Psychological ‘self–other overlap’ and support for slavery reparations

Neurobiological and social psychological studies suggest the existence of non-conscious ‘self–other overlap’ that can lead individuals to identify with other individuals or groups. This paper investigates whether this effect may help to explain support by some Whites for an otherwise unpopular policy on behalf of African Americans-slavery reparations. A representative telephone survey (n = 1200) serves as baseline of comparison for an online reaction time study with a non-representative sample (n = 1341) that measures ‘self–other overlap’ (interchangeably referred to as “implicit closeness” to Blacks). Partial proportional odds ordered logit analyses reveal implicit closeness to Blacks as the single most powerful predictor of support for reparations among White respondents. The magnitude of the absolute effect of implicit closeness exceeds that of traditional predictors such as racial resentment, ideology, and party identification. Methodological and political implications are discussed.     

Trends in the relative occupational status of African Americans and European immigrants in Northern cities, 1880–1970

In his classic book, A Piece of the Pie, Stanley Lieberson described divergent trends in occupational standing for African Americans and European immigrants after 1920, as the Great Migration from the South swelled the size of the black population in northern cities. In this paper I build upon Lieberson’s work using longitudinal data drawn from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series for the census years 1880–1970. This more versatile data source allows me to examine separate occupational trends for northern-born blacks and southern-born migrants and to control for relevant socio-demographic characteristics. The findings confirm Lieberson’s general conclusion that blacks lost ground, occupationally, to immigrants after 1920. However, they show further that: (1) northern- and southern-born blacks experienced different trends in relative occupational standing after 1920, (2) that these different trends were due largely to compositional differences between the two groups of northern blacks, especially educational differences, and (3) that blacks were generally less successful than immigrants at translating additional educational attainment into improved occupational status, with southern migrants experiencing the weakest occupational returns to education. It is concluded that compositional differences and a racially-defined occupational queue were the most important factors shaping group differences and trends in occupational standing between 1920 and 1970. Timing of arrival in the northern industrial economy and a response by whites to the “racial threat” from a growing black population were less important.     

Racial similarity in the relationship between poverty and homicide rates: Comparing retransformed coefficients

Criminologists have shown great interest in comparing the strength of the relationship between poverty and violent crime for whites and blacks. The present paper argues that the standard approach of comparing race-specific coefficients from logarithmic metric OLS and/or Poisson-based regressions has led to erroneous conclusions in this literature. Unlike researchers in other disciplines (especially economics), criminologists have largely ignored the need to “retransform” coefficients to their linear-effect representations before making comparisons between groups. The current study illustrates the importance of this methodological issue for the substantive question of whether poverty’s relationship to homicide is racially invariant (N = 134 cities). Similar to previous studies, initial results indicated that poverty’s effect on the natural logarithm of the homicide rate was dramatically stronger for whites than blacks (nearly 300% stronger for whites). However, after applying a broadly useful retransformation formula, poverty’s effect on the homicide rate actually appeared somewhat stronger for blacks. Further application of bootstrap simulations necessary to calculate the standard error of the difference in coefficients suggested that this racial discrepancy was not statistically significant.     

On a dynamic response model of W. F. Kempf

Kempf's model was used by W. F. Kempf and P. Hampapa (1977, “Conditional inference for the dynamic test model,” in Mathematical Models for Social Psychology (W. F. Kempf and B. H. Repp, Eds.), Chap. 3, pp. 81–100, Wiley, New York) to analyze the cross-classification of responses to four items on sex typing of children's household chores from the 1971 Detroit Area Study. The model alters the simple Rasch measurement model for dichotomous items to include transfer effects, so that responses are allowed to be serially dependent (G. Rasch, 1966, “An individualistic approach to item analysis,” in Readings in Mathematical Social Science (P. F. Lazarsfeld and N. W. Henry, Eds.), pp. 89–107, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1980; Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests, expanded ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago). Although Kempf and Hampapa did not find strong reason to reject the dynamic model, the present analysis indicates that it should be rejected in favor of a two-dimensional Rasch model.     

