Popularity

In sociology, popularity is how much a person, idea, place, item or other concept is either liked or accorded status by other people. Liking can be due to reciprocal liking, interpersonal attraction, and similar factors. Social status can be due to dominance, superiority, and similar factors. For example, a kind person may be considered likable and therefore more popular than another person, and a wealthy person may be considered superior and therefore more popular than another person.

There are two primary types of interpersonal popularity: perceived and sociometric. Perceived popularity is measured by asking people who the most popular or socially important people in their social group are. Sociometric popularity is measured by objectively measuring the number of connections a person has to others in the group. A person can have high perceived popularity without having high sociometric popularity, and vice versa.

According to psychologist Tessa Lansu at the Radboud University Nijmegen, "Popularity [has] to do with being the middle point of a group and having influence on it."

Introduction

thumb|From the 1917 silent film [[Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917 film)|Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, this image shows one girl behaving with overt aggression towards another girl.]]

The term popularity is borrowed from the Latin term popularis, which originally meant "common." The current definition of the word popular, the "fact or condition of being well liked by the people", was first seen in 1601.

While popularity is a trait often ascribed to an individual, it is an inherently social phenomenon and thus can only be understood in the context of groups of people. Popularity is a collective perception, and individuals report the consensus of a group's feelings towards an individual or object when rating popularity. It takes a group of people to like something, so the more that people advocate for something or claim that someone is best liked, the more attention it will get, and the more popular it will be deemed.

Notwithstanding the above, popularity as a concept can be applied, assigned, or directed towards objects such as songs, movies, websites, activities, soaps, foods etc. Together, these objects collectively make up popular culture, or the consensus of mainstream preferences in society. In essence, anything, human or non-human, can be deemed popular.

Types of interpersonal popularity

For many years, popularity research focused on a definition of popularity that was based on being "well liked." Eventually, it was discovered that those who are perceived as popular are not necessarily the most well liked as originally assumed. When students are given the opportunity to freely elect those they like most and those they perceive as popular, a discrepancy often emerges. This is evidence that there are two main forms of personal popularity that social psychology recognizes, sociometric popularity and perceived popularity. Prinstein distinguishes between the two types as likeability vs. social status.

Sociometric popularity or likeability

Sociometric popularity can be defined by how liked an individual is. This liking is correlated with prosocial behaviours. Those who act in prosocial ways are likely to be deemed sociometrically popular. Often they are known for their interpersonal abilities, their empathy for others, and their willingness to cooperate non-aggressively. This is a more private judgement, characterized by likability, that will not generally be shared in a group setting. Often, it is impossible to know whom individuals find popular on this scale unless confidentiality is ensured. Perceived popularity is primarily the result of what a person is. It is mediated by Input of Energy combining with the Hierarchy of Attraction. This preferential receipt of Input of Energy by a select few is what propels them to the "popular" side of the graph that combines sociometric and perceived popularity.

1. Who refers to the personality of the individual and how they treat other people. It is this factor that is responsible for determining where a student sits along the "liking" and "disliking" dimensions that characterize a student. The more pro-social an individual, the more they will be liked.
2. The Situation refers to the circumstances that an individual finds themself in. Different circumstances may result in different social outcomes. For example, the same student may be perceived as popular when in the social context of their church youth group but unpopular within the social context of their school as a whole.

Interpersonal causes

thumb|"Popularity" artwork featured in [[East Texas State Normal College's 1922 Locust yearbook]]

One of the most widely agreed upon theories about what leads to an increased level of popularity for an individual is the perceived value which that individual brings to the group. This seems to be true for members of all groups, but is especially demonstrable in groups that exist for a specific purpose. For example, sports teams exist with the goal of being successful in competitions against other sports teams. Study groups exist so that the members of the group can mutually benefit from one another's academic knowledge. In these situations, leaders often emerge because other members of the group perceive them as adding a lot of value to the group as a whole. On a sports team, this means that the best players are usually elected captain and in study groups people might be more inclined to like an individual who has a lot of knowledge to share.

