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Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren's Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability

Markus Klein, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science July 26, 2021
10.15195/v8.a13


The social stratification literature is inconclusive about whether there is a direct effect of grandparent resources on grandchildren’s educational outcomes net of parental characteristics. Some of this heterogeneity may be due to differences in omitted variable bias at the parental level. Our article accounts for a more extensive set of parent characteristics and explores the mediating role of parental cognitive ability in more detail. It further tackles methodological challenges (treatmentinduced mediator–outcome confounders, treatment–mediator interaction) in assessing any direct influences of grandparents by using a regression-with-residuals approach. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study, our results show that the direct effect of grandparent education on grandchildren’s verbal and numerical ability is small and statistically nonsignificant. Parental cognitive ability alone can account for more than two-thirds (numerical ability) or half (verbal ability) of the overall grandparent effect. These findings stress the importance of cognitive ability for intergenerational social mobility processes.
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Markus Klein: School of Education, University of Strathclyde
E-mail: markus.klein@strath.ac.uk

Michael Kühhirt: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, and Department of Social Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt
E-mail: michael.kuehhirt@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) for providing their information; the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, for collecting and managing the data; the Economic and Social Research Council for funding BCS70; and the UK Data Service for storing the data and making them available. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress in 2018 and the ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in 2021.

  • Citation: Klein, Markus, and Michael Kühhirt. 2021. “Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren’s Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability.” Sociological Science 8:265-284.
  • Received: May 24, 2021
  • Accepted: June 22, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a13


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Genres, Objects, and the Contemporary Expression of Higher-Status Tastes

Clayton Childress, Shyon Baumann, Craig M. Rawlings, Jean-François Nault

Sociological Science July 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a12


Are contemporary higher-status tastes inclusive, exclusive, or both? Recent work suggests that the answer likely is both. And yet, little is known concerning how configurations of such tastes are learned, upheld, and expressed without contradiction. We resolve this puzzle by showing the affordances of different levels of culture (i.e., genres and objects) in the expression of tastes. We rely on original survey data to show that people of higher status taste differently at different levels of culture: more inclusively for genres and more exclusively for objects. Inclusivity at the level of genres is fostered through familial socialization, and exclusivity at the level of objects is fostered through formal schooling. Individuals’ taste configurations are mirrored in and presumably reinforce their adult social-structural positions. The results have important implications for understanding the subtle maintenance of status in an increasingly diverse and putatively meritocratic society.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Clayton Childress: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: clayton.childress@utoronto.ca

Shyon Baumann: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: shyon.baumann@utoronto.ca

Craig M. Rawlings: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: craig.rawlings@duke.edu

Jean-François Nault: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: jf.nault@mail.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgments: All authors contributed equally to this work. Prior versions of this article were presented at the Toronto TheoryWorkshop and at the Sociology of Culture panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. We are grateful to attendees and fellow presenters in both of these venues for their trenchant feedback and comments. In particular, we also thank Jordan Foster, Jennifer Lena, Ann Mullen, Dan Silver, and Omar Lizardo for their time and attention in improving this work. The G7 workshop, per usual, also substantially contributed to the improvement of this work. All mistakes are our own. Direct correspondence to Craig M. Rawlings, Duke University Sociology Department, Reuben-Cooke Building Rm. 270, Durham, NC 27708; craig.rawlings@duke.edu.

  • Citation: Childress, Clayton, Shyon Baumann, Craig M. Rawlings, and Jean-François Nault. 2021. “Genres, Objects, and the Contemporary Expression of Higher-Status Tastes.” Sociological Science 8: 230-264.
  • Received: January 9, 2021
  • Accepted: February 4, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossmann
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a12


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Competitive Exclusion versus Mimetic Isomorphism: An Identified Empirical Test

William P. Barnett, Xiao Xiao, Yi Zhou

Sociological Science June 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a11


Why are organizations sometimes so similar, and in other cases so different? For decades this question has been central to research on organizations, and two leading theories have answered the question very differently. Neo-institutional theory points to the importance of mimetic isomorphism, where organizations imitate one another as they navigate decisions in the context of uncertainty over what is regarded as legitimate action. By contrast, ecological theory argues that competitive exclusion explains the differences we see around us, as organizations repel one another when they vie for the same resources. Decades of empirical work have tended to confirm one or the other prediction, with little acknowledgement of their opposition. Furthermore, much of the existing empirical work is limited to descriptive studies that make little or no attempt to empirically identify their findings, leaving the empirical record open to concerns over endogeneity. This article conducts an identified empirical test in a context where the two arguments make opposing predictions. In an analysis of auditor selection after the collapse of Arthur Andersen, we find evidence of competitive exclusion but no evidence of mimetic isomorphism. Implications for the continued progress of organization theory are discussed.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

William P. Barnett: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
E-mail: william.barnett@stanford.edu

Xiao Xiao: Guanghua School of Management, Peking University
E-mail: xxiao@gsm.pku.edu.cn

Yi Zhou: Center for Social Research, Peking University
E-mail: yizhou.ccer@gmail.com

Acknowledgments: Order of authorship is alphabetical. Correspondence to William Barnett (william.barnett@stanford.edu), or, for questions regarding the data analysis, correspondence to Yi Zhou (yizhou@pku.edu.cn). Research support was provided by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and by Peking University. Thanks for useful advice and comments from Jon Atwell, Özgecan Koçak, Balázs Kovács, Jesper Sørensen, and Olav Sorenson.

