Navigation

You are here: Home › Articles

Articles

Threshold Models of Collective Behavior II: The Predictability Paradox and Spontaneous Instigation

By on December 8, 2020 in Articles

Michael W. Macy, Anna Evtushenko

Sociological Science December 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a26

Abstract
PDF (3674 views)
0 Citation


Collective behavior can be notoriously hard to predict. We revisited a possible explanation suggested by Granovetter’s classic threshold model: collective behavior can unexpectedly fail, despite a group’s strong interest in the outcome, because of the sensitivity of cascades to small random perturbations in group composition and the distribution of thresholds. Paradoxically, we found that a small amount of randomness in individual behavior can make collective behavior less sensitive to these perturbations and therefore more predictable. We also examined conditions in which collective behavior unexpectedly succeeds despite the group’s weak interest in the outcome. In groups with an otherwise intractable start-up problem, individual randomness can lead to spontaneous instigation, making outcomes more sensitive to the strength of collective interests and therefore more predictable. These effects of chance behavior become much more pronounced as group size increases. Although randomness is often assumed to be a theoretically unimportant residual category, our findings point to the need to bring individual idiosyncrasy back into the study of collective behavior.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael W. Macy: Department of Sociology and Department of Information Science, Cornell University
E-mail: mwm14@cornell.edu

Anna Evtushenko: Department of Information Science, Cornell University
E-mail: ae392@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Jon Kleinberg, Dana Warmsley, and Danielle Toupo for contributing ideas and technical suggestions. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES 1756822, “Testing Unpredictability with MultipleWorlds”). Correspondence should be sent to Michael W. Macy, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Macy, Michael W., and Anna Evtushenko. 2020. “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior II: The Predictability Paradox and Spontaneous Instigation.” Sociological Science 7: 628-648.
  • Received: October 18, 2020
  • Accepted: November 1, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a26


0

The Inheritance of Race Revisited: Childhood Wealth and Income and Black–White Disadvantages in Adult Life Chances

By on December 1, 2020 in Articles

David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, Joscha Legewie

Sociological Science December 1, 2020
10.15195/v7.a25

Abstract
PDF (2859 views)
1 Citation


Vast racial inequalities continue to prevail across the United States and are closely linked to economic resources. One particularly prominent argument contends that childhood wealth accounts for black–white (BW) disadvantages in life chances. This article analyzes how much childhood wealth and childhood income mediate BW disadvantages in adult life chances with Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Cross-National Equivalent File data on children from the 1980s and 1990s who were 30+ years old in 2015. Compared with previous research, we exploit longer panel data, more comprehensively assess adult life chances with 18 outcomes, and measure income and wealth more rigorously. We find large BW disadvantages in most outcomes. Childhood wealth and income mediate a substantial share of most BW disadvantages, although there are several significant BW disadvantages even after adjusting for childhood wealth and income. The evidence mostly contradicts the prominent claim that childhood wealth is more important than childhood income. Indeed, the analyses mostly show that childhood income explains more of BW disadvantages and has larger standardized coefficients than childhood wealth. We also show how limitations in prior wealth research explain why our conclusions differ. Replication with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a variety of robustness checks support these conclusions.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

David Brady: School of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside, and WZB Berlin Social Science Center
E-mail: dbrady@ucr.edu

Ryan Finnigan: Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis
E-mail: rfinnigan@ucdavis.edu

Ulrich Kohler: Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam
E-mail: ukohler@uni-potsdam.de

Joscha Legewie: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: jlegewie@fas.harvard.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to David Brady, School of Public Policy, University of California, INTS 4133, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521; email:dbrady@ucr.edu. The last three authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally. This article benefitted from presentations at the New York University–Abu Dhabi Social Research and Public Policy seminar; University of California, Santa Barbara, Broom Center for Demography; the PAA meetings; the University of California Riverside Applied/Development Economics Brown Bag; theWorking Groups on Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility and Movements, Organizations, and Markets in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the WZBUSP Writing Workshop. We appreciate suggestions from Sociological Science reviewers and editor Jesper Sorensen, Thomas Biegert, Agnes Blome, Irene Boeckmann, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Tyson Brown, Mareike Buenning, Rich Carpiano, Joe Cummins, Chenoa Flippen, Sanjiv Gupta, Martin Hällsten, Lena Hipp, Sabine Huebgen, Bob Kaestner, Sasha Killewald, Nadia Kim, Matthew Mahutga, Fabian Pfeffer, Emanuela Struffolino, Florencia Torche, Zachary Van Winkle, Andres Villarreal, and Hanna Zagel.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brady, David, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, and Joscha Legewie. 2020. “The Inheritance of Race Revisited: Childhood Wealth and Income and Black–White Disadvantages in Adult Life Chances.” Sociological Science 7: 599-627.
  • Received: August 7, 2020
  • Accepted: September 24, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a25