The actual value which an individual brings to a group is not of consequence in determining his or her popularity; the only thing that is important is his or her value as perceived by the other members of the group. While perceived value and actual value may often overlap, this is not a requisite and it has been shown that there are instances in which an individual's actual value is relatively low, but they are perceived as highly valuable nevertheless.

Attractiveness

Attractiveness, specifically physical attractiveness, has been shown to have very profound effects on popularity. People who are physically attractive are more likely to be thought of as possessing positive traits. People who are attractive are expected to perform better on tasks and are more likely to be trusted.

Additionally, people who are of above average attractiveness are assumed to also be of above average value to the group. Research shows that attractive people are often perceived to have many positive traits based on nothing other than their looks, regardless of how accurate these perceptions are. This phenomenon is known as the Halo effect

The relationship also depends on culture. Prinstein notes that studies have found that increased aggression tends to correlate with higher social status in the United States, but lower social status in China. marked by:

• love/hate (Middle East, Mediterranean, Latin America);
• approval/criticism (United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Germanic countries);
• esteem/contempt (Japan, Eastern Asia); and
• responsiveness/rejection (the United States).

Only the responsiveness/rejection culture results in teenagers actively trying to become popular. There is no effort for popularity in Northern or Southern Europe, Latin America or Asia. This emotional bonding is specific for the high schools in the United States. In the love/hate cultures, the family and close friends are more important than popularity. In the approval/criticism cultures, actions are more important than persons, so no strong links develop during school.

Demographic differences

Maturity

Popularity is gauged primarily through social status. Because of the importance of social status, peers play the primary role in social decision making so that individuals can increase the chances that others like them. However, as children, individuals tend to do this through friendship, academics, and interpersonal conduct. By adulthood, work and romantic relationships become much more important. This peer functioning and gaining popularity is a key player in increasing interest in social networks and groups in the workplace. To succeed in such a work environment, adults then place popularity as a higher priority than any other goal, even romance.

Race

In some instances, it has been found that in predominantly white high schools, attractive non-white students are on average significantly more sociometrically popular than equally attractive white students. One theory that has been put forth to explain this phenomenon is a high degree of group cohesiveness among minority students compared with the relative lack of cohesion amongst members of the majority. Since there is more cohesion, there is more availability for one person to be liked by many since they are all in contact. This acts like Zipf's law, where the cohesion is a confounding factor that forces the greater links in the smaller minority, causing them to be more noticed and thus more popular. When considering race as a predictor for perceived popularity by asking a class how popular and important each other person is, African American students were rated most popular by their peers. Popularity in race was found to be correlated with athleticism, and because African Americans have a stereotype of being better at sports than individuals of other races, they are viewed as more popular. Additionally, White and Hispanic children were rated as more popular the better they succeeded in school and came from a higher socioeconomic background. No single factor can explain popularity, but instead the interaction between many factors such as race and athleticism vs. academics.

Effects of popularity in the workplace

Importance

More tasks in the workplace are being done in teams, leading to a greater need of people to seek and feel social approval. Popularity also leads to students in academic environments to receive more help, have more positive relationships and stereotypes, and be more approached by peers. Others prefer to work with popular individuals, most notably in manual labor jobs because, although they might not be the most knowledgeable for the job, they are approachable, willing to help, cooperative in group work, and are more likely to treat their coworkers as an equal. If an employee feels good-natured, genial, but not overly independent, more people will say that they most prefer to work with that employee.

Contributing factors

According to the mere-exposure effect, employees in more central positions that must relate to many others throughout the day, such as a manager, are more likely to be considered popular.

• Expressing and acting in genuine ways – others will turn away if they can detect that someone is being fake to them
• Focusing on positive energy – others will feel too drained to be around someone if their interactions are not started on a positive note or they don't have empathy to share in someone else's positive news
• Treating others with respect – others do not like to be around someone if they aren't treated equally and acknowledged for their hard work
• Create connections – others are more likely to approach individuals they have strong relationships with; these can be built by talking about more personal issues, attending work gatherings, and communicating outside the office walls
• Patience – turning away too quickly ignores that relationships take time to grow, especially in the busy and stressful environments that work often induces
• Incorporating others – others feel a sense of trust and belongingness when they are asked for help on a project First, a cohesive group feels more personal responsibility for their work, thus placing more value on better performance. Cohesive members see leaders as taking a bulk of the work and investing a lot of personal time, so when they see a job's value they can ascribe its success to the leader. This greatest contribution principle is perceived as a great asset to the team, and members view the leader more favorably and he gains popularity.

The popularity of objects as a consequence of social influence

Information cascades

Popularity is a term widely applicable to the modern era thanks primarily to social networking technology. Being "liked" has been taken to a completely different level on ubiquitous sites such as Facebook.

Popularity is a social phenomenon but it can also be ascribed to objects that people interact with. Collective attention is the only way to make something popular, and information cascades play a large role in rapid rises in something's popularity. Rankings for things in popular culture, like movies and music, often do not reflect the public's taste, but rather the taste of the first few buyers because social influence plays a large role in determining what is popular and what is not through an information cascade.

Information cascades have strong influence causing individuals to imitate the actions of others, whether or not they are in agreement. For example, when downloading music, people don't decide 100% independently which songs to buy. Often they are influenced by charts depicting which songs are already trending. Since people rely on what those before them do, one can manipulate what becomes popular among the public by manipulating a website's download rankings. Experts paid to predict sales often fail but not because they are bad at their jobs; instead, it is because they cannot control the information cascade that ensues after first exposure by consumers. Music is again, an excellent example. Good songs rarely perform poorly on the charts and poor songs rarely perform very well, but there is tremendous variance that still makes predicting the popularity of any one song very difficult.

Experts can determine if a product will sell in the top 50% of related products or not, but it is difficult to be more specific than that. Due to the strong impact that influence plays, this evidence emphasizes the need for marketers. They have a significant opportunity to show their products in the best light, with the most famous people, or being in the media most often. Such constant exposure is a way of gaining more product followers. Marketers can often make the difference between an average product and a popular product. However, since popularity is primarily constructed as a general consensus of a group's attitude towards something, word-of-mouth is a more effective way to attract new attention. Websites and blogs start by recommendations from one friend to another, as they move through social networking services. Eventually, when the fad is large enough, the media catches on to the craze. This spreading by word-of-mouth is the social information cascade that allows something to grow in usage and attention throughout a social group until everyone is telling everyone else about it, at which point it is deemed popular.

Individuals also rely on what others say when they know that the information they are given could be completely incorrect. This is known as groupthink. Relying on others to influence one's own decisions is a very powerful social influence, but can have negative impacts.

Zipf's law

thumb|left|The popularity of [[Facebook over time illustrating Zipf's law]]

The popularity of many different things can be described by Zipf's powerlaw, which posits that there is a low frequency of very large quantities and a high frequency of low quantities. This illustrates popularity of many different objects.

For example, there are few very popular websites, but many websites have small followings. This is the result of interest; as many people use e-mail, it is common for sites like Yahoo! to be accessed by large numbers of people; however, a small subset of people would be interested in a blog on a particular video game. In this situation, only Yahoo! would be deemed a popular site by the public. This can additionally be seen in social networking services such as Facebook. The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, while very few people have large social networks. However, some individuals have more than 5,000 friends. This reflects that very few people can be extremely well-connected, but many people are somewhat connected. The number of friends a person has, has been a way to determine how popular an individual is, so the small number of people who have a high number of friends on social networking services, like Facebook, illustrates how only a few people are deemed popular.

Popular people may not be those who are best liked interpersonally by their peers, but they do receive most of the positive behavior from coworkers when compared to nonpopular workers.