About

Justin Lucas Sola, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a joint appointment in Sociology and the School of Data Science and Society. His research focuses on how people experience neighborhoods, the criminal justice system, gun ownership, and inequality. He employs a variety of methodological approaches including experiments, machine learning, longitudinal designs, interviews, and observations to explore these topics. In addition to his research, he teaches courses in sociology, computational social science, criminology, and ethics in machine learning.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Sociology
• Medical emergency
• Medicine
• Criminology
• Public economics
• Marketing
• Microeconomics
• Demographic economics
• Business
• Physics
• Finance

Selected publications

• First impressions matter: Mundane obstacles to a forensic device for probabilistic reporting in fingerprint analysis

  Social Studies of Science · 2025-05-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article investigates why statistical reasoning has had little impact on the practice of friction ridge (or 'fingerprint') examination, despite both interest and some modest scientific progress toward this goal. Previous research has attributed this lack of results to practitioner resistance and legal apathy. This article seeks to complement those explanations through interviews with experts with a variety of perspectives on contemporary fingerprint practice about practical and mundane obstacles to the belated statistical revolution in fingerprinting. Based on these interviews, we argue that a 'forensic device' is required to incorporate statistical reasoning into fingerprint practice. This device would consist of a robust statistical model fronted by accessible, usable software. These components, in turn, require other components, such as large research data sets, markets, early adopters, government clients, education, and training. We conclude that the statistical revolution has been delayed not just by grand debates over the probabilistic nature of fingerprint evidence, but also by the seemingly mundane problems posed by developing and maintaining the kind of forensic device that would make such a revolution possible and practical.

  PublisherDOI

• Widespread, bipartisan aversion exists to neighbors owning AR-15s or storing guns insecurely

  UNC Libraries · 2025-01-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Over 45,000 gun deaths occur annually in the United States, a country with more than 100 million gun owners and more than 350 million guns. Nevertheless, passing legislation to reduce gun violence is difficult because the issue is intensely polarized. Polls asking about general gun policies (e.g., AR-15 restrictions) demonstrate that, at least in the abstract, Americans disagree vehemently about whether civilians should be able to keep and bear arms. It is possible, however, that a hidden consensus exists in America, which has thus far escaped attention-specifically, that when the focus is on their immediate environments and daily lives, even traditionally pro-gun groups may exhibit aversion to certain types of gun ownership and storage practices. To test this, we conducted two preregistered survey experiments with a large national sample. The first was a conjoint analysis where respondents chose between neighbors (n = 33,596 choices) who randomly varied on seven attributes, including gun ownership (none, pistol, AR-15). No group of respondents, not even traditionally pro-gun groups (e.g., Republicans), exhibited a significant preference for living near gun owners, and every group was averse to AR-15-owning neighbors. The second experiment, per debates about safe-storage laws, was a picture-based factorial vignette that randomized a neighbor's gun storage practices (n = 2,098). Every group of respondents was averse to interacting with a neighbor who stored guns outside of a locked safe. Our findings demonstrate that there is widespread agreement that certain types of gun ownership and storage practices are undesirable for communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Law Probability and Risk · 2024-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Widespread, bipartisan aversion exists to neighbors owning AR-15s or storing guns insecurely

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024 · 9 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Social psychology
  • Psychology

