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The Social Life of Mortgage Delinquency and Default

By on July 26, 2018 in Articles

Brian J. McCabe

Sociological Science, July 26, 2018
10.15195/v5.a21

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Although falling behind on a mortgage loan has significant personal consequences, we know little about whether the experience of delinquency or default influences the housing market behavior of other people in the defaulter’s social networks. In this article, I ask how exposure to mortgage default through social networks affects perceptions of the housing market, judgments about the strategic default behavior of other households, and expectations for homeownership. Although individuals purposively draw on information from their social networks to aid in their housing search, theories of social influence have yet to be applied to the negative experience of mortgage delinquency or default. Drawing on the National Housing Survey, I find that individuals exposed to mortgage strain through their social networks express more negative expectations for the housing market and hold more permissive attitudes about strategic default. Homeowners reporting network exposure to mortgage strain are more likely to prefer rental housing when they next move. These results are strongest when individuals are connected to someone who has fallen behind on a mortgage payment in the previous three months.
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Social Influence on Observed Race

By on January 18, 2018 in Articles

Zsófia Boda

Sociological Science, January 18, 2018
DOI 10.15195/v5.a3

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This article introduces a novel theoretical approach for understanding racial fluidity, emphasizing the social embeddedness of racial classifications. We propose that social ties affect racial perceptions through within-group micromechanisms, resulting in discrepancies between racial self-identifications and race as classified by others. We demonstrate this empirically on data from 12 Hungarian high school classes with one minority group (the Roma) using stochastic actor-oriented models for the analysis of social network panel data. We find strong evidence for social influence: individuals tend to accept their peers’ judgement about another student’s racial category; opinions of friends have a larger effect than those of nonfriends. Perceived social position also matters: those well-accepted among majority-race peers are likely to be classified as majority students themselves. We argue that similar analyses in other social contexts shall lead to a better understanding of race and interracial processes.

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Timing Matters: How Social Influence Affects Adoption Pre- and Post-Product Release

By on October 24, 2016 in Articles

Sara B. Soderstrom, Brian Uzzi, Derek D. Rucker, James H. Fowler, Daniel Diermeier

Sociological Science, October 24, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a40

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Social influence is typically studied after a product is released. Yet, audience expectations and discussions begin before a product’s release. This observation suggests a need to understand adoption processes over a product’s life cycle. To explore pre- and postrelease social influence processes, this article uses survey data from Americans exposed to word of mouth for 309 Hollywood movies released over two and a half years. The data suggest pre- and postrelease social influences operate differently. Prerelease social influence displays a critical transition point with relation to adoption: before a critical value, any level of social influence is negligibly related to adoption, but after the critical value, the relationship between social influence and adoption is large and substantive. In contrast, postrelease social influence exhibits a positive linear relationship with adoption. Prerelease social influence is argued to require more exposures than postrelease social influence because of differences in the diagnosticity and accessibility of the information. To complement the survey data, computational models are used to test alternative hypotheses. Evidence from the computational models supports the proposed model of social influence.

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Why is the Pack Persuasive? The Effect of Choice Status on Perceptions of Quality

By on April 8, 2016 in Articles

Freda B. Lynn, Brent Simpson, Mark H. Walker, Colin Peterson

Sociological Science, April 8, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a12

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The logic of social proof and related arguments posits that decision makers interpret an actor’s sociometric position (such as popularity) as a signal for quality, especially when quality itself is difficult to ascertain. Although prior work shows that market-level behavioral patterns are consistent with this micro-level account, we seek to explicitly examine the extent to which (and the conditions under which) sociometric status information actually triggers assumptions about an actor’s underlying quality. We introduce two new web-based experiments to investigate how popularity impacts the selection of teammates. We find that the presence of popularity information creates a surprisingly robust quality halo around candidates in some situations but has no effect at all in others. Namely, consistent with Strang and Macy’s (2001) theory of adaptive emulation, choice status appears to affect quality perceptions as part of the rationalization for making attachments, but the halo disappears post-adoption. The implications of these results are discussed in the conclusion.

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The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior

By on February 4, 2015 in Articles

Milena Tsvetkova, Michael W. Macy

Sociological Science, February 4, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a4

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Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers. In this study, we test whether retaliation can also be contagious. Extending previous work on “paying it forward,” we tested two mechanisms for the social contagion of antisocial behavior: generalized reciprocity (a victim of antisocial behavior is more likely to pay it forward) and third-party influence (an observer of antisocial behavior is more likely to emulate it). We used an online experiment with randomized trials to test the two hypothesized mechanisms and their interaction by manipulating the extent to which participants experienced and observed antisocial behavior. We found that people are more likely to harm others if they have been harmed and they are less likely to do so if they observe that others do not harm.

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