, Reece says; being told a person is of mixed race – regardless of what that person looks like – makes them appear more attractive.

“It’s a loaded cognitive suggestion when you say ‘I’m not just black, I’m also Native American, for example,” Reece says. “It changes the entire dynamic.”

Reece tackled this topic to examine the connection between multiraciality and “color,” he says.

“People tend to assume that historical multiraciality is at least partially responsible for the broad range of color among black people,” he says. “I’ve even noticed some people in black communities casually using the terms “mixed” and “light skinned” interchangeably. So I wanted to begin an empirical investigation into the contemporary links between the two and how they combine to shape people’s life experiences. Attractiveness is one part of that.”

Guest post by Eric Ferreri

Turning Duke Experiences into Science Fair Gold

By Karl Bates

On May 13, 2016

In Biology, Cancer, Neuroscience, Students

Do we each have our own story about science fair? Mine is about that time my grandpa and I set fire to my parents’ garage while testing out the new corn stove we had built together. We were looking into cleaner fuels. It was a small fire, easily squelched, fortunately.

Katherine Yang presenting her poster

But in the rite of passage that is the science fair, two Duke-mentored high schoolers are not embarking on half-baked projects with non-scientific relatives like mine, but are instead blazing new trails in science with all of the high-end equipment and faculty mentoring that Duke has to offer.

Katherine Yang and Alisa Cui, of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, are presenting their results in Phoenix this week in Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), a prestigious annual science fair that convenes 1,700 of the best and brightest STEM students from around the world

Working in Qiu Wang’s group, Yang has discovered a potential new drug to treat cancer, focusing on a protein targeted called CARM1, which is known to cause breast and prostate cancers to grow uncontrollably.

Yang’s new molecule blocks CARM1. What’s more, in the process of narrowing her list of five candidates, she developed a new cell-based test that can inform the development of future screening tools for other CARM1 inhibitors.

Cui has worked in Jorg Grandl’s lab on the mechanism by which a family of proteins called Piezo ion channels allow cells to detect mechanical touch and eventually become desensitized to repeated stimulation and shut off. By recording the electrical activity of cells that express one type of Piezo, Cui determined that the channels do not use a particular type of shutdown mechanism that researchers had previously thought. Now, the group will move on to test another major mechanism.

Alisa Cui and her award-winning project.

On Friday, it was announced that Alisa had won a fourth place grand award in Cellular and Molecular Biology, which includes a $500 prize.

“I am very impressed by the impact Alisa made,” said Grandl, who is a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. “The data she collected helped starting a completely new line of research,” in understanding how these channels deal with repeated stimulations, such as vibrations.

Growing up, I was oblivious to the existence of international science fairs but my own experiences ignited a lifelong love for science. I can only hope that these young ladies felt something similar.

KellyRae_Chi_100 Guest Post by Kelly Rae Chi

Duke Robotics Gets an Arm and a Leg Up

By Karl Bates

On March 30, 2016

In Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Guest Post, Medicine, Students

There is a robot learning to be a nurse in the School of Nursing. And that’s not even the most interesting robotics project on Duke’s campus!

Duke’s newly formed Robotics Group showed off a wide range of projects underway March 28, during the first annual Duke Robotics Student Symposium. More than 25 speakers from four different universities and one industry-leading company took turns giving TED-style talks.

Assistant professor of nursing Ryan Shaw (Right) explains the robotic nursing platform to visitors during Monday’s robotics student symposium.

The day kicked off with a look at work being done at Aurora Flight Sciences which included videos of planes designed for human pilots being flown autonomously by the company’s “C3PA” hardware and software.

Faculty from Duke, NC State, NCCU and Clemson then took turns describing the work of their own labs, before breaking to visit the robotic nurse-in-training.

Kris Hauser, one of Duke’s new robotics professors, described the hurdles they’re working to overcome on the robo-nurse, such as pressure sensors that are too easily broken by robotic hands, flexible gears to ensure human safety that also make it impossible to know precisely where a limb will move, and human operators struggling to control multiple appendages in three dimensions in real-time.

Still, Hauser and his funders from the NIH hope that the robotic platform could eventually be used to treat patients in areas with dangerous disease outbreaks or in rural outposts with too few doctors.

The day wrapped up with Duke students talking about their own projects, with no shortage of interesting topics: Medical devices programmed to automatically zap tumors with lasers; tarantula-like robots designed to scale sheer faces of artificial and natural rock; drone systems developed for monitoring elephants in African refuges.

And, of course, the work being done to ensure tomorrow’s autonomous cars don’t run into one another — or anything else for that matter. Learn more about these projects here.

The day’s take-away message? Despite our short history, there’s a ton going on in the Duke Robotics group.

Guest Post by Ken Kingery, Pratt School of Engineering

Puhleeeeese Can We Win It All This Time?

By Karl Bates

On March 23, 2016

In Science Communication & Education, Statistics

The research analytics folks over at Thomson Reuters are once again running the “Metrics Mania” bracket challenge.