A stochastic model of organizational mortality: Review and reanalysis

An effort is made to integrate the research literatures of business policy and organizational sociology as they concern organizational mortality. The previous empirical studies of organizational mortality are reviewed and considered in light of current theoretical arguments. Three stochastic models are developed to test hypotheses concerning organizational mortality: the constant rate model, the Gompertz model, and Makeham's Law. The parameters of these models are estimated for 52 sets of data on organizational mortality. The findings show that Makeham's Law is the best-fitting model, although its estimation requires data with low levels of censoring. Substantively, the findings show strong support for Stinchombe's liability-of-newness hypothesis [A. L. Stinchcombe (1965), “Organizations and social structure,” in Handbook of Organizations (J. G. March, Ed.), pp. 153–193, Rand McNally, Chicago].     

Red unions and bourgeois democracy: A quantitative-historical analysis of worker militancy and socialist electoral power

This paper investigates how workers’ “economic struggle” determines the “democratic class struggle,” and extends socialist electoral constituency. This paper argues that political outcomes, namely, electoral behavior, may not be understood independently of the labor process, especially its most militant manifestation, strikes. Rather than follow the customary conceptual dichotomy between the sphere of production and the political sphere, it is suggested that both strike activity and electoral participation are compatible political strategies that, under specific historical circumstances, may jointly determine the fate of the Socialist party. The leading question is how did the wave of strikes in post World War I Italy affect the electoral power of the Italian Socialist party, in comparison with another mass party, the Popular Catholic Party. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) is employed to analyze census, strike, and electoral data. It is found that strike activity and electoral democracy increased the electoral power of the Socialist party, whereas they had little effect on the power of the Catholic party. It is suggested that this was due to the Catholic non-revolutionary program which was ambivalent about the political role of strikes. It is concluded that the socialists’ political success was determined by their dual political strategy in both spheres, electoral participation, and organizing strikes.     

Cognitive abilities and self-rated health: Is there a relationship? Is it growing? Does it explain disparities?

Although social epidemiologists have recently turned to the role of cognitive abilities in health, the ensuing debate has been largely speculative and numerous questions remain unanswered. Epidemiologists have speculated in three key areas: (i) whether cognitive abilities are associated with health; (ii) whether the association is growing; and (iii) whether cognitive abilities explain disparities. Using the cumulative 1974–2000 General Social Survey, this paper explores these questions using self-rated health as an outcome and a test of verbal ability as an indicator of cognitive abilities. On the one hand, the results suggest a significant and strictly monotonic association between verbal ability (with scores ranging from 0 to 10) and self-rated health. The association has been consistently strong since 1974; there is no evidence for a growing association. On the other hand, the results provide little to no evidence that verbal ability explains disparities. In multivariate models, the coefficients for income and education are reduced by only a small fraction with the introduction of controls for verbal ability (5 and 16%, respectively) and the relationship between verbal ability and self-rated health is, itself, very sensitive to controls for socioeconomic status. Furthermore, verbal ability cannot account for black–white differences in self-rated health: interaction-effect analyses indicate that, conditional on socioeconomic status, verbal ability has no discernable association with self-rated health among African Americans. Altogether, the results suggest that cognitive abilities are related to self-rated health, but also that cognitive abilities will do very little to explain disparities and may have benefits that are limited mostly—and sometimes entirely—to whites. The results are inconsistent with much of the previous speculation regarding cognitive abilities, but consistent with research on health’s “fundamental” causes and, more generally, with sociological research on the role of cognitive abilities in the process of stratification.     

Joining up: Did military service in the early all volunteer era affect subsequent civilian income?

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we examine the long-term implications of military service for men’s income. We show strong variations in the effect of military service according to race and education. We do so while considering the effect of military service on the income trajectories of men and including a series of controls for selectivity. We find that while serving in the military, young men from disadvantaged backgrounds earn more than their civilian counterparts. Upon discharge, however, the income premium associated with military service tends to dissipate, and for White veterans with at least a high school degree, an income deficit results.     

Going most of the way: “Technical virginity” among American adolescents

Reports from academic and media sources assert that many young people substitute non-vaginal sexual activities for vaginal intercourse in order to maintain what could be called “technical virginity.” Explanations for technical virginity, however, are based on weak empirical evidence and considerable speculation. Using a sample of 15–19-year-olds from Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth, we examine technical virginity and its motivations. The results suggest that religious adolescents are less likely than less-religious ones to opt for non-vaginal sex over total abstinence. Abstinence pledgers who are virgins are neither more nor less likely than nonpledgers who are virgins to substitute non-vaginal sex for intercourse. Moreover, religion and morality are actually the weakest motivators of sexual substitution among adolescents who have not had vaginal sex. Preserving technical virginity is instead more common among virgins who are driven by a desire to avoid potential life-altering consequences, like pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.     