1

Who Supports Global Cooperation? Cooperative Internationalism at the Intersection of Social Class and Economic Development

By on November 23, 2020 in Articles

Brandon Gorman, Charles Seguin

Sociological Science November 23, 2020
10.15195/v7.a24

Abstract
PDF (1560 views)
0 Citation


Throughout the twentieth century, the world has seen a rapid increase in global social, economic, and political integration. According to many studies, attitudes toward international organizations and international cooperation have also grown more positive, particularly among elites and in the affluent, densely connected countries of the global core. Using survey responses on 18 different questions from six cross-national attitude surveys, we find that “cooperative-internationalist” attitudes, though widely popular, are no more common in the global core than on the periphery. Furthermore, we find elites are more likely to hold proglobal attitudes than non-elites only in wealthy core countries. These results indicate that scholars may have incorrectly assumed that (modest) class differences in cooperative-internationalist attitudes in Western countries generalize globally, both within and between countries. We conclude with a call to theorize cooperative internationalism as a function of how different groups of people interpret their own costs and benefits of global cooperation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Brandon Gorman: Department of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY
E-mail: bgorman@albany.edu

Charles Seguin: Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: czs792@psu.edu

Acknowledgments: The authors are listed in alphabetical order; each contributed equally. We thank Daniel Laurison, Eric Schoon, and members of the Culture and Politics Workshop
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for comments and guidance on earlier drafts. Mayuko Nakatsuka and Elise Wolff provided able research assistance for this project.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Gorman, Brandon, and Charles Seguin. 2020. “Who Supports Global Cooperation? Cooperative Internationalism at the Intersection of Social Class and Economic Development.” Sociological Science 7: 570-598.
  • Received: August 27, 2020
  • Accepted: October 14, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a24


0

Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts

By on November 9, 2020 in Articles

Marshall A. Taylor, Dustin S. Stoltz

Sociological Science November 9, 2020
10.15195/v7.a23

Abstract
PDF (3496 views)
0 Citation


Recent methodological work at the intersection of culture, cognition, and computational methods has drawn attention to how cultural schemas can be “recovered” from social survey data. Defining cultural schemas as slowly learned, implicit, and unevenly distributed relational memory structures, researchers show how schemas—or rather, the downstream consequences of people drawing upon them—can be operationalized and measured from domain-specific survey modules. Respondents can then be sorted into “classes” on the basis of the schema to which their survey response patterns best align. In this article, we extend this “schematic class analysis” method to text data. We introduce concept class analysis (CoCA): a hybrid model that combines word embeddings and correlational class analysis to group documents across a corpus by the similarity of schemas recovered from them. We introduce the CoCA model, illustrate its validity and utility using simulations, and conclude with considerations for future research and applications.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Marshall A. Taylor: Department of Sociology, New Mexico State University
E-mail: mtaylor2@nmsu.edu

Dustin S. Stoltz: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University
E-mail: dss219@lehigh.edu

Acknowledgments: A replication repository for this article can be found at: https://github.com/Marshall-Soc/CoCA. We thank Jesper Sørensen, the deputy editor, and the consulting editor for their thoughtful comments on this article.

