Reputation systems and recruitment in online labor markets: insights from an agent-based model

Online labor markets—freelance marketplaces, where digital labor is distributed via a web-based platform—commonly use reputation systems to overcome uncertainties in the hiring process, that can arise from a lack of objective information about employees’ abilities. Research shows, however, that reputation systems tend to create winner-takes-all dynamics, in which differences in candidates’ reputations become disconnected from differences in their objective abilities. In this paper, we use an empirically validated agent-based computational model to investigate the extent to which reputation systems can create segmented hiring patterns that are biased toward freelancers with good reputation. We explore how jobs and earnings become distributed on a stylized platform, under different contextual conditions of information asymmetry. Our results suggest that information asymmetry influences the extent to which reputation systems may lead to inequality between freelancers, but contrary to our expectations, lower levels of information asymmetry can facilitate higher inequality in outcomes

Global Diversity and Local Consensus in Status Beliefs:The Role of Network Clustering and Resistance to Belief Change

Formal models of status construction theory suggest that beliefs about the relative social worth and competence of members of different social groups can emerge from face-to-face interactions in task-focused groups and eventually become consensual in large populations. We propose two extensions of earlier models. First, we incorporate the microlevel behavioral assumption of status construction theory that people can become resistant to belief change when a belief appears consensual in their local social environment. Second, we integrate the insight that the macro-level social structure of face-to-face interactions in large populations often is a clustered network structure. Computational experiments identify an outcome that was not anticipated by earlier formalizations. The combination of network clustering at the macrolevel and resistance to belief change at the microlevel can constrain the diffusion of status beliefs and generate regional variation in status beliefs. Further experiments identify conditions under which this outcome obtains

Status perception matter: Understanding disliking among adolescents

"The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This notion is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in 5 schools). As hypothesized individuals dislike those who they look down on (disdain) and conform to others by disliking those who they perceive as being looked down on by their peers (conformity). The inconsistency between status perceptions also leads to disliking, when individuals do not look up to those who they perceive to be admired by peers (frustration). No evidence is found that adolescents do not dislike those who they look up to (admiration). Results demonstrate the role of status perceptions on disliking tie formation. Keywords: disliking ties, social networks, status perception, adolescents, RSiena models

Status inconsistency in groups:How discrepancies between instrumental and expressive status result in symptoms of stress

This study examines whether a mismatch between the positions that individuals hold in different status hierarchies results in symptoms of stress. Prior research has focused on inconsistencies between socioeconomic status dimensions (e.g., education and income) and did not find a significant relation between status inconsistency and stress. In this paper, we build on research on role differentiation and propose to study the effect of inconsistencies between instrumental status and expressive status in group contexts. We hypothesize that people with an inconsistency between these status dimensions experience feelings of uncertainty and frustration in their interactions with others and this manifests in stress-related symptoms. We test this hypothesis with data collected in a medium-sized Dutch childcare organization (N = 93). Polynomial regression analysis, visualized in response surface plots, suggests that status inconsistent employees report higher levels of stress

Status Characteristics and Ability Attributions in Hungarian School Classes: An Exponential Random Graph Approach

We study how the status characteristics gender and ethnicity affect the abilities that adolescents attribute to each other in the Hungarian school context. For this, we derive predictions from status characteristics theory that we test by applying exponential random graph models to data collected among students in 27 school classes. By that, we contribute to the few existing studies of status characteristics in a school context, and we propose a novel approach to handle structural dependencies between individual ability attributions. Our results suggest that across classes, gender does not consistently affect ability attributions, while ethnicity does affect ability attributions. Roma students are on average perceived as less able than their Hungarian peers, even after controlling for the structural embeddedness of these perceptions.status: publishe

An Agent-Based Model of Status Construction in Task Focused Groups

Status beliefs link social distinctions, such as gender and race, to assumptions about competence and social worth. Recent modeling work in status construction theory suggests that interactions in small, task focused groups can lead to the spontaneous emergence and diffusion of such beliefs in larger populations. This earlier work has focused on dyads as the smallest possible groups in which status beliefs might emerge from face-to-face interaction. In today's societies, however, many task focused interactions take place in groups larger than dyads. In this article, we therefore develop an agent-based computational model that enables us to study the emergence of status beliefs in groups larger than dyads. With this model, we address questions such as: Do basic principles of task focused interaction systematically favor the emergence of status beliefs in groups larger than dyads? Does the time-frame over which small groups interact affect the likelihood with which status beliefs emerge? How does group size affect the emergence of status beliefs? Computational experimentation with the new model suggests that behavioral principles known to spontaneously create hierarchical differentiation between individual group members also tend to align these hierarchies with categorical differences and thereby facilitate the emergence of status beliefs. This tendency is stronger in smaller groups, and in groups that interact either for a very short or very long time

The Mid-Twentieth Century Baby Boom and the Role of Social Influence. An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

Around the middle of the 20th century, most Western countries experienced a surge in birth rates, called the Baby Boom. This boom was unexpected at the time and the underlying mechanisms are still not entirely clear. It was characterized by high levels of inter- and intra-country variability in fertility, as some regions even experienced fertility decline during the Boom. In this paper, we suggest that social influence processes, propelling a shift towards two-child families, might have played an important role in the observed changes in fertility. Interactions in social networks can lead new types of childbearing behaviour to diffuse widely and thereby induce changes in fertility at the macro level. The emergence and diffusion of a two-child norm resulted in homogenization of fertility behaviour across regions. Overall, this led to a reduction of childlessness and thus an increase of fertility, as more people aspired to have at least two children. Yet, in those regions where larger family sizes were still common, the two-child norm contributed to a fertility decline. To explore the role of social influence with analytical rigor, we make use of agent-based computational modelling. We explicate the underlying behavioural assumptions in a formal model and assess their implications by submitting this model to computational simulation experiments. We use Belgium as a case study, since it exhibited large variability in fertility in a relatively small population during the Baby Boom years. We use census data to generate realistic starting conditions and to empirically validate the outcomes that our model generates. Our results show that the proposed mechanism could explain an important part of the variability of fertility trends during the Baby Boom era