Cameron Crazies doing their thing.

They start with the 64 universities whose teams have made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and then slice and dice their academic publishing records pair-wise to see which of the best college basketball schools can also kick butt in the academic journals. The contest is based on Thomson Reuters InCites, an analytics site designed to allow institutions to measure research output and benchmark their performance against peers.

Surely, you’re not surprised to learn that Duke is always in the Final Four of Metrics Mania?

How about if I told you we LOST in the finals the last TWO YEARS IN A ROW?

In 2013, Duke made the Final Four. But in that first-ever contest, UC Berkeley beat Harvard by 0.01 points in the finals, which I guess is the Metrics Mania equivalent of a buzzer-beater.

Then in 2014, covered on this blog, we lost to Stanford in the final. (Mascot: anthropomorphized pine tree.)

The 2015 NCAA basketball championship was Duke’s fifth.

Last year — also covered here with waning enthusiasm — we lost to Harvard. (HARVARD?!) but at least our ballers brought home a sweet trophy.

Bitter? Naaaaah, not us. That would be unscientific.

So, what’s it gonna be this year, Thomson Reuters? What combination of measures will put is in our rightful place atop the bracket at the end? The final four face “Category Normalized Citation Impact,” then it’s on to “# of Hot Papers” to pick the winner. We can hardly wait.

My Final Four prediction: Cal, Duke, Michigan, Michigan State. (Remember, this is based on science, not basketball.) Winner? No idea.

Come on back for results right here in two weeks.

UPDATE _ April 6, 2016. Oh yeah, the tournament. We sort of lost track after Duke fell out of the basketball contest. Well, it turns out we fell out of the academic publishing contest too, falling to Yale in the second round over something called “average percentile.”

Let’s see here…

“Winners from this round are determined by the Percentage of International Collaborations. The % of International Collaborations is the number of International Collaborations for an institution divided by the total number of documents for the same entity represented as a percentage.”

The % of International Collaborations is an indication of an institution’s ability to attract international collaborations.”

So there you have it. Our first failure to reach the Final Four in four years. Cal Berkeley won it all for the second time, out-earning Wisconsin on Number of Hot Papers.

Later, Thomson-Reuters.

Post by Karl Leif Bates

Karl Leif Bates

A Link Between Stress and Aging in African-Americans

By Karl Bates

On March 14, 2016

In Cancer, Cardiology, Genetics/Genomics, Guest Post

A recent study finds that lifetime stress in a population of African Americans causes chemical changes to their DNA that may be associated with an increased risk of aging related diseases.

(Image: Rhonda Baer, National Cancer Institute)

Using a previously established DNA-based predictor of age known as the “epigenetic clock,” researchers found that a cohort of highly-traumatized African Americans were more likely to show aging-associated biochemical signatures in their DNA’s epigenetic clock regions at an earlier age than what would otherwise be predicted by their chronological age.

These chemical alterations to DNA’s epigenetic clock were found to be a result of hormonal changes that occur during the body’s stress response and corresponded to genetic profiles associated with aging-related diseases.

The study was performed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany, including Duke University adjunct faculty and psychiatrist Dr. Anthony S. Zannas. The findings were published in a recent issue of Genome Biology.

“Our genomes have likely not evolved to tolerate the constant pressure that comes with today’s fast-paced society,” says lead author Zannas.

Though it may come as no surprise that chronic stress is detrimental to human health, these findings provide a novel biological mechanism for the negative effects of cumulative lifetime stressors, such as those that can come with being a discriminated minority.

Epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors switch our genes on or off. The epigenetic clock is comprised of over 300 sites in our DNA that are subject to a certain chemical modification known as methylation, which physically prevents those sites from being expressed (i.e., turns them off). Conversely, areas within the epigenetic clock can also be de-methylated to turn genes on. Each methylation event can be thought of as a tick of the epigenetic clock’s metaphorical second-hand, corresponding to the passing of physiological time.

During times of stress, a family of hormones known as glucocorticoids becomes elevated throughout the body. These glucocorticoids cause the chemical addition or removal of methyl groups to areas of DNA that the authors found to be located in the same regions that comprise the epigenetic clock. What’s more, the specific changes in methylation were found to correspond with gene expression profiles associated with coronary artery disease, arteriosclerosis, and leukemias.

This link between stress, glucocorticoids, and the epigenetic clock provides evidence that lifetime stress experienced by highly traumatized African Americans promotes physiological changes that affect their overall health and longevity.

The authors make an important distinction between cumulative lifetime stress and current stress. A small number of instances of acute stress may result in a correspondingly small number of methylation changes in the epigenetic clock, but it is the cumulative methylation events from chronic stress that give rise to lasting physiological detriments.

