Developing the Theory of Popularity: An Empirical Assessment of Stability and Social Position

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Status and Hierarchies

Abstract

What accounts for the continuous turnover in popular practices? The extant Theory of Popularity argues that cyclical nature of popularity shifts can be explained as an endogenous process driven by (1) a desire to conform or differentiate that leads to a stable taste for popularity at the individual level, and (2) a heterogeneous distribution of taste at the population level. Although this argument is intuitive and potentially powerful, the theory would be strengthened with a closer examination of the argument’s foundations. In this paper, we seek to validate and elucidate the taste for popularity, a core element in the Theory of Popularity. To do so, we utilize birth certificates from the State of California between 1997 and 2007 (n = 5,914,804), and employ a novel identification strategy. We first validate the taste for popularity by demonstrating that individuals exhibit stability in choosing (un)popular names for their children over time. Second and more importantly, we advance the theory by investigating the relationship between naming practices and social position (as measured in social status, race, and immigration status). We find that social position ex-plains a substantial portion of the observed taste for popularity, and that this effect is stable over time. Taken together, these findings help further develop the Theory of Popularity and help us to better understand the cyclical shifts in popularity.

Authors

• Tristan L. Botelho, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Phech Colatat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology