Showing papers in "Social Psychology Quarterly in 2016"
TL;DR: This work offers an alternative explanation rooted in identity theory that focuses on measurement directiveness as a cause of bias in survey self-reports, finding that direct measures generated bias—overreporting in survey measures and reactivity in the directive text condition—but the nondirective text condition generated unbiased measures.
Abstract: Explanations of error in survey self-reports have focused on social desirability: that respondents answer questions about normative behavior to appear prosocial to interviewers. However, this paradigm fails to explain why bias occurs even in self-administered modes like mail and web surveys. We offer an alternative explanation rooted in identity theory that focuses on measurement directiveness as a cause of bias. After completing questions about physical exercise on a web survey, respondents completed a text message-based reporting procedure, sending updates on their major activities for five days. Random assignment was then made to one of two conditions: instructions mentioned the focus of the study, physical exercise, or not. Survey responses, text updates, and records from recreation facilities were compared. Direct measures generated bias-overreporting in survey measures and reactivity in the directive text condition-but the nondirective text condition generated unbiased measures. Findings are discussed in terms of identity.
196 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate networks of friendship, dating, and aggression among a sample of 788 eighth-to-twelfth-grade students in a longitudinal study of a New York school.
Abstract: We examine instances of youth cyber aggression, arguing that the close relationships of friendship and romance substantially influence the chances of being targeted. We investigate networks of friendship, dating, and aggression among a sample of 788 eighth- to twelfth-grade students in a longitudinal study of a New York school. Approximately 17 percent reported some involvement in cyber aggression within the past week. LGBTQ youth were targeted at a rate over four times that of their heterosexual peers, and females were more frequent victims than males. Rates of cyber aggression were 4.3 times higher between friends than between friends of friends. According to both an exponential random graph model and a lagged, network MRQAP regression, electronic attacks emerged far more frequently between current or former friends and dating partners, presumably due to competition, revenge, or attempts to fend off romantic rivals. Language: en
80 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the mechanisms driving lenders' behavior in traditional and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending markets and find that lenders discriminate between loan applicants.
Abstract: Research documents that lenders discriminate between loan applicants in traditional and peer-to-peer lending markets, yet we lack knowledge about the mechanisms driving lenders’ behavior. I offer o...
40 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined emotion and risk as mutually constituting processes linked to biographical context and social structure and found that economic insecurity and incarceration influence how risk is felt by providing comparative experiences of felt risk and felt benefits.
Abstract: Theorized as objective or constructed, risk is recognized as unequally distributed across social hierarchies. Yet the process by which social forces shape risk and risk emotions remains unknown. The pharmaceutical industry depends on healthy individuals to voluntarily test early-stage, investigational drugs in exchange for financial compensation. Emblematic of risk in late modernity, Phase I testing is a rich site for examining how class and race shape configurations of emotion and risk. Using interview data from 178 healthy trial participants, this article examines emotion and risk as mutually constituting processes linked to biographical context and social structure. Biographical events like economic insecurity and incarceration influence how risk is felt by providing comparative experiences of felt risk and felt benefits. Such events, in turn, are structured by class-based and racial inequalities, linking class and race positions to primary emotional experiences of risk.
40 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that through collectively managing the causal ambiguities of genomic findings, clinicians and parents enact a care relationship that works to assuage underlying feelings of diagnostic uncertainty.
Abstract: Clinicians order next-generation genomic testing to address diagnostic uncertainty about the cause of a patient’s symptoms. Based on video-recorded observations, we examine geneticists as they retu...
36 citations
TL;DR: Experimental research in traditional laboratories comes at a significant logistic and financial cost while drawing data from demographically narrow populations as discussed by the authors, which is why the growth of online methods of rese...
Abstract: Experimental research in traditional laboratories comes at a significant logistic and financial cost while drawing data from demographically narrow populations. The growth of online methods of rese...
20 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce conversation analysis (CA) as a methodological innovation that contributes to studies of the classic Milgram experiment, one allowing for substantive advances in the social psychological "obedience to authority" paradigm.
