Professors John W. Patty and Elizabeth Maggie Penn of Emory College of Arts and Sciences will join 15 leading social science researchers as visiting scholars with the Russell Sage Foundation for the coming academic year.
The foundation has a history of funding research that influences social policy and leads to reforms in areas such as health care and labor laws.
The prestigious opportunity will allow the husband-and-wife team, both of whom hold joint appointments in the Departments of Political Science and Quantitative Theory and Methods, to engage with other elite scholars who are committed to the foundation’s mission of improving social and living conditions in the U.S.
They also will conduct new research, examining how algorithms and systems that classify people — think credit scores and standardized tests — shape behavior and outcomes. Patty and Penn expect to complete a book based on the work, along with public scholarship that discusses policy concerns and recommendations.
“We argue that a lot of the algorithmic work typically takes people’s fundamental characteristics as fixed, yet we know people change behaviors,” says Penn, whose research focuses on social choice theory, political institutions and intergroup dynamics. “Once you account for that, you see that we need new notions of algorithmic fairness.”
For instance, the algorithms that develop credit scores may induce some people to be more credit worthy and others to be less so. That behavior challenges the model’s ability to quantify creditworthiness overall.
The pair began thinking deeply about those questions in 2022, when they were part of an interdisciplinary team of faculty teaching Introduction to Data Justice, an upper-level course considering how to design data-driven systems with equity in mind.
The research tackles a fundamental issue in the field of social choice theory, which studies how to combine individual preferences into a collective decision, such as with voting.
Patty and Penn co-authored a 2014 book, “Social Choice and Legitimacy: The Possibilities of Impossibility,” which applied that theory to assert a new theory of legitimacy, arguing for the need to explain the trade-offs necessary for government function.
“I think we are heading to a theorem that explains why we argue about what is fair, because we know there is no single notion,” says Patty, whose research centers on mathematical models of economic and political institutions.
One notion of fairness is forward-looking, described as “people who have behaved the same way should expect to be treated the same way.” Another notion is more retrospective, capturing the idea that “people who have been treated the same way should be expected to have behaved the same way,” Patty says.
Mathematically, it is impossible to satisfy both notions of fairness simultaneously when dealing with diverse populations, Patty says.
Their new research will address how those issues might shape how we regulate and use algorithms. Following the sabbatical year, Patty and Penn hope to incorporate their findings into their coursework, including their respective seminars on algorithms in social science and on social choice theory.
“Penn and Patty are a remarkable duo who apply sophisticated theoretical approaches to understanding everyday problems that are part and parcel of democratic governance,” says Joseph Crespino, Emory College’s senior associate dean of faculty and divisional dean of humanities and social sciences. He also serves as Jimmy Carter Professor of History.
“Emory is so fortunate to have them, and I know they will benefit greatly from their year at the Sage Foundation, which is one of the leading social science research centers in the country,” Crespino adds.