  • Citation: Taylor, Marshall A., and Dustin S. Stoltz. 2020. “Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts.” Sociological Science 7:544-569.
  • Received: July 31, 2020
  • Accepted: October 4, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a23


0

Microaggressions in the United States

By on November 2, 2020 in Articles

Kiara Wyndham Douds, Michael Hout

Sociological Science November 2, 2020
10.15195/v7.a22

Abstract
PDF (4469 views)
0 Citation


“Microaggressions” is the term scholars and cultural commentators use to describe the ways that racism and other systems of oppression are upheld in everyday interactions. Although prior research has documented the types of microaggressions that individuals experience, we have lacked representative data on the prevalence of microaggressions in the general population. We introduce and evaluate five new survey items from the 2018 General Social Survey intended to capture five types of microaggressions. We assess the prevalence of each microaggression as well as a constructed microaggression scale across a key set of sociodemographic characteristics. We find that black Americans experience more microaggressions than other racialized groups, twice the rate of the general public for some types. Younger people report more microaggressions than older people. Women are more likely to report some types of microaggressions, and men others. Experiencing microaggressions is associated with an array of negative physical and mental health outcomes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kiara Wyndham Douds: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: kiara.douds@nyu.edu

Michael Hout: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: mikehout@nyu.edu

Acknowledgments: This research was conducted with institutional support from New
York University and no external funding.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Douds, Kiara Wyndham, and Michael Hout. 2020. “Microaggressions in the United States.” Sociological Science 7: 528-543.
  • Received: September 11, 2020
  • Accepted: September 25, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a22


0

Sexual Identity Disclosure among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals

By on October 19, 2020 in Articles

Long Doan, Trenton D. Mize

Sociological Science October 19, 2020
10.15195/v7.a21

Abstract
PDF (2870 views)
0 Citation


Most research on sexual prejudice explicitly or implicitly assumes that an individual’s sexual orientation identity is known to observers. However, there has been little large-scale survey evidence examining differential rates of disclosure among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, and there remains much to be studied as to why and when LGB individuals choose to disclose their sexual identity to others. Using data from a nationally representative sample of LGB Americans (N=1,085), we assess the contexts and conditions under which LGB individuals disclose their sexual identities. Results show that bisexual women and men are significantly less likely to disclose their sexual identity across several important social domains, such as family and the workplace. This disclosure gap is partially explained by measures of identity commitment but surprisingly not by measures of perceived social acceptance. We discuss implications of these findings for sexuality and identity research.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Long Doan: Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
E-mail: longdoan@umd.edu

Trenton D. Mize: Department of Sociology and Advanced Methodologies, Purdue University
E-mail: tmize@purdue.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Brian Powell, Lisa R. Miller, and Brian T. Connor for excellent suggestions on various drafts of this paper. Parts of this paper were presented at the Indiana University Social Psychology, Health, and the Life Course seminar and the 2017 ASA Meetings. We thank audience members in both venues for their valuable comments. We are also grateful to the Pew Research Center for collecting the data used in our analyses. Partial funding for open access was provided by the UMD Libraries’ Open Access Publishing Fund. Opinions, findings, and ‘conclusions presented in this paper are ours and do not necessarily represent the views of any of the organizations or individuals above.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Doan, Long, and Trenton D. Mize. 2020. “Sexual Identity Disclosure among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals.” Sociological Science 7: 504-527.
  • Received: August 19, 2020
  • Accepted: September 19, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a21


0

Generalized Markovian Quantity Distribution Systems: Social Science Applications

By on October 8, 2020 in Articles

Noah E. Friedkin, Anton V. Proskurnikov

Sociological Science October 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a20

Abstract
PDF (1215 views)
0 Citation


We propose a model of Markovian quantity flows on connected networks that relaxes several properties of the standard compartmental Markov process. The motivation of our generalization are social science applications of the standard model that do not comport with its steady state predictions. The proposed generalization relaxes the predictions that every node belonging to the same nontrivial strong component of a network must acquire the same fraction of its members’ initial quantities and that the sink component(s) of the network must absorb all of the system’s available initial quantity. For example, when applied to refugee flows from a nation in chaos to other nations on a network with one or more sink nations, the standard model predicts that all the refugees will be eventually located in the sink(s) of the network and none that will permanently locate themselves in the nations along the paths to the sink(s). We illustrate this and several other social science applications to which our proposed model is applicable.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Noah E. Friedkin: Department of Sociology and the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara
E-mail: friedkin@soc.ucsb.edu

Anton V. Proskurnikov: Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy, and the Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
E-mail: anton.p.1982@ieee.org