Though the authors make no direct claims regarding the physiological effects of racial inequities prevalent in today’s society, the findings perhaps shed light on the health disparities observed between disadvantaged African American populations and more privileged demographics, including increased mortality rates for cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

Glucocorticoids become elevated during the body’s stress response and lead to changes in DNA methylation that promote the expression of genes associated with aging.
Illustration by Katy Riccione

Interestingly, the epigenetic effects of lifetime stress were blunted in individuals who underwent significant childhood trauma, suggesting that early trauma may trigger mechanisms of physiological resilience to chronic stress later in life. In other words, if racial minorities are more likely to face hardships during their upbringing, perhaps they are also better prepared to cope with the chronic stress that comes with, for instance, losing a job or ending a marriage.

Though the study relies on data from an African American cohort, Dr. Zannas believes that the same conclusions are likely applicable to other highly stressed populations: chronic stress leads to lasting changes in our epigenome that may increase our likelihood of aging-related diseases, while acute stress was not found to have any long-term epigenetic effects.

So a single tough calculus exam won’t shave years off of your life, but consistent 80-hour work weeks just may.

In a world where everyday stress is unavoidable, whether it be from the hardships faced as a minority or the demands of being a full-time student, what lifestyle choices can we make to limit the detriments to our health? Dr. Zannas emphasizes that the “solution is not to avoid all stressors, but to prevent excessive stressors when possible and to learn to live with unavoidable stress constructively.”

The study underscores the importance of stress management on our general well-being. Future research may highlight the direct chemical benefits to our epigenome that are afforded by mindfulness, psychotherapy, diet/exercise, and other modes of stress relief. “Learning to better cope with stress is the best way to reduce our physiological response to it and the resultant harmful effects.”

Guest Post by Katy Riccione, Ph.D. Candidate in Biomedical Engineering

In the Land of Fantasy, Inequality is Benign

By Karl Bates

On March 7, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Students

Cinderella went from scrubbing floors in tattered clothes to marrying her prince in a royal wedding.

Off they go to a hard day in the mines, whistling and smiling. (Except for Grumpy, but what do you expect?)

Off they go to a hard day in the mines, whistling and smiling. (Except for Grumpy, of course.)

Snow White’s seven dwarfs head off to the mines each day with a spring in their step and a song on their lips.

In Cars, an anthropomorphic Porsche named Sally finds her job as a lawyer too stressful so she moves to a working-class town where she finds an easier life.

Sally chucked it all, but she's still got a Porsche.

Sally chucked it all, but she’s still drives a Porsche.

These and other wildly popular movies that enchant children with magical tales of love, royalty, riches and happiness portray social class inequality in potentially harmful ways, a new Duke University study finds.

Sociologist Jessi Streib and two undergraduate students, Miryea Ayala and Colleen Wixted, watched all 36 G-rated movies that have grossed more than $100 million as of January 1, 2014, studying the characters in each to see what social class they represent and whether they scale the social ladder or fall off it. Many were Disney or Pixar movies from the last decade or so, while a few, like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, are considered generational classics.

The study found that the movies presented a less-than-nuanced view of social class, often focusing on up-from-the-bootstraps characters who reap huge social and economic rewards largely from hard work, moral fortitude, and playing by the rules.

Jessi Streib is an assistant professor of sociology.

“The big theme is that inequality is benign,” said Streib, an assistant professor of sociology. “Being poor isn’t a big deal. Being working class makes you happy. Anyone who wants to get ahead, and is ambitious and is a good person, can do so. And the rich happily provide for everyone else. Obviously, that’s not exactly how the world works.”

The study was published last month in the Journal of Poverty.

The study found a series of children’s characters who were economically top heavy. Of 67 main characters, 38 would be considered upper- or upper-middle class. Just 11 would be considered working class, and just three primary characters – or 4 percent of the total, would be considered poor by contemporary standards.

To compare, roughly 25 percent of American children live in poverty. And in real life, less than one-tenth of people in the lowest economic bracket rise to the top.

“In Disney movies, of course,” Streib noted, “They all do.”

The study also found that movies often minimize economic hardships. One example noted is Aladdin, the story of a young, homeless boy who befriends a princess named Jasmine. The two trade ‘horror’ stories, suggesting that Aladdin’s life on the streets is roughly equivalent to Jasmine’s struggles because servants tell her “where to go and how to dress.”

Streib’s paper excerpted this bit of Aladdin dialogue:

Aladdin: “The palace looks pretty amazing, huh?”
Jasmine, disappointed, responding about the palace where she lives: “It’s wonderful.”
Aladdin: “I wonder what it’d be like to live there, and have servants and valets.”
Jasmine: “Oh, sure. People who tell you where to go and how to dress.”
Aladdin: “That’s better than here. You’re always scraping for food and ducking the guards.”
Jasmine: “You’re not free to make your own choices.”
Aladdin: “Sometimes you feel so …”
Jasmine: “You’re just …”
Aladdin and Jasmine, simultaneously: “Trapped.”

Though these movies are fictional, their popularity does raise concerns about perpetuating myths related to inequality and the struggles lower-class people have climbing the ladder, Streib said.

“But would people really want to watch an honest movie?” she concedes? “Probably not.”

Guest Post by Eric Ferreri, News and Communications