Abstract: We introduce conversation analysis (CA) as a methodological innovation that contributes to studies of the classic Milgram experiment, one allowing for substantive advances in the social psychological “obedience to authority” paradigm. Data are 117 audio recordings of Milgram’s original experimental sessions. We discuss methodological features of CA and then show how CA allows for methodological advances in understanding the Milgramesque situation by treating it as a three-party interactional scene, explicating an interactional dilemma for the “Teacher” subjects, and decomposing categorical outcomes (obedience vs. defiance) into their concrete interactional routes. Substantively, we analyze two kinds of resistance to directives enacted by both obedient and defiant participants, who may orient to how continuation would be troublesome primarily for themselves (self-attentive resistance) or for the person receiving shocks (other-attentive resistance). Additionally, we find that defiant participants mobilize t...
20 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relative merits of two established and two newly proposed methods for modeling impressions of social events: stepwise regression, ANOVA, Bayesian model averaging, and bayesian model sampling are evaluated.
Abstract: This research evaluates the relative merits of two established and two newly proposed methods for modeling impressions of social events: stepwise regression, ANOVA, Bayesian model averaging, and Bayesian model sampling. Models generated with each method are compared against a ground truth model to assess performance at variable selection and coefficient estimation. We also assess the theoretical impacts of different modeling choices. Results show that the ANOVA procedure has a significantly lower false discovery rate than stepwise regression, whereas Bayesian methods exhibit higher true positive rates and comparable false discovery rates to ANOVA. Bayesian methods also generate coefficient estimates with less bias and variance than either stepwise regression or ANOVA. We recommend the use of Bayesian methods for model specification in affect control theory.
15 citations
TL;DR: In the social sciences, an outstanding puzzle remains about the forms of perceived trustworthiness sufficient to produce trust survey experiments adjudicated between four models of the trustworthin this article. But trust surveys have been used to evaluate the trustworthiness of individuals.
Abstract: An outstanding puzzle in the social sciences remains about the forms of perceived trustworthiness sufficient to produce trust Survey experiments adjudicated between four models of the trustworthin
15 citations
TL;DR: The authors identify three instances in which adults make use of its specific spatial and symbolic resources to transmit socialization messages to children according to "naturalized" models of hegemonic gender difference.
Abstract: We draw on public observations conducted in a zoo to identify three instances in which adults make use of its specific spatial and symbolic resources to transmit socialization messages to children according to “naturalized” models of hegemonic gender difference. First, adults attribute gender to zoo animals by projecting onto them human characteristics associated with feminine and masculine stereotypes. Second, adults mobilize zoo exhibits as props for modeling their own normative gender displays in the presence of children. Third, adults discipline boys and girls differently in the context of the zoo’s built environment, and in doing so, they communicate socialization messages to children regarding how to behave in conventionally gendered ways. In emphasizing the context of the zoo as a site for the naturalization of gender categories, we identify how adults transmit gender socialization messages to children that promote gender stereotypes associated with the biological determinism of the natural living ...
15 citations
TL;DR: In the United States, age discrimination is pervasive and little is known about the social contexts in which it occurs as mentioned in this paper, but older persons spend much of their time in their neighborhoods, where a densit...
Abstract: Age discrimination is pervasive in the United States, yet little is known about the social contexts in which it occurs. Older persons spend much of their time in their neighborhoods, where a densit...
TL;DR: This article found that people who are over-rewarded relative to their referential expectations still report less negative emotion and more positive emotion than those who receive expected rewards, and they proposed a theoretical explanation that overreward based on local comparisons with an interaction partner creates guilt and other negative emotions.
