Essays
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A Social Psychological Approach to Racializing Wealth Inequality - Brown, Joey
Since the Civil Rights' movements of the 1960s, some Blacks have advanced socioeconomically, resulting in a flourishing Black middle‐class. The Black middle‐class has experienced upward mobility as measured by traditional indicators of education and income. Cultural narratives promoting colorblindness and stressing the rise of a postracial, meritocratic America uphold Black advancement as a symbol of success. However, a focus on racial wealth inequality complicates the narrative of Black success and tells a different story regarding the life chances of Black Americans, even those who are middle‐class. This essay explicates foundational research on the increasing visibility of the Black middle‐class and racial wealth inequality. Secondly, it discusses advances in research on race and wealth inequality as well as recent social psychological theory on social class that may be useful in thinking about mechanisms and consequences of racial wealth inequality. Finally, the essay raises some key issues and questions for social psychologists interested in racial wealth inequality. By no means exhaustive, the goal is to begin a conversation on how social psychologists can contribute to understanding racial wealth inequality. In particular, social psychological work may help us understand continuing racial wealth inequality by considering the role of financial socialization, addressing tensions between objective and subjective social class identification, and thinking about the role of self and identity in wealth creation, accumulation, and dissemination. -
Aggression and Victimization - Bauman, Sheri
This essay details the historical progression of theories attempting to explain human aggression and victimization across the lifespan. Different theoretical lenses allowed for a comprehensive examination of the nuances between aggression and victimization, as supported by landmark experimental research studies conducted in the social and behavioral sciences. In addition, the neurobiology of aggression was discussed as an area of future research where professionals from multiple fields could collaborate in order to better understand the intersection of biology and the environment and how it impacts the development of individuals. -
Bullying and Cyberbullying - Bauman, Sheri
The purpose of this essay is to explore diverse forms of bullying according to multiple theoretical frameworks of aggression, victimization, and human development. We comment on existing anti‐bullying legislation and bullying prevention programs. Bullying manifests in a variety of settings, and with the popularity and accessibility of the Internet, a new form of bullying has become prevalent: cyberbullying or cyber aggression. Different forms of cyber aggression are discussed, as well as psychosocial implications for both aggressors and victims. Current trends in bullying and cyber aggression such as Internet trolling and innovative prevention strategies are detailed, as well as potential areas of future research in the social and behavioral sciences. -
Changing Work–Family Equilibria and Social Inequality - Scherer, Stefani
Profound changes in families and in employment patterns challenge the conventional view of work and family as two separate spheres, and finding a balance between them has become vitally important in economic, social, and even demographic terms for today's societies. Current trends also potentially alter families' role in societies' stratification system and overall inequality. Only recently research started to systematically link demographic and employment behavior and the family to the consequences for societies' inequality structure. Often the empirical impact is much less straightforward than parts of the literature suggest, and for a detailed understanding lifetime inequality and stratification rather than distributional inequality will need to gain major attention. -
Class, Cognition, and Face‐to‐Face Interaction - Rivera, Lauren A.
Social class—one's relative socioeconomic rank in society—plays a vital role in shaping individuals' future educational and occupational attainment, job satisfaction, and overall mental and physical well‐being. Although sociologists have studied macrolevel aspects of class formation and reproduction for over a century, how class distinctions are produced and reproduced on the ground in everyday social interactions has received far less empirical attention. Like other forms of stratification, class inequalities are driven not only by differential access to material resources but also how we fundamentally perceive ourselves, others, and appropriate behavior. Yet, the social sciences have yet to develop a clear and convincing theory of the microdynamics of social class. In this essay, I integrate contemporary research across disciplines to illuminate how social perception and interaction shape and are shaped by social class. I review classical and cutting‐edge research on the microdimensions of social class, discuss outstanding issues, and highlight promising directions for future research. -
Demography and Social Inequality - Fasang, Anette E.
