Tag Archives | Prestige

Status Ambiguity and Multiplicity in the Selection of NBA Awards

Peter McMahan, Eran Shor

Sociological Science August 20, 2024
10.15195/v11.a25


Sociologists of culture have long noted that contrasting cultural frames can lead to status ambiguity and status multiplicity. We explore these phenomena in the domain of professional sports by first replicating and then extending and challenging recently published findings on selections for the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game. Relying on a large data set that includes more than 10,000 player–years, we show that accounting for better-justified performance measures reduces but does not nullify the effects of status cumulative advantage on All-Star selections. However, when replacing All-Star selections with a less ambiguous measure (selections to All-NBA teams), we no longer find evidence of decoupling between player performance and award nomination. From this we conclude that cumulative status advantage only affects selection when voters view factors other than statistical performance as legitimate, perhaps even desired, selection criteria. These findings have relevance for our understanding of status evaluations beyond professional sports, including in domains as diverse as the film industry, the performing arts, literature, politics, and the sciences.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peter McMahan: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: peter.mcmahan@mcgill.ca

Eran Shor: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: eran.shor@mcgill.ca

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Reproduction package is available at https://github.com/mcmahanp/nba_status.

  • Citation: McMahan, Peter, and Eran Shor. 2024. “Status ambiguity and multiplicity in the selection of NBA awards.” Sociological Science 11: 680-706.
  • Received: January 5, 2024
  • Accepted: June 2, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a25


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Status and Vocal Accommodation in Small Groups

Joseph Dippong

Sociological Science August 3, 2020
10.15195/v7.a12


Sociological research on vocal dynamics demonstrates that as actors engage in conversation, their vocal frequencies tend to converge over time. Previous scholars have theorized that patterns of vocal accommodation serve as a mechanism through which speakers non-consciously communicate perceptions of each other’s relative status. In this article I discuss existing evidence linking vocal accommodation to status perceptions. Next, I report results from a laboratory experiment in which I test the proposed causal link between status and vocal accommodation by randomly assigning members of dyadic task groups to occupy either a higher or lower status position and assessing patterns of vocal accommodation. Results support the theorized causal relationship between group status structure and vocal accommodation. I argue that, as an unobtrusive and non-conscious indicator of status, vocal accommodation is a valuable, yet underused tool for assessing group status structures in a wide variety of situations and regarding many substantive sociological questions.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Joseph Dippong: Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
E-mail: jdippong@uncc.edu

Acknowledgments: The research reported here was funded in whole under award W911NF-17-1-0008 from the U.S. Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory.

  • Citation: Dippong, Joseph. 2020. “Status and Vocal Accommodation in Small Groups.” Sociological Science 7: 291-313.
  • Received: May 6, 2020
  • Accepted: June 8, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a12


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