Pub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1177/10434631241264122
Shuangda Wei
While extensive research has focused on the impact of educational expectations on academic performance, limited studies have explored the behavioral implications of educational aspirations, which are often presumed to have a monotonically increasing motivational effect. Challenging this conventional view, we leverage recent developments in economic theory to explore the non-monotonic motivational effect of educational aspirations, introducing the concept of “aspiration failure.” We propose a behavioral model that captures this motivational effect within a framework of decision-making under uncertainty, distinguishing between aspirations and expectations. Through regression analysis of data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we investigate how educational aspirations influence student effort and subsequent academic performance. Our findings reveal an overall positive and increasing motivational effect, after adjusting for multiple socioeconomic and psychological factors. Subgroup analysis indicates that low-achieving students with aspirations for a bachelor’s degree demonstrate greater effort and achieve better outcomes compared with those aiming for a master’s degree or higher, highlighting aspirational failure in the educational context. Consequently, we suggest that students can reach higher levels of behavioral motivation and academic success by adjusting their educational aspirations to more realistic levels instead of pursuing overly ambitious goals.
{"title":"Is aiming high always a good thing? A behavioral model of aspiration failure with evidence from lower-secondary students in China","authors":"Shuangda Wei","doi":"10.1177/10434631241264122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241264122","url":null,"abstract":"While extensive research has focused on the impact of educational expectations on academic performance, limited studies have explored the behavioral implications of educational aspirations, which are often presumed to have a monotonically increasing motivational effect. Challenging this conventional view, we leverage recent developments in economic theory to explore the non-monotonic motivational effect of educational aspirations, introducing the concept of “aspiration failure.” We propose a behavioral model that captures this motivational effect within a framework of decision-making under uncertainty, distinguishing between aspirations and expectations. Through regression analysis of data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we investigate how educational aspirations influence student effort and subsequent academic performance. Our findings reveal an overall positive and increasing motivational effect, after adjusting for multiple socioeconomic and psychological factors. Subgroup analysis indicates that low-achieving students with aspirations for a bachelor’s degree demonstrate greater effort and achieve better outcomes compared with those aiming for a master’s degree or higher, highlighting aspirational failure in the educational context. Consequently, we suggest that students can reach higher levels of behavioral motivation and academic success by adjusting their educational aspirations to more realistic levels instead of pursuing overly ambitious goals.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141802822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-24DOI: 10.1177/10434631241266494
Qian Hu, Yanping Pu
While research has explored the relationship between official media use and hierarchical government trust, there is a lack of studies that delve deeper into the relationship between official media use and government trust structure. Therefore, this study uses data from the 2017-2018 Chinese netizens’ social awareness non-tracking survey and employs rational choice theory and process-based trust mechanisms theory to empirically explore, for the first time, the relationship between official media use and government trust structure, along with its underlying mechanisms. Government trust structure is divided into four categories based on the different levels of trust in the central government and local government: paradoxical government trust, equal distrust, hierarchical government trust and equal trust. Among them, hierarchical government trust can be divided into central-distrust-local-distrust, central-trust-local-distrust, and central-trust-local-trust. The study finds that although hierarchical government trust decreases, it is the dominant form of government trust structure, and central-trust-local-distrust is the dominant form of hierarchical government trust. The transformation of other government trust structures into hierarchical government trust of central-trust-local-trust is associated with official media use, and political participation has a mediating effect in official media use and government trust structure. Our findings not only deepen the understanding of rational choice theory and process-based trust mechanism theory but also expand the comprehensive understanding of government trust structure in authoritarian regimes like China.