The role of self-evaluations in legitimizing social inequality

This research addresses a long standing puzzle in the social sciences: why are stratified social systems accepted as legitimate (the way things “ought” to be) by those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged by them? We build on previous studies of self-evaluations to explain the legitimation of inequality. The research consists of two experiments designed to test the self-evaluation theory of legitimacy. The theory proposes that structural inequality becomes legitimated when individuals’ self-evaluations and the level of resources they receive are congruent. Study 1 examines the impact of structural power on self-evaluations. Results show that participants randomly assigned to advantaged positions in power structures earn more rewards and, as a result, develop higher self-evaluations than those randomly assigned to disadvantaged positions. Study 2 addresses the relationship between self-evaluations and legitimated structural inequality by testing competing hypotheses of legitimacy. The results partially support the self-evaluation theory and partially support competing arguments about legitimacy. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our work and suggestions for future research.     

Cognitive Abilities and the Growth of High-IQ Occupations

Is there increasing cognitive partitioning by occupation over time? Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve strongly suggests such a trend. Herrnstein and Murray specify 12 occupations as “high-IQ professions.” They argue that as jobs in these occupations increase over time, more people with high IQs are drawn to these occupations. Thus, there is a growing concentration of the cognitive elite in high-IQ occupations and increasing cognitive partitioning by occupation. However, I find Herrnstein and Murray's analysis problematic due to lack of evidence and misinterpretation of data. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey, I rank occupations by incumbents' mean IQ and demonstrate that Herrnstein and Murray overestimate the rankings of some high-IQ occupations, the mean IQ level of persons in high-IQ occupations, and the percentage of high-IQ persons engaged in high-IQ occupations. In addition, using data from the General Social Survey, 1974–1998, I find no evidence that cognitive partitioning by occupation has increased over time.     

Global biodiversity decline of marine and freshwater fish: A cross-national analysis of economic, demographic, and ecological influences

We test competing hypotheses from political–economic and neo-liberal theories about the effects of economic growth and urbanization on a neglected, but important, indicator of environmental health: aquatic biodiversity. We analyze cross-national data on the number of threatened fish species within national territorial waters using negative binomial regression. We find that, counter to the expectations of neo-liberal theories, economic growth increases the likelihood of fish species becoming threatened within nations. Urbanization, however, appears to have no additional effect. The “environmental Kuznets curve” does not hold for aquatic biodiversity, suggesting that further economic growth in nations is likely to escalate the biodiversity crisis.     

Educational differences in health risks and illness over the life course: A test of cumulative disadvantage theory

This study tests the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis by examining the age-varying relationships between education, health risks, and disease onset and survival duration. Results based on 20 years of longitudinal data suggest that education is related to both the individual and accumulated number of behavioral, social, and economic health-risks, which in turn, are related to increasing educational differences in rates of disease incidence and survival. For hypertension, behavioral risks fully account for education’s negative effect on disease onset whereas educational differences in survival are best explained by the accumulation of social and economic risks. For heart attack, a combination of behavioral, social, and economic risks mediate the association between education and incidence, but neither the individual nor accumulated health-risks could account for education’s positive effect on surviving after a heart attack. Similar findings for diabetes and stroke are also discussed.     

Did send-down experience benefit youth? A reevaluation of the social consequences of forced urban–rural migration during China’s Cultural Revolution

During China’s Cultural Revolution, a large proportion of urban youth were forced to go to the countryside as a result of the state’s “send-down” policy. Past research has been ambivalent about the long-term social consequences for the Chinese youth who experienced send-down. Some scholars have suggested that the send-down experience may have yielded beneficial effects. To test this claim, we analyze data from the Survey of Family Life in Urban China, which we conducted in three large cities in 1999. Questions available in this data set allow us to ascertain the send-down experience of both the respondent and a sibling and educational attainment at the times of send-down and return. Our analyses of the new data show that the send-down experience does not seem to have benefited the affected Chinese youth. Differences in social outcomes between those who experienced send-down and those who did not are either non-existent or spurious due to other social processes.     