  • Citation: Barnett, William P., Xiao Xiao, and Yi Zhou. 2021. “Competitive Exclusion versus Mimetic Isomorphism: An Identified Empirical Test.” Sociological Science 8: 211-229.
  • Received: April 2, 2021
  • Accepted: May 5, 2021
  • Editors: Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a11


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Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thomas Marlow, Kinga Makovi, Bruno Abrahao

Sociological Science June 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a9


The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted Americans’ daily mobility, which could contribute to greater social stratification. Relying on SafeGraph cell phone movement data from 2019 and 2020, we use two indices proposed by Phillips and colleagues (2019) to measure mobility inequality between census tracts in the 25 largest U.S. cities. These measures capture the importance of hubs and neighborhood isolation in a network. In the earliest phases of the pandemic, neighborhood isolation rapidly increased, and the importance of downtown central business districts declined. Mobility hubs generally regained their importance, whereas neighborhood isolation remained elevated and increased again during the latter half of 2020. Linear regression models with city and week fixed effects find that new COVID-19 cases are positively associated with neighborhood isolation changes a week later. Additionally, places with larger populations, more public transportation use, and greater racial and ethnic segregation had larger increases in neighborhood isolation during 2020.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thomas Marlow: Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: twm9710@nyu.edu

Kinga Makovi: Social Science Division, New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: km2537@nyu.edu

Bruno Abrahao: Business Division, New York University Shanghai; Global Network Assistant Professor, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University
E-mail: bd58@nyu.edu

Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Byungkyu Lee, Philipp Brandt, and Clara G. Sears for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts. This work was supported by the NYUAD Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), funded by Tamkeen under the NYUAD Research Institute Award CG001 and by the Swiss Re Institute under the Quantum Cities initiative. Bruno Abrahao was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Grant 61850410536.

  • Citation: Marlow, Thomas, Kinga Makovi, and Bruno Abrahao. 2021. “Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 8: 170-190.
  • Received: March 14, 2021
  • Accepted: April 22, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a9


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Racial Differences in Women’s Role-Taking Accuracy: How Status Matters

Tony P. Love, Jenny L. Davis

Sociological Science June 7, 2021
10.15195/v8.a8


Role-taking is the process of mentally and affectively placing the self in the position of another, understanding the world from the other’s perspective. Role-taking serves an expressive function within interpersonal interaction, supporting others to pursue instrumental tasks that are recognized, valued, and rewarded. In the present work, we compare role-taking accuracy between white women and black women across status-varying interactional arrangements. Data for this study come from a series of two laboratory experiments. Experiment 1 establishes racial differences in white and black women’s role-taking accuracy, showing that women of color are significantly more attuned to others within social encounters. Experiment 2 implements an intervention to undermine racial disparities in role-taking accuracy, showing that expressive labors equalize when black women are empowered within the social structure. Findings highlight the entwinement of status structures with interpersonal processes while demonstrating the efficacy and value of structural reforms.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tony P. Love: Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky; School of Sociology, Australian National University
E-mail: tony.love@uky.edu

Jenny L. Davis: School of Sociology, Australian National University
E-mail: jennifer.davis@anu.edu.au

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank the American Sociological Association for their funding of this research through the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) and the Australian National University for their funding through the Futures Scheme. Additional gratitude is due to Paige Adkins and Rachel Barczak for their assistance in conducting these studies.

  • Citation: Love, Tony P., and Jenny L. Davis. 2021. “Racial Differences in Women’s Role-Taking Accuracy: How Status Matters.” Sociological Science 8: 150-169.
  • Received: February 2, 2021
  • Accepted: March 6, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a8


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Better in the Shadows? Public Attention, Media Coverage, and Market Reactions to Female CEO Announcements