Population processes, that is, fertility, migration, and mortality, are closely intertwined with social stratification and mobility from one generation to the next. There is some indication for an emerging trend toward a stronger integration of previously more separate research communities in demography and social stratification research. The author discusses three promising avenues for future research to generate new insights into the interplay between population processes and social inequality: (i) Demographic change and political processes, (ii) Long time horizons across the life course and multiple generations, and (iii) Implications of digitalization and technological change. -
Education for Mobility or Status Reproduction? - Lacy, Karyn
Everyone is familiar with the popular phrase, “education levels the playing field.” However, does public schooling really provide opportunities for everyone who is willing to work hard to succeed? This essay examines the scholarly debate that has emerged around this long‐standing maxim. At one end of the continuum, scholars draw on the experiences of white ethnic immigrants to make the claim that education is the ticket to upward mobility for students from poor families. However, critics point to the experiences of marginalized blacks, and increasingly, Latinos, to reject this claim. At the other end of the continuum, scholars depart from traditional debates about racial disparities per se, shifting their focus to an understudied disparity—the growing gap in achievement between middle‐class students and poor students. These scholars point to an important new trend in class inequality, one that has gained momentum in recent years, namely, the rising significance of the acquisition of cultural capital as a necessary prerequisite for upward mobility. Analysis of this trend is a promising step in the right direction for scholars concerned with helping disadvantaged students to climb out of poverty. -
Elites - Chu, Johan S. G.
By definition, individual elite actors have a disproportionately high level of resources at their disposal with which to influence society. The question is whether such elites are able to act in a unified and effective manner. During the twentieth century, scholars discovered mechanisms that led to elite cohesion and unified political action. In the early twenty‐first century, these mechanisms have ceased to function. Elite researchers are thus faced with the challenge of identifying alternative mechanisms capable of fostering elite influence. In addition to cohesion, mechanisms of elite institutional influence and durable dominance are promising areas for study. Against the current backdrop of popular interest in elites and the many theoretical avenues opened up by researchers doing related work in fields such as economics, organizational theory, business, and psychology, the twenty‐first century promises to be an important period for elite scholarship. -
Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups - Askin, Noah
Stratification within small groups is virtually inevitable. Understanding the precise mechanisms by which it occurs and the nature of its consequences is an important sociological endeavor. Individuals' preexisting qualities, as well as advantages emerging from intra‐group interactions, affect the flows of respect and deference accruing to each member of a group. Differences in these flows in turn create a hierarchy. In this essay, we first discuss foundational research on the causes and consequences of stratification before turning to more current trends. We focus on the ways in which status, the primary determinant of one's location in a group's hierarchy, is created and maintained or lost. We discuss the Matthew Effect—a process by which high‐status group members receive disproportionate credit for their contributions, and also more easily maintain their status. We also address the circumstances and activities that can curb the Matthew Effect. We then move to current research, which centers on two main concepts. First, we consider peer effects, discussing the various means by which an individual's closest peers shape his or her status; second, we take a broader perspective by examining small groups as open systems. This section considers how a group's external environment, including other nearby groups, affects the level and stability of within‐group stratification. We emphasize key issues and implications for future research on these topics. -
Emerging Trends: Social Classification - Pontikes, Elizabeth G.
Social classification influences how people interpret their surroundings. Classification helps organize people's knowledge and guide how they reason about new objects. Although people perceive classification as reflecting an objective, natural reality, to a large extent, it is constructed through contested social processes. Foundational research on classification focused on this social construction, on how actors conform to social categories, and on the penalties that accrue to actors who do not conform. Recent research has built on and questioned these foundations. Whether categorical boundaries are strong or weak affects how consequential categorization is; in some situations, there are rewards to categorical nonconformity, and for any classification there are multiple audiences with different perspectives on what social categories mean and how they confer value. This entry concludes by suggesting promising new directions for future research in social classification. -
Enduring Effects of Education - Curry, Matthew