{"title":"Official media use, political participation, and government trust structure an empirical study based on the attitude of Chinese netizens","authors":"Qian Hu, Yanping Pu","doi":"10.1177/10434631241266494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241266494","url":null,"abstract":"While research has explored the relationship between official media use and hierarchical government trust, there is a lack of studies that delve deeper into the relationship between official media use and government trust structure. Therefore, this study uses data from the 2017-2018 Chinese netizens’ social awareness non-tracking survey and employs rational choice theory and process-based trust mechanisms theory to empirically explore, for the first time, the relationship between official media use and government trust structure, along with its underlying mechanisms. Government trust structure is divided into four categories based on the different levels of trust in the central government and local government: paradoxical government trust, equal distrust, hierarchical government trust and equal trust. Among them, hierarchical government trust can be divided into central-distrust-local-distrust, central-trust-local-distrust, and central-trust-local-trust. The study finds that although hierarchical government trust decreases, it is the dominant form of government trust structure, and central-trust-local-distrust is the dominant form of hierarchical government trust. The transformation of other government trust structures into hierarchical government trust of central-trust-local-trust is associated with official media use, and political participation has a mediating effect in official media use and government trust structure. Our findings not only deepen the understanding of rational choice theory and process-based trust mechanism theory but also expand the comprehensive understanding of government trust structure in authoritarian regimes like China.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141810291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-17DOI: 10.1177/10434631241252742
Ricardo Nieva
The authors study the role of kinship relationships in explaining mobilization for a revolt in Basel, Switzerland, in 1691; rebels consisted of a weaker fraction of the elite and individuals with citizen rights. The empirical section shows that revolts are mainly driven by the elite’s distant kin rather than the rebels’ close kin. Allowing for coalition formation, as in the new theory of corruption, conflict, and inequality proposed in this comment, can give an alternative explanation. In the first formal model, we assume “elite” corresponds to the term “enforcer” in the new theory. This is a nonproductive individual who is the strongest in terms of fighting against peasants over a prize in a contest. In this simple model, there are no other players. Thus, this framework predicts that the only rebels would come from within the elite. Historical evidence shows that the marginal elite got stronger relatively and, thus, excluded the oligarchy from the winning coalition to take over the government. The direct application of this model would imply that non-elite members were not part of the rebellion. However, the historical facts presented by Armandola et al. show that non-elite citizens also participated in the revolt. To match these facts in Armandola et al., we allow informally individuals with citizen rights to participate in the rebellion. Peasants, a term also used in the new theory, and marginalized groups (a term only used in the commented paper) in the cities did not participate. Kinship effects are discussed.
{"title":"Explaining mobilization for revolts by private interests and kinship relations. A comment on Armandola, Doehne and Rost","authors":"Ricardo Nieva","doi":"10.1177/10434631241252742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241252742","url":null,"abstract":"The authors study the role of kinship relationships in explaining mobilization for a revolt in Basel, Switzerland, in 1691; rebels consisted of a weaker fraction of the elite and individuals with citizen rights. The empirical section shows that revolts are mainly driven by the elite’s distant kin rather than the rebels’ close kin. Allowing for coalition formation, as in the new theory of corruption, conflict, and inequality proposed in this comment, can give an alternative explanation. In the first formal model, we assume “elite” corresponds to the term “enforcer” in the new theory. This is a nonproductive individual who is the strongest in terms of fighting against peasants over a prize in a contest. In this simple model, there are no other players. Thus, this framework predicts that the only rebels would come from within the elite. Historical evidence shows that the marginal elite got stronger relatively and, thus, excluded the oligarchy from the winning coalition to take over the government. The direct application of this model would imply that non-elite members were not part of the rebellion. However, the historical facts presented by Armandola et al. show that non-elite citizens also participated in the revolt. To match these facts in Armandola et al., we allow informally individuals with citizen rights to participate in the rebellion. Peasants, a term also used in the new theory, and marginalized groups (a term only used in the commented paper) in the cities did not participate. Kinship effects are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141127170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trade-offs between quality and quantity arise in an abundance of contexts concerning group decision making. With the starting point being that group members provide more accurate evidence when they are involved with fewer tasks, team managers often encounter the following dilemma: Should they assign their group members with many tasks (attempting to gather more evidence with lower quality), or with fewer tasks (aiming at receiving less, but more high-quality evidence)? Secondly, what is the optimal way to aggregate the collected evidence from a group, which may be contrasting and varying in accuracy? Should more weight be given to the more accurate group members, or to the larger number of those who provide the same answer? This topic is already studied within the mathematical framework of Terzopoulou and Endriss (2019). In this paper we complement it experimentally, by investigating to what extent people's decision-making patterns are in accordance with the optimal ones proposed by the normative model. Our findings suggest that people understand the task at hand and generally opt for optimal choices, especially in conflict-free cases. Still, a tendency towards overvaluing the importance of additional evidence, despite their accuracy, is observed; this translates into choosing options that align with the majority rule in aggregation problems.
