Sandra Nakagawa’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

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Publications (4)


Is Deference the Price of Being Seen as Reasonable? How Status Hierarchies Incentivize Acceptance of Low Status
  • Article

May 2017

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98 Reads

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26 Citations

Social Psychology Quarterly

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Sandra Nakagawa

High-status members are incentivized to contribute to a group’s collective endeavors by the deference and influence they receive. But what incentives do groups offer low-status members for their continued participation and deference to high-status others? We develop and test a theoretical account of how the implicit cultural rules for status hierarchies create a modest incentive system for deference to those deemed more valuable to the collective effort. Such deference endorses the group’s shared expectations for what is perceived to be validly better. The group responds by granting the deferrer a modicum of respect: the dignity of being seen as reasonable. This respect reaction acts as an incentive system that tempts the low-status person to stay involved in the group’s endeavor despite being less valued. Three experiments confirm that low-status members anticipate receiving and higher-status members offer such reactions of respect and reasonableness for low-status deference, and these reactions increase low-status members’ commitment to the group. A fourth study with a nationally representative sample supports the robustness of these findings.


It’s the Conventional Thought That Counts: How Third-Order Inference Produces Status Advantage

February 2017

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221 Reads

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189 Citations

American Sociological Review

Shelley J. Correll

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Ezra W. Zuckerman

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[...]

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Sandra Nakagawa

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.


Status

August 2014

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164 Reads

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20 Citations

Questions about the causes and consequences of inequality are fundamental to the discipline of sociology. Most sociological analyses contribute in some way to our understanding of what inequality is, how it is produced and reproduced, and how it affects individuals, groups, and societies. Sociologists study inequality in many and diverse contexts—between nations, between groups within nations, between individuals within groups, and so on. We draw from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, each of which offers unique insights into the complex processes through which social hierarchies are created and maintained.


Social Exchange Theory
  • Chapter
  • Full-text available

June 2013

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78,092 Reads

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593 Citations

Much of social life involves interactions between individuals or corporate actors in dyads, groups, organizations or networks that can be viewed as social exchanges. This chapter presents an overview of the main theories of social exchange focusing on the key contributors in sociology, including George Homans, Peter Blau, Richard M. Emerson and those whose work subsequently built on their original formulations. The theories that have been developed in recent decades have focused on the social structures created by repeated exchanges and the ways in which these structures both constrain and enable actors to exercise power and influence. Other related social processes addressed within the exchange tradition include interpersonal commitment, trust, fairness, procedural and distributive justice, coalition formation and collective action. Recent work also focuses on emotions and their role in social exchange. The methodological challenges of studying social exchange in the laboratory and in the world outside the lab are addressed as well as links between exchange theory and topics under study by economic sociologists and network scholars more broadly, including Internet-mediated exchanges and their growing significance.

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Citations (4)


... Empirical evidence lends some support to this critical perspective, especially when the group's structure enhances the disadvantages of social status. Lower-status group members tend to exercise less voice and are often afforded less authority (Ridgeway and Nakagawa 2017). This marginalization takes many forms. ...

Reference:

Race, Voice, and Authority in Discussion Groups
Is Deference the Price of Being Seen as Reasonable? How Status Hierarchies Incentivize Acceptance of Low Status
  • Citing Article
  • May 2017

Social Psychology Quarterly

... Individuals tend to comply unquestionably when faced with valid objects, driven by social obligation and control rather than voluntary endorsement. For instance, research has shown that validity's coercive power diminishes negative emotions toward perceived injustices (Johnson et al., 2016), and thus helps maintaining status hierarchies (Correll et al., 2017) and structures of inequality (Haack and Sieweke, 2018;Walker et al., 1988). However, as mentioned above, in contexts of conflicting validity and propriety, evaluators may conceal their propriety beliefs due to fear of social repercussions, sometimes even actively endorsing a valid object they privately deem improper (Centola et al., 2005). ...

It’s the Conventional Thought That Counts: How Third-Order Inference Produces Status Advantage
  • Citing Article
  • February 2017

American Sociological Review

... L. Cohen & Greenberg, 1982;Ridgeway, 2011). Although expectation states theory limits the scope of its predictions to task-orientated situations, Ridgeway and Nakagawa (2014) note its relevance to the work role because goalorientated interactions occur in workplace contexts and, ultimately, "mediate access to significant life outcomes such as income, positions of authority, social prestige, or health" (p. 6). Reward expectations theory-an extension of the status value theory of distributive justicerefines this insight by recognizing the ways that situations of action link to performance and reward structures. ...

Status
  • Citing Chapter
  • August 2014

... Similarly, Social Exchange Theory (Cook et al. 2013) states that a relationship exists between two individuals is based on cost-benefit analysis. Therefore, a relationship having higher rewards than costs is deemed to stay for a longer duration of time. ...

Social Exchange Theory