Abstract: How do people feel when they benefit from an unfair reward distribution? Equity theory predicts negative emotion in response to over-reward, but sociological research using referential standards of justice drawn from status-value theory repeatedly finds positive emotional responses to over-reward. Researchers have proposed methodological explanations for these different findings, but we propose a theoretical explanation—that over-reward based on local comparisons with an interaction partner creates guilt and other negative emotions, while over-reward relative to an abstract justice standard leads to more positive emotion. We describe two experiments that address methodological explanations for the status value findings: (1) lack of tangible rewards and (2) lack of sufficiently large over-rewards. We find that people who are over-rewarded relative to their referential expectations still report less negative emotion and more positive emotion than those who receive expected rewards. We report results from a ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider how advice transmission varies across age groups and examine the age-contingent attitude of advice transmission in social networks and developmental social psychology scholarship, drawing from life course, social networks, and developmental psychology scholarship.
Abstract: Drawing from life course, social networks, and developmental social psychology scholarship, this article considers how advice transmission varies across age groups and examines the age-contingent a...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose models based in expectation states theory for the probability that a particular candidate (or subset of candidates) is selected from a pool of potential team members who are differentiated along diffuse status characteristics.
Abstract: Teams are ubiquitous in contemporary business, government, health care, and education settings; hence, the process of team formation is worth close examination We propose models based in expectation states theory for the probability that a particular candidate (or subset of candidates) is selected from a pool of potential team members who are differentiated along diffuse status characteristics The candidates may be equally qualified in other respects, but the ways in which they differ will be activated under specified conditions and influence their chances of selection We use the “motherhood penalty” literature to illustrate the model and the inferences it affords Our concluding discussion notes that although a step forward in understanding team selection, the model cannot be the whole story as “suitability,” a legitimate consideration in the team formation process, is unaddressed by an expectation states based model focused solely on attributions of competence as the drivers of teammate choice
TL;DR: This paper examined the effects of perceived distributive injustice, legitimacy of the authority, and authority's procedural fairness on members' self-reported emotions and likelihood of intended emotional displays toward that authority, a superordinate authority and coworkers in a work group context.
Abstract: People typically respond with negative emotions when they perceive an authority’s outcome distribution to be unjust. We argue, however, that legitimacy of the authority—“what others think” in terms of support coworkers and superiors extend to an individual occupying an authority position—acts as an opposing force, attenuating negative emotions and thus helping to sustain stratified orders. Likewise, legitimacy may stymie intentional displays of felt emotions. Our experiment examines the effects of perceived distributive injustice, legitimacy of the authority, and authority’s procedural fairness on members’ self-reported emotions and likelihood of intended emotional displays toward that authority, a superordinate authority, and coworkers in a work group context. Findings demonstrate that while perceived injustice arouses expected self-reported negative emotions, legitimacy (authorization as support by a superordinate authority and endorsement as support by coworkers) reduces such feelings. Also, strong aut...
TL;DR: There is widespread agreement from many areas of status research that evaluators’ judgments of performances can be distorted by the status of the performer as discussed by the authors, and the question arises as to whether status...
Abstract: There is widespread agreement from many areas of status research that evaluators’ judgments of performances can be distorted by the status of the performer. The question arises as to whether status...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider how two forms of direct exchange influence whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in the micro-structures that disadvantage them and find that the exit opportunity is more likely to result in disadvantaged actors coming to view their network as a group if there has been a history of reciprocal exchange.
Abstract: Drawing on existing theories of social exchange as well as self-categorization theory, we consider how two forms of direct exchange influence whether structurally disadvantaged actors choose to stay in the micro-structures that disadvantage them. We posit that (1) the exit opportunity is more likely to result in disadvantaged actors coming to view their network as a group if there has been a history of reciprocal, as opposed to negotiated, exchange and (2) this psychological group formation should account for disadvantaged actors disproportionately choosing to remain in reciprocal exchange networks. We also consider whether the information actors have about the alternative network affects this choice. Findings from two laboratory experiments generally support our argument that for disadvantaged actors, psychological group formation mediates the relationship between exchange form and staying in networks.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study how the status characteristics gender and ethnicity affect the abilities that adolescents attribute to each other in the Hungarian school context and propose a novel approach to handle structural dependencies between individual ability attributions.