{"title":"Managing and aggregating group evidence under quality and quantity trade-offs","authors":"Zoi Terzopoulou, Patricia Mirabile, Pien Spekreijse","doi":"10.1177/10434631241253078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241253078","url":null,"abstract":"Trade-offs between quality and quantity arise in an abundance of contexts concerning group decision making. With the starting point being that group members provide more accurate evidence when they are involved with fewer tasks, team managers often encounter the following dilemma: Should they assign their group members with many tasks (attempting to gather more evidence with lower quality), or with fewer tasks (aiming at receiving less, but more high-quality evidence)? Secondly, what is the optimal way to aggregate the collected evidence from a group, which may be contrasting and varying in accuracy? Should more weight be given to the more accurate group members, or to the larger number of those who provide the same answer? This topic is already studied within the mathematical framework of Terzopoulou and Endriss (2019). In this paper we complement it experimentally, by investigating to what extent people's decision-making patterns are in accordance with the optimal ones proposed by the normative model. Our findings suggest that people understand the task at hand and generally opt for optimal choices, especially in conflict-free cases. Still, a tendency towards overvaluing the importance of additional evidence, despite their accuracy, is observed; this translates into choosing options that align with the majority rule in aggregation problems.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141001641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.1177/10434631241243282
Yossi Perelman, Chen Goldberg
The ultra-Orthodox population in Israel demonstrates a higher natural growth rate compared to the general population, yet the employment rate among ultra-Orthodox men remains significantly lower. This phenomenon can be attributed to the concept of the religious club model (Berman, 2000), which posits that strict requirements and club goods foster a strong commitment to the religious community. By utilizing individual-level data collected from 256 ultra-Orthodox men and employing K-Means clustering analysis, we identified two distinct types based on their demonstrated levels of voluntary sacrifice which only partially overlapped the club’s formal admission criteria. Our findings illustrate the ultra-Orthodox religious club as inherently limited in its ability to enforce religious norms and prohibitions and as a result it is variably effective in filtering out ‘free riders’ and may not reward nonmembers despite their demonstrably consistently high adherence (‘wannabes’). Our findings also reveal a positive association between wage expectations and the likelihood of ultra-Orthodox men entering the labor market, implying a potential trade-off between earning potential and the extent of social fines. Interestingly, our results also offer insight into the increased adherence to Halacha (Jewish religious law), despite the rise in real wages. Furthermore, our simulation offers policymakers a tool to evaluate the necessary incentives to encourage greater participation of ultra-Orthodox men in the labor market. This has implications for both enhancing economic outcomes and understanding the intricate interplay between religion, social norms, and employment decisions.