  • Citation: Friedkin, Noah E., and Anton V. Proskurnikov. 2020. “Generalized Markovian Quantity Distribution Systems: Social Science Applications.” Sociological Science 7: 487-503.
  • Received: September 3, 2020
  • Accepted: September 10, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a20


0

Interactions between Polygenic Scores and Environments: Methodological and Conceptual Challenges

By on September 21, 2020 in Articles

Benjamin W. Domingue, Sam Trejo, Emma Armstrong-Carter, Elliot M. Tucker-Drob

Sociological Science September 21, 2020
10.15195/v7.a19

Abstract
PDF (3130 views)
0 Citation


Interest in the study of gene–environment interaction has recently grown due to the sudden availability of molecular genetic data—in particular, polygenic scores—in many long-running longitudinal studies. Identifying and estimating statistical interactions comes with several analytic and inferential challenges; these challenges are heightened when used to integrate observational genomic and social science data. We articulate some of these key challenges, provide new perspectives on the study of gene–environment interactions, and end by offering some practical guidance for conducting research in this area. Given the sudden availability of well-powered polygenic scores, we anticipate a substantial increase in research testing for interaction between such scores and environments. The issues we discuss, if not properly addressed, may impact the enduring scientific value of gene–environment interaction studies.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Benjamin W. Domingue: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: bdomingu@stanford.edu

Sam Trejo: La Follette School of Public Affairs & Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: sam.trejo@wisc.edu

Emma Armstrong-Carter: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: emmaac@stanford.edu

Elliot M. Tucker-Drob: Department of Psychology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: tuckerdrob@utexas.edu

Acknowledgments: This work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Ford Foundation (grant 96-17-04). S.T. was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant DGE-1656518) and the Institute of Education Sciences (grant R305B140009). E.M.T.-D. was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01AG054628, R01MH120219, and R01HD083613) and by the Jacobs Foundation. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of any foundation. The authors would like to thank Jason Boardman and Jason Fletcher for comments on an early draft of this article.

  • Citation: Domingue, Benjamin W., Sam Trejo, Emma Armstrong-Carter, and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob. 2020. “Interactions between Polygenic Scores and Environments: Methodological and Conceptual Challenges.” Sociological Science 7: 465-486.
  • Received: June 5, 2020
  • Accepted: August 24, 2020
  • Editors: Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a19


0

Bounded Solidarity in Cross-National Encounters: Individuals Share More with Others from Poor Countries but Trust Them Less

By on September 8, 2020 in Articles

Felix Bader, Marc Keuschnigg

Sociological Science September 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a17

Abstract
PDF (1873 views)
0 Citation


Globalization makes cross-national encounters increasingly common. Hesitant cooperation across national, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, however, undercuts the microlevel stabilizers of global integration and, most importantly, the willingness to share with and place trust in members of other social groups. In a 109-country online experiment, we convey information on interaction partners’ nationalities to indicate membership in a broader in- or out-group, cultural distance, and perceived material neediness—or status differences more generally—to 1,674 participants in incentivized games of generosity (dictator game) and trust (trust game). We find consistent evidence for in-group favoritism and—against this benchmark—demonstrate that individuals across the globe share more with but place less trust in interaction partners from poor countries and that cultural distance moderates this status effect.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Felix Bader: Department of Social Sciences, Technical University of Kaiserslautern
E-mail: felix.bader@sowi.uni-kl.de

Marc Keuschnigg: Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University
E-mail: marc.keuschnigg@liu.se

Acknowledgments: We thank Hanna Nau, Leona Przechomski, and Fabian Thiel for excellent research assistance and Amelie Aidenberger, Johanna Gereke, Wojtek Przepiorka, and Heiko Rauhut for discussions. This research received funding from the German Research Foundation (KE 2020/2-1). M.K. further acknowledges the Swedish Research Council (2018-05170). Address correspondence to felix.bader@sowi.uni-kl.de.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Bader, Felix, and Marc Keuschnigg. 2020. “Bounded Solidarity in Cross-National Encounters: Individuals Share More with Others from Poor Countries but Trust Them Less.” Sociological Science 7: 415-432.
  • Received: June 5, 2020
  • Accepted: July 22, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a17


0
SiteLock