Social scientists have found strong and persistent causal effects of education on various outcomes over the life course, even after using various methods to control for preexisting selection into educational treatments. Research suggests that educational attainment is an important causal factor in determining labor market outcomes, social status, physical and mental health, marriage and fertility, civic participation, and social attitudes. As education plays a central role in the causal processes of so many outcomes of interest, understanding the effects of education is a primary concern to social scientists. The effects of education are complex and vary across demographic groups, appearing greatest for marginal students. Furthermore, after controlling for individual educational attainment, aggregate levels of education can affect economic and noneconomic outcomes at both the aggregate and individual levels. Building on the literature on the effects of education, we suggest promising areas for future research, including assessing effect heterogeneity across individual and contextual characteristics; rigorously identifying and testing causal pathways and mechanisms that link education to associated outcomes; and attending to equilibrium effects, where aggregate levels of education may influence the relationship between individual education and a variety of individual outcomes. -
Feminists in Power - Orloff, Ann
In contrast to the scholarship allied with first and second waves of feminism, feminist analysts today survey a changed landscape of gender across the United States and much of the world: formal exclusions and discrimination are outlawed, gender hierarchies have been undermined, and women are appearing among economic, political, and other elites to an unprecedented degree even as gender inequalities stubbornly persist across multiple arenas. A focal point of debate among analysts of sexuality, political economy, and culture is the meaning and implications of pursuing gender equality in a world that no longer neatly divides into subordinated women and powerful men, and in which the increasing number of women among the socially advantaged problematizes traditional notions of female victimization and male domination. In this essay, we first offer an overview of earlier approaches to gender equality, then turn to critiques of these approaches which insist on the need for a new starting point for considering gender equality and women's emancipation. -
Gender and School‐to‐Work Transitions Research - Smyth, Emer
This essay critically reflects on existing conceptualizations of gender in school‐to‐work transitions research. Gender is always included as a “control” variable in analyses of post‐school transitions, but the way in which gender is embedded in institutional structures across different national settings is rarely unpacked in a systematic way. The essay draws on recent research to outline the way in which gender differences in labor market outcomes, especially at the early stages of the career, are likely to reflect variation in the nature of education and training systems. In doing so, it argues for the need to build bridges between transitions research and other sociological accounts of education and gender and highlights methodological challenges in combining insights from detailed case‐studies of specific workplaces and from multivariate analyses of large‐scale national and cross‐national data sets. -
Gender and the Transition to Adulthood: A Diverse Pathways View - Schoon, Ingrid
The transition to adulthood can be considered as a status passage in the institutionalized life course, involving the assumption of new social roles, such as the completion of education, entry into the labor market, and family formation (Shanahan, 2000). It is guided by age‐related legal norms as well as population‐based norms and informal expectations regarding appropriate ages for the completion of education, marriage, or becoming a parent, and the sequencing and combination of these roles (Buchmann & Kriesi, 2011). These norms and expectations, or “scripts of life” (Buchmann, 1989), can vary by gender, ethnicity, and social class—and are also highly responsive to social change. In this essay, I introduce a diverse pathways view examining variations and changes in transition experiences among men and women, as well as similarities in pathways to independent adulthood between the 1960s and today. The essay also addresses the intersection of multiple inequalities (focusing on class and gender) that shape individual transition experiences, and introduces the notion of “bounded diversity” taking into account the institutional framing of transitions. It is argued that existing templates for the transition to adulthood are dominated by the assumption of a linear career path moving from full‐time education to full‐time continuous employment, which is more typical for males than females, ignores the dynamics of human lives, and the need to combine work and family roles. To address the complexities and variations in transitions of men and women and in different subgroups of the population, it is necessary to revise existing templates and increase awareness of persisting inequalities. Moving toward more flexible and dynamic conceptions that represent the changing everyday arrangements between men and women, it can be possible to undercut traditional views of status differences and open up new potential for life projects. I first review key findings regarding gender differences in transition experiences, followed by a brief consideration of recent research, and a discussion of issues for future research. -
Gender and Women's Influence in Public Settings - Mendelberg, Tali
Does gender equality in public meetings improve as women's numbers grow? Research applying critical mass theory to the exercise of influence in public discussion and decision making reveals a complicated story. Women have made significant progress in education, employment, and the attainment of elected office; yet, they continue to lag behind their male counterparts in substantive, symbolic, and authoritative representation. Across political, nonpolitical, and experimental settings, women's participation and influence does not follow necessarily from their numerical proportion. We review previous studies of how women's lower status is manifested in group interaction, and we argue that research can better identify when and how numbers matter by attending to the group's context, institutional features, and informal norms. We describe cutting‐edge research designed to explore the effects of institutional rules and norms on women's authority. Women's increasing numbers in positions of potential influence constitutes a timely, promising, and challenging agenda for further scholarship. -
Gender and Work - Williams, Christine L.