Abstract: We study how the status characteristics gender and ethnicity affect the abilities that adolescents attribute to each other in the Hungarian school context. For this, we derive predictions from status characteristics theory that we test by applying exponential random graph models to data collected among students in 27 school classes. By that, we contribute to the few existing studies of status characteristics in a school context, and we propose a novel approach to handle structural dependencies between individual ability attributions. Our results suggest that across classes, gender does not consistently affect ability attributions, while ethnicity does affect ability attributions. Roma students are on average perceived as less able than their Hungarian peers, even after controlling for the structural embeddedness of these perceptions.
TL;DR: This article examined how expectations affect the emotions experienced when people verify or fail to verify their identities and found that both the distance one is from identity verification and one's progress toward verification independently influence the emotions individuals experience.
Abstract: In this study, I examine how expectations affect the emotions experienced when people verify or fail to verify their identities. Identity theory points to identity verification (i.e., thinking others view us as we see ourselves) as a source of emotions. The control model of affect provides an alternative explanation, emphasizing one’s expected rate of progress toward goal accomplishment (or verification) as a source of emotions. Results from three structural equation models testing these predictions indicate both the distance one is from identity verification and one’s progress toward verification independently influence the emotions individuals experience. These findings indicate that the two theories can be used to inform one another to provide a more precise prediction of the emotions experienced as individuals’ progress toward identity verification.
TL;DR: The Cooley Mead Award winner Dr. Murray Webster, Jr. as discussed by the authors was one of the founding scholars of the expectation states research tradition during the mid-1960s, when he was a talented PhD candidate at Stanford University.
Abstract: Bernard de Chartres, the twelfth-century Neoplatonist scholar, once described himself and his contemporaries as being able to see the world much more clearly because they benefitted from the wisdom of those who had gone before them. John of Salisbury once quoted Bernard: ‘‘And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.’’ Young expectation states theorists share this insight: we, too, stand on the shoulders of the giants and, with lucidity, see what others could not see and reach even higher. How fortunate I have been to be trained, nurtured, and encouraged by some of the giants of my field—and, of course, included in this group of giants is this year’s Cooley Mead Award winner, Dr. Murray Webster, Jr. Murray was very much one of the founding scholars of the expectation states research tradition during the mid1960s, when he was a talented PhD candidate at Stanford University. The fortuitous ‘‘linked lives’’ (Elder 1994) of the early expectation states theorists cannot be understated—Joseph Berger; Elizabeth and Bernard Cohen; Morris Zelditch, Jr.; Hamit Fisxek; Martha Foschi; and Murray Webster—all came together not only to produce some of the greatest works about social structure but also to create one of the most successful traditions in sociology. However, continuing with a life-course framing, one might also note that the ‘‘historical times’’ shaped these persons and the reasons why they become sociological social psychologists. Murray is no exception: his life journey to Stanford University shows that it is no accident that he decided to study how larger social forces initiate and maintain social inequalities during group interactions. Murray was born on December 10, 1941, within the small American and European expatriate community in the Philippines—three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By May 6, 1942, the Philippines were the occupied territory of the empire of Japan. Murray and his family were now official enemies of the state and were forced to live in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. So, if Murray tells you that he is the only Cooley Mead Award winner to ever have been in prison, know that this is a play on words: he was technically a prisoner of war during the first three years of his life. The story of the Santo Tomas camp is told eloquently by Ken Burns in his video history of World War II titled The War. As
TL;DR: A simple two-step approach based on a matching pre-processing of the data to estimate individual double standards is proposed, which simplifies regression analyses of the effects of covariates on double standards and offers new opportunities for research on double Standards.
Abstract: Split-ballot data are often used to study double standards. The key problem of this design is that individual double standards cannot be identified. I propose a simple two-step approach based on a matching pre-processing of the data to estimate individual double standards. Once this preliminary first step is completed, any statistical technique (e.g., regression models) can be applied on the new data. I apply the method to gender double standards on attitudes toward the age one leaves home by using data from the third round of the European Social Survey. The proposed method simplifies regression analyses of the effects of covariates on double standards and offers new opportunities for research on double standards.