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

By on July 14, 2021 in Articles

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

Sociological Science July 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a12

Abstract

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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.
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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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

By on June 21, 2021 in Articles

William P. Barnett, Xiao Xiao, Yi Zhou

Sociological Science June 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a11

Abstract

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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.
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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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

By on June 14, 2021 in Articles

Thomas Marlow, Kinga Makovi, Bruno Abrahao

Sociological Science June 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a9

Abstract

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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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

By on June 7, 2021 in Articles

Tony P. Love, Jenny L. Davis

Sociological Science June 7, 2021
10.15195/v8.a8

Abstract

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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

By on May 17, 2021 in Articles

Edward Bishop Smith, Jillian Chown, and Kevin Gaughan

Sociological Science May 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a7

Abstract

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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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

By on May 10, 2021 in Articles

Gordon Brett, Andrew Miles

Sociological Science May 10, 2021
10.15195/v8.a6

Abstract

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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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

By on January 21, 2021 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell, Barum Park

Sociological Science January 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a4

Abstract

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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.
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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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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Using Sequence Analysis to Quantify How Strongly Life Courses Are Linked

By on January 19, 2021 in Articles

Tim F. Liao

Sociological Science January 19, 2021
10.15195/v8.a3

Abstract

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Dyadic or, more generally, polyadic life course sequences can be more associated within dyads or polyads than between randomly assigned dyadic/polyadic member sequences, a phenomenon reflecting the life course principle of linked lives. In this article, I propose a method of U and V measures for quantifying and assessing linked life course trajectories in sequence data. Specifically, I compare the sequence distance between members of an observed dyad/polyad against a set of randomly generated dyads/polyads. TheU measure quantifies how much greater, in terms of a given distance measure, the members in a dyad/polyad resemble one another than do members of randomly generated dyads/polyads, and the V measure quantifies the degree of linked lives in terms of how much observed dyads/polyads outperform randomized dyads/polyads. I present a simulation study, an empirical study analyzing dyadic family formation sequence data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, and a random seed sensitivity analysis in the online supplement. Through these analyses, I demonstrate the versatility and usefulness of the proposed method for quantifying linked lives analysis with sequence data. The method has broad applicability to sequence data in life course, business and organizational, and social network research.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tim F. Liao: Department of Sociology, University of Illinois
E-mail: tfliao@illinois.edu

Acknowledgments: The author wishes to acknowledge the benefit of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP#160101063, chief investigators Irma Mooi-Reci and Mark Wooden, and partner investigator Tim Liao). The abovementioned project anticipated the need for the research reported in this article. The author would also like to thank Anette Fasang and Marcel Raab, who kindly shared the Longitudinal Study of Generations data used in their 2014 Demography publication, and Yifan Shen for comments.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Liao, Tim F. 2021. “Using Sequence Analysis to Quantify How Strongly Life Courses Are Linked.” Sociological Science 8: 48-72.
  • Received: November 5, 2020
  • Accepted: December 13, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a3


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Which Data Fairly Differentiate? American Views on the Use of Personal Data in Two Market Settings

By on January 13, 2021 in Articles

Barbara Kiviat

Sociological Science January 13, 2021
10.15195/v8.a2

Abstract

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Corporations increasingly use personal data to offer individuals different products and prices. I present first-of-its-kind evidence about how U.S. consumers assess the fairness of companies using personal information in this way. Drawing on a nationally representative survey that asks respondents to rate how fair or unfair it is for car insurers and lenders to use various sorts of information—from credit scores to web browser history to residential moves—I find that everyday Americans make strong moral distinctions among types of data, even when they are told data predict consumer behavior (insurance claims and loan defaults, respectively). Open-ended responses show that people adjudicate fairness by drawing on shared understandings of whether data are logically related to the predicted outcome and whether the categories companies use conflate morally distinct individuals. These findings demonstrate how dynamics long studied by economic sociologists manifest in legitimating a new and important mode of market allocation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Barbara Kiviat: Department of Sociology, Stanford University
E-mail: bkiviat@stanford.edu

Acknowledgments: For helpful comments, the author thanks Laura Adler, Alexandra Feldberg, Carly Knight, Rourke O’Brien, Kim Pernell, Alix Winter, and the editors of Sociological Science, as well as participants of the MIT-NYU Morals and Markets Workshop and the 2019 annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and American Sociological Association. For advice on the survey instrument used in this research, the author thanks Birny Birnbaum, Douglas Heller, Rajat Jain, Sam Luks, Katherine Morris, Gennady Stolyarov II, and the Dobbin Research Group. The author gratefully acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation (Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award 1802286).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kiviat, Barbara. 2021. “Which Data Fairly Differentiate? American Views on the Use of Personal Data in Two Market Settings.” Sociological Science 8: 26-47.
  • Received: September 26, 2020
  • Accepted: November 12, 2020
  • Editors: Gabriel Rossman, Ari Adut
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a2