Over the past 30 years, the US labor market has undergone fundamental structural changes. In the past, loyal and hardworking employees could expect to spend their entire careers working for a single employer. But starting in the 1980s, globalization, deregulation, and the decline of unions transformed this standard employment contract between workers and employers. Today, employment has become more precarious, unstable, and insecure. This essay reviews the limited research on how the rise of precarious employment in the United States has impacted men and women. We also analyze the gender implications of policies designed to address precariousness, and set an agenda for future research on gender inequality and precarious work. -
Gender Inequalities in the Home - Drobnič, Sonja
Gender inequalities in the home are reflected across a range of issues centering on care. In this essay, we focus on household labor which is persistent, structured by individual, couple, and structural differences and reflective of broader issues of gender inequality. Initially, we identify the theoretical approaches that serve as the foundation of empirical work on domestic arrangements: relative resources, time availability, and gender display theories. Then we discuss cutting‐edge approaches to household arrangements focusing on emerging research that expands definitions of housework, investigates existing theories for new family forms, and identifies housework as fluid by situating these divisions over the life course. Next, we discuss the methodological concerns that limit the generalizability of existing housework research. Finally, we identify remaining theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues plaguing housework research to provide further directions for future research. Ultimately, we provide a road map for emerging research on the gendered distribution of household labor. -
Gender Inequality in Educational Attainment - McDaniel, Anne
Just a few decades ago in most nations in the world, women completed far less schooling than men. Today, throughout much of the world, the reverse is true, and on average, women complete more years of schooling than men. This essay identifies important cross‐national trends in gender inequalities in educational attainment, outlines foundational and cutting‐edge research on the topic and suggests directions for future research. We examine US‐based explanations for the female‐favorable gender gap in educational attainment, and argue that the gender gap must be studied from a comparative and international perspective. While little is known about why women outpace men in education throughout the world, we recommend three potential avenues for future research: (i) the sources of girls' better average academic performance in school, (ii) boys' apparent greater vulnerability to resource deficits within families, and (iii) changing incentives for women and men to complete higher education. We conclude by discussing the potential consequences of the female advantage in educational attainment and the challenges of conducting cross‐national educational research. -
Gender Segregation in Higher Education - Hendley, Alexandra
During the second half of the twentieth century, systems of higher education expanded and democratized around the world. Women's participation increased so dramatically that their numbers now surpass men's in many industrialized countries. But gender equalization has not occurred uniformly. Sex segregation of majors and degree programs is a striking feature of modern educational systems and a key reason for the ongoing social and economic inequality of women and men. While significant gender inequality is found within educational systems worldwide, recent evidence shows marked differences among countries and country groups in their degree and pattern of sex segregation. This essay reviews foundational research in this field, identifies emergent trends and cutting‐edge lines of inquiry, and poses questions for future research on men's and women's distribution across educational institutions and fields of study. Much research on sex segregation in higher education has focused on cross‐national differences and historical trends. A major question concerns the persistence of extreme gender differentiation even in the most economically and socially modern contexts. Research findings to date reveal a complex interplay between cultural beliefs, structural forms, and individual cognition in generating and maintaining sex segregation in the modern world. In order to advance research in this field, we suggest that future studies focus on: (i) how patterns of sex segregation differ by race, ethnicity, class, and national origin; (ii) how curricular preferences are formed; (iii) how characteristics of educational systems influence patterns of sex segregation; and (iv) how fields of study (and occupations) become defined as either masculine or feminine. -
Gender, Religion, and State in the Middle East - Charrad, Mounira M.
