Ezra W. Zuckerman’s research while affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other places

We develop and test the idea that public appreciation for authentic lowbrow culture affords an effective way for certain elites to address feelings of authenticity-insecurity arising from “high status denigration” (Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). This argument, which builds on recent sociological research on the “search for authenticity” (e.g., Grazian 2005) and on Bourdieu’s (1993) notion of artistic “disinterestedness,” is validated through experiments with U.S. subjects in the context of “outsider” art (Fine 2004). The first study demonstrates that preference for lowbrow culture perceived to be authentic is higher when individuals feel insecure in their authenticity because they attained status in a context where extrinsic incentives are salient. The second study demonstrates that audiences perceive the members of erstwhile denigrated high-status categories to be more authentic if they consume lowbrow culture, but only if the cultural producer is perceived as authentic. We conclude by noting how this “authenticity-by-appreciation” effect might be complementary to distinction-seeking as a motivation for elite cultural omnivorousness, and we draw broader implications for when and why particular forms of culture are in demand.

The "categorization as a theoretical tool" framework is delineated to clarify how innovation is possible even though candidates for exchange face a "categorical imperative" - pressure from their audience to adopt the conventional practices associated with existing categories. The key insight is that categorization is generally a useful tool for sorting and screening exchange opportunities. This insight is developed to suggest how the nature of the imperative varies with the audience's objectives and the theory of value it espouses and how the strength of the imperative varies with the social challenges and opportunities for engaging in, and learning from, experiments with unconventionality.

A core claim of sociological theory is that modern institutions fall short of their meritocratic ideals, whereby rewards should be allocated based on achievement-related criteria. Instead, high-status actors often experience a “status advantage”: they are rewarded disproportionately to the quality of their performance. We develop and test a theory of status advantage in meritocratic settings. The most influential model in past research derives status advantage from decision-makers’ tendency to infer quality from status when quality is uncertain. The theory developed here integrates and extends this and other theories to explain the emergence of status advantage in the many meritocratic contexts where the decision-maker’s personal, first-order sense of quality is less important to the decision. We argue that in such contexts, decision-makers must often coordinate with others to make the “best” decision, and thus they focus on the “third-order inference” problem of discerning who or what “most people” think is higher quality, as encoded in status beliefs. Three experiments demonstrate that under such conditions, status advantages can emerge even though (1) status information does not resolve uncertainty about quality; (2) the status belief is illegitimate; and (3) no party to the decision personally prefers the higher-status option. The theory implies that status hierarchies are resilient in the face of significant dissent but may be subject to public challenge.

Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting a lack of “mainstream” cultural capital; established names are popular among immigrants because they are unaware of current fashion. But we argue and show that even when they are aware of current fashion, immigrants may favor established names to affirm their membership in the host society. Comparing given names among World War II Jewish servicemen (born around 1918) with given names in the general US population in 1920, we show that the parents of these servicemen exhibited a pattern of acculturation that was (1) selective (in avoiding popular native names with strong Christian associations, and embracing certain unpopular native names) and (2) conservative (in their tendency to favor established names relative to newly popular names). In addition, our key finding is that these parents favored those established names whose popularity was rising and avoided those whose popularity was declining. This suggests that Jewish immigrants were aware of mainstream fashion, but deliberately chose established names so as to express their membership in American society. More generally, this result indicates that the acculturation process is as much about gaining social acceptance as about becoming adept in the mainstream culture.

In my doctoral dissertation, I attempt to understand why and how an individual or organization's perceptions of commitment affect different market outcomes. This dissertation consists of three essays. In the first essay, I study the effect of organizational form on market performance in the diamond retail industry. Building on the notion that profit-oriented motives create the risk that sellers may not be committed to customers, I develop the argument that the chain form of organization generates beliefs about profit-oriented motives that give rise to the perception that small retailers have higher moral standing. I argue that when organizational actions are morally ambiguous but there is no explicit violation of a moral norm, consumers are less likely to penalize small organizations than large organizations, providing small stores with an advantage in the market. I use retailers' responses to "conflict diamonds"-diamonds that fund rebels in war zones-in the diamond retail industry as an empirical case of moral ambiguity. This argument is tested in a series of online experiments. I also empirically validate the implications of my finding using observations from diamond retailers' websites and field interviews. My second essay (coauthored with Renee Gosline and Ezra Zuckerman) illustrates that social valuation plays a role in shaping consumers' social acceptance of technological innovation. In this paper, we investigate a technological innovation in diamond production, namely, labmade diamonds. While this provides a more efficient way of achieving a given level of quality, consumers have generally been resistant to lab-made diamonds. We argue that one mechanism that drives this resistance is the use of a product in the performance of a social ritual. The underlying logic is that a deviation from the traditional rules of a ritual carries the risk of signaling a lack of commitment or cultural competence. In a series of experiments, we show that consumers are more resistant to lab-made diamonds when they buy diamond jewelry for an engagement gift, compared to when they buy diamond jewelry for a more routine gift. The perceived risk associated with the ritual is found to mediate consumers' resistance to lab-made diamonds. In the third essay (coauthored with Oliver Hahl), we argue that perceptions of commitment to the customer is an important demand-side factor that influence a firm's ability to diversify to related business lines. We focus on an emerging activity in the US behavioral health industry: the private equity-backed clinics. We show, through experiments on therapists in the field of behavioral health, the industry's key audience, that perceptions of commitment are influenced by a firm's authenticity and influence the firm's likelihood of selection after diversification from addiction recovery clinics into substance abuse and eating disorder clinics. This study makes important contributions through causal evidence of demand-side limits to the boundaries of a firm via perceptions of commitment.

As enduring as categories are, they can and do change, over time and across spaces. Yet, such processes have received comparatively little attention. Moving beyond understanding how categories confine and define people’s sense-making processes, our symposium aims to shift attention to the ways in which categories themselves emerge, evolve, and dissolve. What are the different processes by which category systems can emerge? What approaches are best suited to studying such formation, change, and also dissolution of categories? Further, how is the same category system used and interpreted differently in different communities? In this symposium, we aim to address these questions by bringing together four studies that take a cultural and socio-cognitive approach to understanding category dynamics. In addition, we aim to explore how cultural artifacts—including language and narratives, for example—may co-evolve with and affect the evolution of categories. • The Categorical Dis-Imperative? Examining Category Effects in Fields of Innovation • Presenter: Adam Robert Castor; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania • Presenter: Tyler Earle Wry; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania • Explaining Hypes: Narratives and Category Emergence • Presenter: Nina Granqvist; Aalto U. • The Linguistic Structure of Industry Categories • Presenter: Stine Grodal; Boston U. • Presenter: Steven Kahl; Dartmouth College • Category Dynamics of a Hybrid Category: The Rise and Fall of Edutainment • Presenter: Eunice Yunjin Rhee; Seattle U. • Presenter: Jade Yu-Chieh Lo; Drexel U.