Edward Bishop Smith, Jillian Chown, and Kevin Gaughan

Sociological Science May 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a7


Combining media coverage data from approximately 17,000 unique media outlets with the full population of CEO appointments for U.S. publicly traded firms between 2000 and 2016, we investigate whether female CEO appointments garner more public attention compared with male appointments, and if so, whether this increased attention can help make sense of the previously reported negative market reaction to these events. Contrary to prior reports, our data do not indicate that the appointments of female CEOs elicit overly negative market reactions, on average. Our results do highlight an important moderating role of public attention, however. We demonstrate that greater attention—even when exogenously determined—contributes to negative market reactions for female CEO appointments but positive market reactions for male CEOs, all else held constant. Additionally, female CEO appointments that attract little attention garner significant positive responses in the market, compared with both male CEOs drawing similarly limited levels of attention and female CEOs drawing high levels of attention. Our results help to reconcile contrasting empirical findings on the effects of gender in executive leadership and parallel recent work on anticipatory bias and second-order discrimination in alternative empirical contexts. Implications for research on attention, gender bias, and executive succession are discussed.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Edward Bishop Smith: Management and Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
E-mail: ned-smith@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Jillian Chown: Management and Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
E-mail: jillian.chown@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Kevin Gaughan: Management and Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University (formerly)
E-mail: kevin.gaughan@northwestern.edu

Acknowledgments: We have benefitted from the advice of Jeanne Brett, Roberto Fernandez, Brayden King, Maxim Sytch, Ed Zajac, FilippoWezel, Ezra Zuckerman, and seminar participants at MIT, Harvard,Washington University, and Dartmouth. Correspondence may be directed to Ned Smith, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, ned-smith@kellogg.northwestern.edu.

  • Citation: Smith, Edward Bishop, Jillian Chown, and Kevin Gaughan. 2021. “Better in the Shadows? Public Attention, Media Coverage, and Market Reactions to Female CEO Announcements.” Sociological Science 8: 119-149.
  • Received: February 10, 2021
  • Accepted: March 7, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a7


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Who Thinks How? Social Patterns in Reliance on Automatic and Deliberate Cognition

Gordon Brett, Andrew Miles

Sociological Science May 10, 2021
10.15195/v8.a6


Sociologists increasingly use insights from dual-process models to explain how people think and act. These discussions generally emphasize the influence of cultural knowledge mobilized through automatic cognition, or else show how the use of automatic and deliberate processes vary according to the task at hand or the context. Drawing on insights from sociological theory and suggestive research from social and cognitive psychology, we argue that socially structured experiences also shape general, individual-level preferences (or propensities) for automatic and deliberate thinking. Using a meta-analysis of 63 psychological studies (N = 25,074) and a new multivariate analysis of nationally representative data, we test the hypothesis that the use of automatic and deliberate cognitive processes is socially patterned. We find that education consistently predicts preferences for deliberate processing and that gender predicts preferences for both automatic and deliberate processing. We find that age is a significant but likely nonlinear predictor of preferences for automatic and deliberate cognition, and we find weaker evidence for differences by income, marital status, and religion. These results underscore the need to consider group differences in cognitive processing in sociological explanations of culture, action, and inequality.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Gordon Brett: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: gordon.brett@utoronto.ca

Andrew Miles: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: andrew.miles@utoronto.ca

Acknowledgments: We thank Vanina Leschziner, Martin Lukk, Lance Stewart, and Lawrence Williams for their very helpful feedback on an early draft of this article.

  • Citation: Brett, Gordon, and Andrew Miles. 2021. “Who Thinks How? Social Patterns in Reliance on Automatic and Deliberate Cognition.” Sociological Science 8: 96-118.
  • Received: February 10, 2021
  • Accepted: March 10, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a6


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Still a Small World? University Course Enrollment Networks before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell, Barum Park

Sociological Science January 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a4


In normal times, the network ties that connect students on a college campus are an asset; during a pandemic, they can become a liability. Using prepandemic data from Cornell University, Weeden and Cornwell (2020) showed how co-enrollment in classes creates a “small world” network with high clustering, short path lengths, and multiple independent pathways connecting students. Using data from the fall of 2020, we assess how the structure of the co-enrollment network changed as Cornell, like many other institutions of higher education, adapted to the pandemic by adopting a hybrid instructional model. We find that under hybrid instruction, not only is a much smaller share of students in the face-to-face network, but the paths connecting student pairs in the network lengthened, the share of student pairs connected by three or fewer degrees of separation declined, clustering increased, and a greater share of co-enrollment ties occurred between students in the same field of study. The small world became both less connected and more fragmented.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kw74@cornell.edu

Benjamin Cornwell: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: btc49@cornell.edu

Barum Park: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: b.park@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to Kim A. Weeden, Department of Sociology, Cornell University; kw74@cornell.edu. We acknowledge Cornell University’s administration for generously and promptly providing access to anonymized data.

  • Citation: Weeden, Kim A., Benjamin Cornwell, and Barum Park. 2021. “Still a Small World? University Course Enrollment Networks before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 8: 73-82.
  • Received: November 19, 2020
  • Accepted: December 18, 2020
  • Editors: Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a4


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