This essay discusses the major trends in the study of gender, religion, and state in the Middle East from colonialism to the Arab Spring. Showing how the field started as a critique of colonial representations of women in the Middle East as passive and subordinate, it reviews briefly the foundational studies. It then indicates the major frameworks that scholars have used subsequently to show the complexities of the linkages between gender, religion, and state. Diversity within Islamic law, the role of kinship and states, and the significance of women's agency are highlighted. The essay proceeds with a discussion of cutting‐edge issues raised by the Arab Spring and suggests future directions for research. -
Group Identity and Political Cohesion - Huddy, Leonie
This entry examines the conditions under which group identities become politicized, the psychology underlying this process, and the consequences of political identities for political cohesion and engagement. The political consequences of membership in various demographic and religious groups played a central role in the earliest voting studies and these findings have been theoretically and empirically enriched by an active research focus on social identities within social psychology. Foundational research has identified the underpinnings of cohesive group political behavior in the existence of chronic strong group identities, an established link between the group and politics, and the emergence of group norms fostering a distinct political outlook and political action. Recent research has focused on dynamic aspects of group political cohesion, including threats to the group's status, the convergence of distinct identities, and factors that arouse strong emotions likely to foster collective action. Numerous questions remain unanswered about the conditions under which group political cohesion emerges. One set of questions concerns the origins of chronically strong identities in personality factors such as agreeableness and extraversion. Another set of questions touches on the origins of group identity in situational contexts that promote uncertainty. Finally, the degree to which group leaders can elicit cohesion and conformity, and the situational elements that promote such influence, is a very promising avenue for future research. -
Herd Behavior - Kameda, Tatsuya
There are many manifestations of herding in the human species—one of the most socially interdependent species on the earth. Herding here refers to an alignment of thoughts or behaviors of individuals in a group through local interactions among individuals rather through than some purposeful coordination by a central authority in the group. Herding underlies many collective phenomena in the Internet era, ranging from everyday social behavior, consumer choices, economic bubbles, and political movements. Accumulating evidence in various behavioral science disciplines suggests that we humans are equipped with neural, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms that constitute our highly socially sensitive minds. These built‐in mechanisms are evolutionary products that have promoted our survival. Yet, these adaptive tools can cause serious errors in modern environments, in which interconnectivities of individuals are much denser and externalities accruing from individual behaviors are much greater and more far‐reaching, compared to primordial environments in which the human mind evolved. Growing evidence in the behavioral sciences also suggests that the two contrasting collective phenomena in humans, maladaptive herding and the wisdom of crowds, are based on similar underlying mechanisms. In this sense, the two apparently opposite macro phenomena may be seen as twins produced and governed by the social receptivity of our minds. Given this commonality, understanding the neural, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms that could distinguish these twins will be one of the most important challenges for behavioral sciences in the next decade. -
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced Economies - Solga, Heike
Employment and wage inequalities between educational groups in advanced economies have received much attention in economic and sociological research. Over the past 50 years, the labor market vulnerability of less‐educated workers has increased and will most probably continue to do so unless crucial interventions take place. Foundational research has identified multiple factors that contribute to rising educational disparities in employment prospects. It has focused in particular on demand‐side factors, such as skill supply–demand mismatches, changes in overall job structures, foreign trade, or institutional changes; however, most studies were based on supply‐side data. Cutting edge research has challenged some of these findings by studying recruitment processes, technological changes, and skill distributions, and by using a multidimensional concept of education. Nevertheless, the relative importance of the various factors has yet to be determined. Other key issues for future research involve including women in the analysis, explaining not only differences between educational groups but also differences within the group of less‐educated workers, and studying the impact of variation in competence‐qualification relationships on the employment prospects of less‐educated workers. Research of this nature will require more interdisciplinary cooperation between economists and sociologists and an increase in international comparative studies. Such research will enrich our understanding of how the barriers confronting less‐educated workers in the labor market can be overcome or removed. -
Information Politics in Dictatorships - Wallace, Jeremy L.
Political science has made great progress in the study of nondemocratic regime survival in the past 15 years. Democratization is only one threat that such regimes face—indeed, most nondemocratic regimes are replaced by other dictators. How do regimes learn about the threats facing them? Cutting‐edge research has pointed to elite institutions, such as legislatures and politburos, easing information problems among regime insiders. However, the ways that nondemocratic regimes gather information about local agent performance and society remain underexplored. -
Interdependence, Development, and Interstate Conflict - Gartzke, Erik
A nation's economy is the engine that powers, produces, and procures the weapons of war. Economic interests may benefit from war through increased production or they may oppose contests that promise to interfere with profits from trade and investment. Punitive raids, a major invasion, or an attack from the air may also hamper the productive potential of a nation, encouraging its leaders to think twice before using force.