Collaborative Research: Accounting for Status

斯坦福大学谢莉·科瑞尔康奈尔大学埃兹拉·祖克曼麻省理工学院问责制在偏向于高地位选择的决策中的作用可以用一句谚语来描述：？从来没有人因为购买IBM而被解雇。这个表达反映了这样一种认识，即决策者必须向他人证明他们的决定是合理的，如果他们能说他们做了什么，他们就更容易为自己的决定辩护。大多数人?会做什么？他更喜欢高地位的选择。然而，尽管经济社会学的研究已经证明了这种影响，但社会心理学中对地位的研究却显示出了相反的模式，即问责制抑制了对性别或种族等地位特征的偏好。考虑到这一背景，拟议项目的智力优势在于：1)开发并测试了一种新的理论分析，分析了问责制在地位过程中的作用，从而促进了我们对重要的社会不平等过程的理解；2)整合了之前关于问责制和地位偏见的两个独立且看似矛盾的研究方向。这种协调的关键在于认识到问责是地位的组成部分，因为地位不仅标志着质量？同时也是一种社会协调工具，人们通过它来调整自己与他人的行为。如果决策者觉得自己依赖于受众的认可，但只知道受众知道自己的地位结构，那么即使决策者个人并不赞同高地位的选择，他也会倾向于高地位的选择。但只要决策者相信或怀疑观众持有非常规的信念（例如，性别和种族偏见是不合理的），对高地位选择的偏见就会减少。两个实验将检验关于问责制在哪些条件下会产生有利于高地位选择的偏见以及在哪些条件下会抑制这种偏见的假设。第一个实验采用经济社会学的消费者产品选择决策。第二种是评估应聘者的应聘材料，类似于社会心理学研究。每个实验中的条件会操纵决策者吗？因此，对于消费者选择和招聘推荐，我们预测在一种情况下会出现高地位偏好，而在另一种情况下，我们预计这种偏好会受到抑制。该项目有几个更广泛的影响。首先，它有可能通过加强问责制，为旨在减少工作场所对妇女和少数民族歧视的政策提供信息。这个项目表明，问责制的积极影响只有在一个环境中才能实现，这个环境可以有效地超越传统信念，并用当地环境中的特定信念取代它们，从而使地位和质量的联系脱钩。第二，该项目将通过为两所大学的研究生和几名本科生提供第一手的社会研究培训和经验，为科学的基础设施做出贡献。第三，根据过去的经验，ppi预计多达一半的毕业生和本科生将是女性和少数民族。这样的经历增加了这些学生追求科学事业的可能性。

SES-0751993Cecilia RidgewayStanford University SES-0751471Shelley CorrellCornell UniversitySES-0751474Ezra ZukermanMITThe role of accountability in biasing decisions in favor of high-status options is captured by the saying, ?No one ever got fired for buying IBM.? This expression reflects the recognition that decision-makers who must justify their decisions to others have an easier time defending that decision if they can say that they did what ?most people? would have done?i.e., favored the high-status option. Yet while research in economic sociology has documented such an effect, research on status in social psychology has shown what appears to be the opposite pattern, whereby accountability dampens biases in favor of status characteristics such as gender or race. With this background in mind, the intellectual merits of the proposed project are that it: 1) develops and tests a new theoretical analysis of the role of accountability in status processes that advances our understanding of important social inequality processes; 2) integrates two previously separate and seemingly contradictory strands of research on accountability and status biases. The key to this reconciliation involves recognizing that accountability is constitutive of status because status not only signals ?quality? but also acts as a social coordination device by which people align their behavior in relation to others. Insofar as a decision-maker feels dependent on audience approval but knows only that the audience is aware of the status structure, it is rational for a decision-maker to favor high-status options even when the decision-maker personally does not endorse them. But insofar as the decision-maker: believes or suspects that the audience holds unconventional beliefs (e.g., that gender and race biases are illegitimate), the bias towards high status options will be reduced. Two experiments will test hypotheses about the conditions under which accountability produces biases in favor of high status options and those in which it suppresses such biases. The first experiment employs a consumer product choice decision following economic sociology. The second involves the assessment of applicant files for hiring similar to social psychological research. Conditions within each experiment manipulate the decision maker?s sense of the audience for his of her decision so that, for both consumer choice and hiring recommendations, we predict high status favoritism in one condition while we expect such favoritism to be suppressed in other conditions. The project has several broader impacts. First it has the potential to inform policies aimed at reducing workplace discrimination against women and minorities by increasing accountability. This project suggests that the positive effects of accountability will only be realized in an environment that can effectively override conventional beliefs and replace them with specific beliefs in the local environment that decouple the association of status and quality. Second, the project will contribute to the infrastructure of science by providing graduate students and several undergraduates at two universities with first hand training and experience in the conduct of social research. Third, from past experience, the PIs expect that up to half of the graduates and undergraduates will be women and racial/ethnic minorities. Such experiences increase the likelihood that these students will pursue scientific careers.