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How to Sell a Friend: Disinterest as Relational Work in Direct Sales

By on January 6, 2021 in Articles

Curtis Child

Sociological Science January 6, 2021
10.15195/v8.a1

Abstract

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Economic sociologists agree that monetary transactions are not necessarily antithetical to meaningful social relationships. However, they also accept that creating “good matches” between the two requires hard work. In this article, I contribute to the relational program in economic sociology by examining a common but understudied type of work in which one party to a relationship stands to benefit from it financially. I identify in these highly commercialized contexts a particular style of relational work anticipated, but not fully developed, in Pierre Bourdieu’s writings: disinterest. I argue that the disinterested style is manifest by economically implicated individuals who downplay their objectively apparent economic interests in order to preserve or encourage good feelings about a relationship that is meaningful to them. Drawing upon data from the direct selling industry, I show how distributors use disinterest to navigate their work.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Curtis Child: Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University
E-mail: cchild@byu.edu

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Sage Christianson, Eric Dahlin, Krista Frederico, Ben Gibbs, Jon Jarvis, Stacey Johnson, Jane Lopez, Heather Shurtliff, and Greg Wurm for support and comments on earlier drafts.

  • Citation: Child, Curtis. 2021. “How to Sell a Friend: Disinterest as Relational Work in Direct Sales.” Sociological Science 8: 1-25.
  • Received: September 18, 2020
  • Accepted: October 20, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a1


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The Toll of Turnover: Network Instability, Well-Being, and Academic Effort in 56 Middle Schools

By on December 18, 2020 in Articles

Hana Shepherd, Adam Reich

Sociological Science December 18, 2020
10.15195/v7.a28

Abstract

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This article examines whether network instability—namely, the extent of turnover in a person’s social network over time—is a distinct social process that affects individual well-being. Using a unique two-wave network data set collected in a field experiment that involved more than 21,100 students across 56 middle schools, we find a strong negative association between network instability and well-being and academic effort at the individual level, independent of other types of network change effects. We assess whether the negative effect of network instability remains when the source of instability is exogenous, the result of participation in the randomized intervention. Network instability leads to negative consequences even in this context, negatively impacting students who directly participated in the intervention. For nonintervention students in treatment schools, the intervention stabilized their social networks. We discuss the implications of these findings for studies of social networks and collective action.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Hana Shepherd: Department of Sociology, Rutgers University
E-mail: hshepherd@sociology.rutgers.edu

Adam Reich: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: ar3237@columbia.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank the members of the Columbia University Networks and Time Workshop for their feedback on this project. Amy Kate Bailey, Lauren Krivo, Emily Marshall, Christine Percheski, and LaTonya Trotter provided helpful feedback on early versions of the manuscript. The data set used in this article (available at Inter-University Consortium for Politics and Social Research, https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37070.v1) was collected by Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Hana Shepherd and was funded by grants from the W. T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Princeton Educational Research Section, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Rutgers Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Shepherd, Hana, and Adam Reich. 2020. “The Toll of Turnover: Network Instability, Well-Being, and Academic Effort in 56 Middle Schools.” Sociological Science 7: 663-691.
  • Received: August 12, 2020
  • Accepted: September 30, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a28


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Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans

By on December 16, 2020 in Articles

Peter Hepburn, Renee Louis, Matthew Desmond

Sociological Science December 16, 2020
10.15195/v7.a27

Abstract
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2 Citation


Drawing on millions of court records of eviction cases filed between 2012 and 2016 in 39 states, this study documents the racial and gender demographics of America’s evicted population. Black renters received a disproportionate share of eviction filings and experienced the highest rates of eviction filing and eviction judgment. Black and Latinx female renters faced higher eviction rates than their male counterparts. Black and Latinx renters were also more likely to be serially filed against for eviction at the same address. These findings represent the most comprehensive investigation to date of racial and gender disparities among evicted renters in the United States.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peter Hepburn: Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Rutgers University-Newark
E-mail: peter.hepburn@rutgers.edu

Renee Louis: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: reneel@princeton.edu

Matthew Desmond: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: matthew.desmond@princeton.edu

Acknowledgments: Members of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University offered valuable feedback on an early draft of this article. Sandra Park of the American Civil Liberties Union provided guidance on the structure of disparate impact claims and the Fair Housing Act. The Eviction Lab is funded by the JPB, Gates, and Ford Foundations as well as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number P2CHD047879. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Hepburn, Peter, Renee Louis, and Matthew Desmond. 2020. “Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans.” Sociological Science 7: 649-662.
  • Received: September 21, 2020
  • Accepted: November 14, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a27


2

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
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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


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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
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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


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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
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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


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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
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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


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