{"title":"Untangling expectations and sacrifices: Ultra-Orthodox men in Israel and the religious club model","authors":"Yossi Perelman, Chen Goldberg","doi":"10.1177/10434631241243282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241243282","url":null,"abstract":"The ultra-Orthodox population in Israel demonstrates a higher natural growth rate compared to the general population, yet the employment rate among ultra-Orthodox men remains significantly lower. This phenomenon can be attributed to the concept of the religious club model (Berman, 2000), which posits that strict requirements and club goods foster a strong commitment to the religious community. By utilizing individual-level data collected from 256 ultra-Orthodox men and employing K-Means clustering analysis, we identified two distinct types based on their demonstrated levels of voluntary sacrifice which only partially overlapped the club’s formal admission criteria. Our findings illustrate the ultra-Orthodox religious club as inherently limited in its ability to enforce religious norms and prohibitions and as a result it is variably effective in filtering out ‘free riders’ and may not reward nonmembers despite their demonstrably consistently high adherence (‘wannabes’). Our findings also reveal a positive association between wage expectations and the likelihood of ultra-Orthodox men entering the labor market, implying a potential trade-off between earning potential and the extent of social fines. Interestingly, our results also offer insight into the increased adherence to Halacha (Jewish religious law), despite the rise in real wages. Furthermore, our simulation offers policymakers a tool to evaluate the necessary incentives to encourage greater participation of ultra-Orthodox men in the labor market. This has implications for both enhancing economic outcomes and understanding the intricate interplay between religion, social norms, and employment decisions.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140785240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-28DOI: 10.1177/10434631241242598
Charles Miller
Military institutions can be seen as a solution to a type of principal-agent problem, in which a government principal contracts with a military agent to produce violence on their behalf. Absent extensive monitoring, low effort should be expected from the military agent. This should especially be the case for a mercenary force which cannot rely on patriotism or ideology. Yet the mercenary army of the British-ruled India consistently produced high and dedicated performance. In this paper, I argue that the otherwise curious institution of recruiting predominantly from the so-called ‘martial races’ helps to explain this puzzle. Drawing on Iannaccone’s club goods model, I argue that the martial race recruitment system represented an effective solution to the principal-agent problem by allowing the British to benefit from a repeat business arrangement with a small number of ethno-religious groups whose costly in-group prohibitions and poor outside options helped both to screen out potential shirkers and deter poor performance on the battlefield.
{"title":"Martial races as clubs? The institutional logic of the martial race system of British India","authors":"Charles Miller","doi":"10.1177/10434631241242598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241242598","url":null,"abstract":"Military institutions can be seen as a solution to a type of principal-agent problem, in which a government principal contracts with a military agent to produce violence on their behalf. Absent extensive monitoring, low effort should be expected from the military agent. This should especially be the case for a mercenary force which cannot rely on patriotism or ideology. Yet the mercenary army of the British-ruled India consistently produced high and dedicated performance. In this paper, I argue that the otherwise curious institution of recruiting predominantly from the so-called ‘martial races’ helps to explain this puzzle. Drawing on Iannaccone’s club goods model, I argue that the martial race recruitment system represented an effective solution to the principal-agent problem by allowing the British to benefit from a repeat business arrangement with a small number of ethno-religious groups whose costly in-group prohibitions and poor outside options helped both to screen out potential shirkers and deter poor performance on the battlefield.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140371561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-16DOI: 10.1177/10434631241232518
R. Jiao, W. Przepiorka, Vincent Buskens
In 25 years, research on reputation-based online markets has produced robust evidence on the existence of the so-called reputation effect, that is the positive relation between online traders’ reputations and these traders’ market success in terms of sales and prices. However, there is an ongoing debate on what the size of the reputation effect means. We argue that the rate of truthful feedback that traders leave after completed transactions is negatively related to the size of the reputation effect. The higher the rate of truthful feedback, the quicker will untrustworthy traders be screened and disincentivized to enter the market. With mostly trustworthy traders entering the market, buyers will demand smaller price discounts from market entrants without a good reputation. We test this mechanism empirically in two laboratory experiments. In both experiments, we systematically vary the probability with which information about sellers’ behavior in an economic trust game is recorded and shown to future interaction partners of these sellers. In the second experiment, we introduce competition among sellers by allowing buyers to choose one of two sellers in each interaction. We find that sellers give discounts to buyers to build or repair their reputation and that sellers who give discounts or have a good reputation are trusted more. However, we do not find support for our hypothesis that a higher feedback rate significantly decreases sellers’ propensity to give discounts. We argue and show in exploratory analyses that this is likely due to the high level of unconditional trust buyers exhibit towards sellers without a reputation. Yet, seller competition increases the propensity to offer discounts among sellers without a reputation the most.