Career mobility and job flocking

Flocking is oftentimes used to metaphorically describe social behavior. Do people actually flock in a way that avian species do? This paper develops a purely ecological mechanism for explaining similarity in human behavior by distinguishing between social networks of person-to-person ties and ecological networks of ties of observability. I test the “information center hypothesis” [Ibis 115 (1973) 517] from bioecology on the career mobility of professional managers who all graduated from the same university. In this case, spatial proximity in birds is replaced with sociodemographic homophily on an acquired status characteristic among persons. The results indicate that homophilous individuals exchange information about a favorable destination state by ecological ties of observability, that is, they follow the career mobility of fellow alumni and “flock” along with them.     

The interviewer effect when there is an education gap with the respondent: Evidence from a survey on biotechnology in Taiwan

Survey methodologists are concerned that the interviewer’s characteristics may affect respondents’ answers. This paper investigates how the interviewer’s education interacts with the respondent’s perceptions and in turn affects the latter’s responses to hard questions in a biotechnology survey in Taiwan. Our results indicate that respondents with little education (junior high school or below) react to highly-educated interviewers by giving more substantive answers to both knowledge questions and attitude questions. These findings are consistent with findings in the literature on social psychology whereby the respondents can infer from the interviewer’s appearance and behavior whether the latter seems more knowledgeable than themselves, and that in interacting with someone with much more education, the one with little education senses his or her inferiority and tries to conform to the perceived expectations.     

Religious intermarriage in the United States: trends, patterns, and predictors

The reciprocal connection between religion and family life makes the topic of religious intermarriage of particular importance in the sociology of religion. Spousal influences are key for motivating religious switching and other religious commitments. Religious intermarriage has also been shown to influence a host of other outcomes, including spousal conflict, domestic violence, divorce, and fertility. Using data from the 1973–1994 GSS, I estimate log-multiplicative models examining patterns of association between spouses’ religious affiliations across two broad cohorts. Two-step and FIML Heckman’s selection models are used to determine how education, migration, cohort, and denominational origins influence the probability of intermarriage and the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Religious intermarriage increases across cohorts, but declines in homogamy are limited to liberal religious groups. Catholics and members of conservative sects are less likely to intermarry compared to others. The relative ordering of distances between religious groups was unchanged across cohorts. Educational attainment increases the likelihood of intermarriage, and marriages in which the woman has more education are more likely to be heterogamous. However, educational factors have no impact on the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Geographically stable rural Southerners are least likely to intermarry and if they do, choose a more similar spouse.     

Do displaced workers lose occupational prestige?

Worker displacement has become a common feature of employment in the “flexible economy.” While studies of income losses and the duration of unemployment after displacement abound, and popular accounts argue that workers often lose status, less empirical attention has been paid to the quality or prestige of employment displaced workers are able to secure after a downsizing event. This paper helps to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on changes in occupational prestige among a nationally representative sample of displaced workers who became reemployed from the January 2004 Displaced Workers and Employee Tenure Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Our findings show that displaced workers with higher levels of education, net of other factors, fared significantly better than others in job quality upon reemployment, highlighting the importance of education in retaining status and privilege in the new economy.     

Status claims, performance expectations, and inequality in groups

We state and test two new theoretical assumptions regarding effects of explicit status claims upon others' performance expectations and the consequent group hierarchy: (1) that any such claim is aggregated with other status information, and (2) that the weight of the effect of a claim is a direct function of the status position of the person expressing it. Added to the core assumptions of theories of status generalization, the new assumptions account for phenomena also called “second-order expectations” and “status cues.” Results from a six-condition experimental test support the ideas, and permit comparing our assumptions with two variant mechanisms. We consider some uses of the extended theory, including interventions to control status effects within groups and legitimating and de-legitimating group hierarchies.     

Latent structures of vertical control in intergovernmental relations

Much of the work on interorganizational (IO) relations focuses on intracommunity bases of resource exchange, or what a number of writers have referred to as the “horizontal axes” of community organization and resource control. Building on earlier work in the field, the present paper extends this conceptual framework to include “vertical” dimensions of resource control as they pertain to the work relations of governmental units at the local and extralocal level. In this context, vertical control is viewed as a power-dependence relation between county-based public service agencies and their “parent” units at the state and federal level. Variations in these control relations are used to identify alaternate structures of vertical control within a set of public service programs spanning several units of government. The analysis reveals three basic types of vertical control structure each of which is shown to foster a distinct pattern of exchange relations among these units.