Round-up: Does inter-group contact reduce prejudice?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Income and Fertility of Female College Graduates in the United States. Zhengyu Cai and John Winters examine the effect of income and fertility on female college graduates in the US. Using methods that home-in on causality, they find that income has an unambiguously negative effect on fertility. However, since it is relatively small in magnitude, the recent fertility decline cannot be primarily explained by higher female incomes.

Psychological Features of Extreme Political Ideologies. Jan-Willem van Prooijen and André Krouwel review the literature on the psychology of people with extreme political views (both left and right). They conclude that such people tend to be psychologically distressed, overconfident and intolerant of other groups. They also tend to have a simple black-and-white view of the social world. These traits predispose them to conflict.