{"title":"Building a reputation for trustworthiness: Experimental evidence on the role of the feedback rate","authors":"R. Jiao, W. Przepiorka, Vincent Buskens","doi":"10.1177/10434631241232518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241232518","url":null,"abstract":"In 25 years, research on reputation-based online markets has produced robust evidence on the existence of the so-called reputation effect, that is the positive relation between online traders’ reputations and these traders’ market success in terms of sales and prices. However, there is an ongoing debate on what the size of the reputation effect means. We argue that the rate of truthful feedback that traders leave after completed transactions is negatively related to the size of the reputation effect. The higher the rate of truthful feedback, the quicker will untrustworthy traders be screened and disincentivized to enter the market. With mostly trustworthy traders entering the market, buyers will demand smaller price discounts from market entrants without a good reputation. We test this mechanism empirically in two laboratory experiments. In both experiments, we systematically vary the probability with which information about sellers’ behavior in an economic trust game is recorded and shown to future interaction partners of these sellers. In the second experiment, we introduce competition among sellers by allowing buyers to choose one of two sellers in each interaction. We find that sellers give discounts to buyers to build or repair their reputation and that sellers who give discounts or have a good reputation are trusted more. However, we do not find support for our hypothesis that a higher feedback rate significantly decreases sellers’ propensity to give discounts. We argue and show in exploratory analyses that this is likely due to the high level of unconditional trust buyers exhibit towards sellers without a reputation. Yet, seller competition increases the propensity to offer discounts among sellers without a reputation the most.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140455148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-11DOI: 10.1177/10434631241227279
Andreas Flache, Jonas Stein
{"title":"Reviewer Acknowledgements","authors":"Andreas Flache, Jonas Stein","doi":"10.1177/10434631241227279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631241227279","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139626647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-04DOI: 10.1177/10434631231225544
Joel Berger, Andreas Diekmann, Stefan Wehrli
The rise of populism has reignited scholarly interest in the paradox of societal advancement leading to frustration and social tension. Globalization and digitalization have increased social opportunities for parts of the population, but a substantial portion of society feels disadvantaged, resulting in discontent. This study, rooted in Boudon’s model of relative deprivation, examines the mechanisms that fuel this frustration. We conducted an online experiment involving 2114 US-based MTurk participants, in which we manipulated the availability of status positions to create varying degrees of upward social mobility. We also varied group sizes to ensure robustness. We assessed relative deprivation with structural, subjective, and behavioral measures. For example, frustration was measured using the “joy-of-destruction game,” in which subjects had to make the costly decision to destroy part of another player’s winnings. Contrary to the model’s prediction, we found that the proportion of individuals who were worse off, the losers, decreased consistently as mobility increased. This outcome can be attributed to overentry in conditions of low mobility and underentry in conditions of intermediate or high mobility. The losers displayed increased frustration and hostility towards noncompetitors and winners. Intriguingly, winners also exhibited heightened hostility. However, at the aggregate level, hostile behavior did not surge as conditions improved. In our exploratory analyses at the individual level, we identified several distinct patterns. Risk-tolerant individuals and women were more likely to enter competition. Conversely, those with advanced education levels showed a decreased inclination to competitiveness. Risk-tolerant individuals reported greater feelings of frustration and displayed increased hostility. This effect was also observed particularly among politically right-leaning individuals.
