
Zachary BrewsterWayne State University | WSU · Department of Sociology
Zachary Brewster
PhD
About
34
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674
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Education
August 2002 - August 2009
August 2000 - August 2002
August 1998 - August 2000
Publications
Publications (34)
The current study draws from contemporary theories of morality to examine moral motives underlying service employees’ interactions with clientele. Specifically, we posit that employees who exhibit strong moral commitments to service equality (MCSE) are likely to make efforts to treat all clients equally—even when differential treatment is externall...
Existing evidence indicates that racial discrimination is a common, if not pervasive, feature of Black Americans’ experiences in U.S. consumer markets. However, few studies have quantitatively explored specific social psychological and interactional consequences of consumer racial discrimination. In response, we draw from literatures on experiences...
Restaurant servers’ negative sentiments toward Black customers have been well documented. Further, existing research has shown that a large proportion of waiters/waitresses confess that they sometimes discriminate against Black Americans by giving them less than their optimal service effort. However, research assessing the generalized consequences...
Racial discrimination in restaurant service is often depicted as an economically rational response to servers' concerns about perceived inadequate tipping by black and/or Hispanic customers. However, drawing from sociological and criminological theories that critique the limits of economic models of human behavior, we argue that discrimination agai...
In U.S. restaurants, racial and ethnic minorities often tip less than whites. These differences in tipping create numerous problems ranging from discriminatory service to restaurant executives’ reluctance to open restaurants in minority communities. Thus, racial differences in tipping need to be sizably reduced, which requires an understanding of t...
Masks have become the custom among restaurant workers and bartenders as a form of protection against COVID-19. Yet, given the rapid introduction of masks to the uniforms of restaurant servers there is a dearth of extant scholarship that has explored the effects of face coverings on customers’ behaviors. In response, this research offers a prelimina...
A limited number of published studies have presented evidence indicating that restaurant customers discriminate against Black servers by tipping them less than their White coworkers. However, the cross-sectional, localized, and small samples that were analyzed in these extant studies do not support any unqualified claim that consumer racial discrim...
Verbal and behavioral manifestations of anti-Black biases have been shown to be quite common in many full-service restaurant establishments. Such explicit expressions of anti-Black biases have been linked with servers’ endorsement of racial stereotypes depicting Black Americans as undesirable customers and their self-reported proclivities to withho...
Negative stereotypes are widely assumed to underpin the mistreatment that black Americans sometimes experience while engaging in everyday consumption activities like shopping or dining away from home. However, studies that directly observe the relationship between service providers’ endorsement of racial stereotypes and the nature of their interact...
Despite the size and interdisciplinary scope of the extant literature on domestic tipping behaviors, little research has been done on the tipping behaviors of tourists when traveling abroad. In response, this study presents results from a hypothetical scenario experiment indicating that tipping by US tourists follows the tipping norms of the visite...
A political mismatch between professors and a large swath of the student population has been widely documented. This mismatch is salient within sociology, where left-leaning politics are mainstream and institutionalized. Further, extant research indicates that this political mismatch leads students outside of the left-leaning mainstream to perceive...
On average, Black consumers have been reliably shown to tip restaurant servers less than their White counterparts, and this difference has been widely acknowledged to contribute to servers’ negative attitudes toward Black customers. However, studies centered on explicating the actual and perceived magnitude of Black–White tipping differences are sc...
Many U.S. restaurants have recently adopted no-tipping policies or are considering doing so. This study examines the effects of such moves away from tipping on restaurant’s online customer ratings. The results indicate that (i) restaurants receive lower online customer ratings when they eliminate tipping, (ii) online customer ratings decline more w...
In addition to encouraging good service, there are concerns that the custom of tipping may also motivate restaurant servers to discriminate in their service delivery by giving relatively less attention to members of groups thought to be poor tippers. Surprisingly, however, there is a notable scarcity of studies that have directly assessed the relat...
There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets is, however, relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focus...
Existing studies have found that restaurant servers sometimes deliver service that is informed by their customers’ race. However, we know considerably less about the causes underlying such discriminatory behaviors within the restaurant context. In this study, we advance this literature by analyzing data derived from a survey of restaurant servers (...