  Over 45,000 gun deaths occur annually in the United States, a country with more than 100 million gun owners and more than 350 million guns. Nevertheless, passing legislation to reduce gun violence is difficult because the issue is intensely polarized. Polls asking about general gun policies (e.g., AR-15 restrictions) demonstrate that, at least in the abstract, Americans disagree vehemently about whether civilians should be able to keep and bear arms. It is possible, however, that a hidden consensus exists in America, which has thus far escaped attention-specifically, that when the focus is on their immediate environments and daily lives, even traditionally pro-gun groups may exhibit aversion to certain types of gun ownership and storage practices. To test this, we conducted two preregistered survey experiments with a large national sample. The first was a conjoint analysis where respondents chose between neighbors (n = 33,596 choices) who randomly varied on seven attributes, including gun ownership (none, pistol, AR-15). No group of respondents, not even traditionally pro-gun groups (e.g., Republicans), exhibited a significant preference for living near gun owners, and every group was averse to AR-15-owning neighbors. The second experiment, per debates about safe-storage laws, was a picture-based factorial vignette that randomized a neighbor's gun storage practices (n = 2,098). Every group of respondents was averse to interacting with a neighbor who stored guns outside of a locked safe. Our findings demonstrate that there is widespread agreement that certain types of gun ownership and storage practices are undesirable for communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pathways to concealed gun carrying

  Science Advances · 2024-12-04 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Understanding the distinction between adolescent and adult pathways to concealed gun carrying can inform interventions to reduce gun violence.

  PublisherDOI

• Partisan Differences in Hiring and Social Discrimination against Nonbinary Americans

  Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Discrimination based on gender identity is unjust and wreaks havoc on individuals’ lives. Nonbinary Americans report experiencing extensive and daily experiences with discriminatory events. Yet experimental evidence on how employers and members of the public evaluate and react to individuals (e.g., job applicants, social acquaintances) with different gender identities remains limited and is mixed. Using experimental data from two conjoint analyses, which we conducted with two national samples—one of active hiring managers (Experiment 1: N = 12,934 applicant choices, N = 924 active hirers) and one of members of the public (Experiment 1: N = 32,908 neighbor choices, N = 2,057 respondents)—we document wide partisan differences in the proclivity to discriminate against people who are nonbinary. Republicans are over 10 percentage points more likely to hire a binary than a nonbinary applicant and are 16 to 20 points more likely to want someone as a neighbor if the person is binary compared to nonbinary.

  PublisherDOI

• Pathways to concealed gun carrying

  UNC Libraries · 2024-12-14

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Understanding the distinction between adolescent and adult pathways to concealed gun carrying can inform interventions to reduce gun violence.

  PublisherDOI

• Firearms, families, and financial distress: Economic instability and increased gun desire

  Social Science Quarterly · 2024-10-16 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The United States is a global leader in estimated rates of civilian gun ownership, and over the past few years—as the country grappled with a struggling economy exacerbated by a global pandemic—gun‐buying surged. We argue that the COVID‐19 pandemic's economic impact has implications for gun purchasing interest, and this intersects with gendered expectations about familial roles. Integrating sociological scholarship on gender and families with consumer behavior research, and using a preregistered online survey of over 8000 American adults collected in the early months of the pandemic's emergence in the United States (May 2020–June 2020), we hypothesize that men in familial roles may express greater gun interest in response to financial instability, and theorize why such a process may also be observed among women. Analyses show that men's gun interest is unaffected by family roles or financial distress. Women in family roles—mothers, in particular—who experience financial stress, however, are significantly more amenable toward guns than other women and express interest at levels approaching those of men. We discuss how such findings increase our understanding of the heterogeneity of gun owners.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making the call: how does perceived race affect desire to call the police?

  CrimRxiv · 2023-05-12 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ObjectivesThere is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA.We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police. MethodsWe conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat. ResultsPerceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat.However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men. ConclusionsThe political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making the call: how does perceived race affect desire to call the police?

  Journal of Experimental Criminology · 2023-05-12 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Objectives: There is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police. Methods: We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat. Results: Perceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat. However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men. Conclusions: The political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Justin T. Pickett

  University at Albany, State University of New York

  3 shared

• Vicente Celestino Mata

  2 shared

• Meghan Ballard

  2 shared

• Daniela Kaiser

  University of California, Irvine

  2 shared

• Bryan L. Sykes

  2 shared

• Shawn D. Bushway

  University at Albany, State University of New York

  2 shared

• Simon A. Cole

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Rebecca Goodsell

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared