Biography: Marissa Thompson is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the role of education in shaping disparate outcomes over the life-course. Marissa’s current research investigates, for example, parental preferences regarding school segregation, the causal effects of first-dollar scholarship policies on college access, and the role of genetic ancestry tests in racial boundary-making processes. She employs a range of methods in her work, including quantitative methods, survey experiments, and both computational and qualitative analyses of text data.

Abstract: How do genetic ancestry tests (GATs) affect Black Americans’ beliefs about when others should – or should not – identify as Black? Using two survey experiments that integrate causal inference with computational text analysis, we disentangle the effects of GAT results, setting, and prior identification on racial classifications and evaluations. We find that respondents have an increased likelihood of approving of a person’s decision to identify as Black and of classifying them as Black if that person has higher levels of GAT-measured Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Further, we identify meaningful gaps between the responses made by respondents themselves and their perception of the typical response made by members of their own racial group; these patterns are consistent with broad pluralistic ignorance towards the social rules governing racial classifications and evaluations. Finally, free text responses reveal a range of strategies used in evaluations. We find that the aspects that affect approval and evaluations differ from those that affect classifications; respondents selectively integrate different sources of information, including GAT results, via a dual classification and evaluation process which we term racial contextualism.