{"title":"Does improved upward social mobility foster frustration and conflict? A large-scale online experiment testing Boudon’s model","authors":"Joel Berger, Andreas Diekmann, Stefan Wehrli","doi":"10.1177/10434631231225544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231225544","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of populism has reignited scholarly interest in the paradox of societal advancement leading to frustration and social tension. Globalization and digitalization have increased social opportunities for parts of the population, but a substantial portion of society feels disadvantaged, resulting in discontent. This study, rooted in Boudon’s model of relative deprivation, examines the mechanisms that fuel this frustration. We conducted an online experiment involving 2114 US-based MTurk participants, in which we manipulated the availability of status positions to create varying degrees of upward social mobility. We also varied group sizes to ensure robustness. We assessed relative deprivation with structural, subjective, and behavioral measures. For example, frustration was measured using the “joy-of-destruction game,” in which subjects had to make the costly decision to destroy part of another player’s winnings. Contrary to the model’s prediction, we found that the proportion of individuals who were worse off, the losers, decreased consistently as mobility increased. This outcome can be attributed to overentry in conditions of low mobility and underentry in conditions of intermediate or high mobility. The losers displayed increased frustration and hostility towards noncompetitors and winners. Intriguingly, winners also exhibited heightened hostility. However, at the aggregate level, hostile behavior did not surge as conditions improved. In our exploratory analyses at the individual level, we identified several distinct patterns. Risk-tolerant individuals and women were more likely to enter competition. Conversely, those with advanced education levels showed a decreased inclination to competitiveness. Risk-tolerant individuals reported greater feelings of frustration and displayed increased hostility. This effect was also observed particularly among politically right-leaning individuals.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139386504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-11DOI: 10.1177/10434631231220850
Elias L. Khalil
The “Stratification-of-Goods” expresses social ranking where the lower status group consumes almost exclusively coarse goods such as Rambo films while the upper status group consumes almost exclusively refined goods such as Shakespearean plays. The Stratification-of-Goods is an enigma for the social welfare function (SWF)—which also applies at the level of the individual utility function. It is an enigma because it makes SWF and individual utility function ill-defined: there is no single metric that allows us to compare the utility functions across groups, as well as the tastes across a single decision maker (DM), insofar as they are segregated by the refinement of taste. This paper proposes a model that promises to solve the Stratification-of-Goods Enigma. The model, consistent with rational choice theory, starts with DMs who have identical tastes but differ with respect to income level. If income inequality is non-trivial, DMs invest differently in what this paper calls “sophistication capital”—the education needed to appreciate refined goods. The difference in investment in sophistication capital sets in motion dynamics that generates hard-to-reverse status stratification. In this fashion, this paper offers a solid endogenous account that solves the Stratification-of-Goods Enigma.
{"title":"Refined tastes, coarse tastes: Solving the stratification-of-goods enigma","authors":"Elias L. Khalil","doi":"10.1177/10434631231220850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631231220850","url":null,"abstract":"The “Stratification-of-Goods” expresses social ranking where the lower status group consumes almost exclusively coarse goods such as Rambo films while the upper status group consumes almost exclusively refined goods such as Shakespearean plays. The Stratification-of-Goods is an enigma for the social welfare function (SWF)—which also applies at the level of the individual utility function. It is an enigma because it makes SWF and individual utility function ill-defined: there is no single metric that allows us to compare the utility functions across groups, as well as the tastes across a single decision maker (DM), insofar as they are segregated by the refinement of taste. This paper proposes a model that promises to solve the Stratification-of-Goods Enigma. The model, consistent with rational choice theory, starts with DMs who have identical tastes but differ with respect to income level. If income inequality is non-trivial, DMs invest differently in what this paper calls “sophistication capital”—the education needed to appreciate refined goods. The difference in investment in sophistication capital sets in motion dynamics that generates hard-to-reverse status stratification. In this fashion, this paper offers a solid endogenous account that solves the Stratification-of-Goods Enigma.","PeriodicalId":47079,"journal":{"name":"Rationality and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138979221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：