In this article we advance scholarship on consumer racial profiling (CRP), in general, and the practice as it occurs in restaurant establishments, in particular, by presenting findings from a survey of restaurant consumers that was designed to ascertain the degree to which discriminate service is evident in black and white customers' perceptions an...
Authors have called for concerted scholarship on how service workers strategically express agency in their work. This article furthers our knowledge of service workers' experiences by analyzing qualitative data derived from in-depth interviews in which restaurant servers discussed how they experience the labor process of serving. We delineate the v...
College instructors, as a group, are more liberal than the general US population. The causes and consequences of this incongruence have been the focus of a considerable amount of discourse. However, little scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding if and how political ideologies shape students’ classroom experiences. We advance this are...
Scholars have noted that the institution of tipping may encourage restaurant servers to provide discriminate service. The prospect of receiving an excellent tip from a patron, for example, is thought to encourage servers to discriminately provide excellent service. In contrast, the prospect of receiving a poor tip from a patron is thought to encour...
Most of the scholarly and popular discourse to date on the topic of racial discrimination within the restaurant industry has centered on the unjust treatment experienced by employees who are racial minorities. However, discriminatory service based on race also is—or should be—an industry concern. Based on a review of evidence, race-based discrimina...
Despite popular claims that racism and discrimination are no longer salient issues in contemporary society, members of racially underrepresented groups continue to experience disparate treatment in everyday public interactions. The context of full-service restaurants is one such public setting wherein African Americans, in particular, encounter rac...
Despite popular claims that racism and discrimination are no longer salient issues in contemporary society, racial minorities continue to experience disparate treatment in everyday public interactions. The context of full-service restaurants is one such public setting wherein racial minority patrons, African Americans in particular, encounter racia...
Considering the increasing proportion of US workers who depend on gratuities for a substantial amount of their income, it is not surprising that a growing body of literature across a variety of disciplines examines the phenomenon of tipping. Only recently, however, have scholars begun to study variation in tipping behaviours across social groups. T...
This guide accompanies the following article: Sarah E. Rusche and Zachary W. Brewster, ‘“Because they tip for shit!” The Social Psychology of Everyday Racism in Restaurants,’ Sociology Compass 2/6 (2008): 2008–2029, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2008.00167.x
Author's Introduction
The context of the article is very relatable to students, many who have worked...
Despite the notion that racism and discrimination are things of the past, racial minorities continue to experience such treatment in everyday interactions, often occurring in commercial transactions. In this paper, we analyze data from a survey of restaurant servers (N = 200) and a qualitative field study. Both were designed to explore the racial c...
Sociologists can make meaningful contributions to quantitative literacy by teaching sociological research skills in sociology classes, including introductory courses. We report on the effectiveness of requiring a research module in a large introductory class. The module is designed to teach both basic research skills and to increase awareness of ra...
A random sample of insured adults (n=134) tests the effects of insurance on respondents’ emotional and physical health. Results showed that being married and being widowed improved physical health while having no religious identification heralded less emotional distress. Preferred Provider Organization services satisfaction was related to better ph...
Individuals employ general, cognitively grounded categorization processes to form expectations for interactions with members of other social groups. Such categorizations sometimes surface in the form of racial, ethnic, or other stereotypes. But although much literature describes and/or tests the cognitive nature of stereotyping and categorization,...
Community household survey data tested the intervening role (between education and reported health outcomes) of adaptations of Antonovsky’s (1987) tripartite sense of coherence (SOC). Comprehensibility was indexed by clarity and responsiveness of insurance representatives, manageability was measured by problems reported with physician office visits...
In the last three decades a significant amount of research has been done on various aspects of strip clubs. The overwhelming majority of this research has focused on the females who perform at these clubs. Until recently, the patrons who frequent these clubs have been virtually ignored. Using covert participant observation, data were collected on p...
In this study we used community health survey data to test an adapted version of Lin's (2001a, b) theoretical model for explaining health differences in terms of the differential generation of social capital. There was considerable support for the model's explanatory components with regard to differences in physical health. Variation in physical he...