We suggest that moral panics exert spillover effects through stigma by mere association. Individuals are harmed even if their ties to stigmatized affiliates are heterophilous, and high-status individuals can also suffer. This creates a broadcast effect that increases the scale of the moral panic. Analyzing the U.S. film industry from 1945 to 1960, we examine how artists’ employment in feature films was influenced by their associations with co-workers who were blacklisted as communists after working with the focal artist. Mere association reduces an artist’s chances of working again, and one exposure is enough to impair work prospects. Furthermore, actors’ careers are impaired when writers with whom they worked are blacklisted. Moreover, the negative effects of stigma by mere association hold even when the focal artist has received public acclaim. These findings have broad implications. When a few individuals or organizations are engaged in wrongdoing and publicly targeted, stigma by association can lead to false positives and harm many innocents.
AdutAri. 2005. “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde.” American Journal of Sociology111:213–48.
2.
American Film Institute (AFI). 1999. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced In the United States: Feature Films, 1941–1950, 1951–1960. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
3.
BakerWayneFaulknerRobert R.1991. “Role as Resource in the Hollywood Film Industry.” American Journal of Sociology97:279–309.
4.
BaumeisterRoy F.BratslavskyEllenFinkenauerCatrinVohsKathleen D.2001. “Bad is Stronger than Good.” Review of General Psychology5:323–70.
5.
BeckerHoward S.1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press.
6.
BelfrageCedric. 1973. The American Inquisition, 1945–1960. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
7.
Ben-YehudaNachman. 1980. “The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist’s Perspective.” American Journal of Sociology86:1–31.
8.
BergesenAlbert J.1977. “Political Witch-Hunts: The Sacred and the Subversive in Cross-National Perspective.” American Sociological Review42:220–33.
9.
BertrandMarianneMullainathanSendhil. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?” American Economic Review94:991–1013.
10.
BielbyWilliam T.BielbyDenise D.1999. “Organizational Mediation of Project-Based Labor Markets: Talent Agencies and the Careers of Screenwriters.” American Sociological Review64:64–85.
11.
BurkJeffrey P.SherKenneth J.. 1990. “Labeling the Child of an Alcoholic: Negative Stereotyping by Mental Health Professionals and Peers.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol51:156–63.
12.
BurtRonald S.2005. Brokerage and Closure. New York: Oxford University Press.
13.
CeplairLarryEnglundSteven. 1979. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–60. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
14.
CogleyJohn. 1956. Report on Blacklisting, Vol. I. Movies. New York: Fund for the Republic.
15.
CohenStanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
16.
CorrellShelley J.BenardStephenPaikIn. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” American Journal of Sociology112:1297–1338.
17.
DovidioJohn F.KawakamiKerryJohnsonCraigJohnsonBrendaHowardAdaiah. 1997. “On the Nature of Prejudice: Automatic and Controlled Processes.” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology33:510–40.
18.
EriksonKai. 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: J. Wiley.
19.
FiskeSusan T.1980. “Attention and Weight in Person Perception: The Impact of Negative and Extreme Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology38:889–906.
20.
GoffmanErving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.
21.
GoldsteinSusan B.JohnsonVera A.1997. “Stigma by Association: Perceptions of the Dating Partners of College Students with Disabilities.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology19:496–504.
22.
GusfieldJoseph R.1963. Symbolic Crusade: Status, Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
23.
HeblMichelleMannixLaura. 2003. “The Weight of Obesity in Evaluating Others: A Mere Proximity Effect.” Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin29:28–38.
24.
HernánMiguel A.BrumbackBabetteRobinsJames M.2001. “Marginal Structural Models to Estimate the Joint Causal Effect of Non-randomized Treatments.” Journal of the American Statistical Association96:440–48.
25.
JonesDorothy B.1956. “Communism and the Movies: A Study of Film Content.” Pp. 196–233 in Report on Blacklisting, Vol. I. Movies, edited by CogleyJ.New York: Fund for the Republic.
26.
LazarsfeldPaul M.ThielensWagnerJr. 1958. The Academic Mind. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
27.
LinkBruce G.PhelanJo C.2001. “Conceptualizing Stigma.” Annual Review of Sociology27:363–85.
28.
McGilliganPatrickBuhlePaul. 1997. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
29.
McPhersonMillerSmith-LovinLynnCookJames M.2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology27:415–44.
30.
MehtaSheila I.FarinaAmerigo. 1998. “Associative Stigma: Perceptions of the Difficulties of College-Aged Children of Stigmatized Fathers.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology7:192–202.
31.
MeigsAnna S.1984. Food, Sex, and Pollution: A New Guinea Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
32.
MertonRobert K.1936. “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.” American Sociological Review1:894–904.
33.
MertonRobert K.1968. “The Matthew Effect in Science.” Science159:56–63.
34.
NavaskyVictor S.1980. Naming Names. New York: Viking.
35.
NeubergSteven L.SmithDylan M.HoffmanJonna C.RussellFrank J.1994. “When We Observe Stigmatized and ‘Normal’ Individuals Interacting: Stigma by Association.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin20:196–209.
36.
PagerDevahQuillianLincoln. 2005. “Walking the Talk: What Employers Say Versus What They Do.” American Sociological Review70:355–80.
37.
PhelanJo C.LinkBruce G.DovidioJohn F.2008. “Stigma and Prejudice: One Animal or Two?” Social Science and Medicine68:358–67.
38.
PhillipsDamon J.ZuckermanEzra W.2005. “High-Status Deviance or Conformity? Professional Purity or Impurity? Silicon Valley Law Firms’ Engagement in Family and Personal Injury Law.” Working paper, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
39.
PodolnyJoel M.2005. Status Signals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
40.
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. 1950. New York: Counterattack.
41.
RisenJane L.GilovichThomasDunningDavid. 2007. “On-shot Illusory Correlations and Stereotype Formation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin33:1492–502.
42.
RobinsJames M.HernánMiguel A.BrumbackBabette. 2000. “Marginal Structural Models and Causal Inference in Epidemiology.” Epidemiology11:550–60.
43.
RogersEverett M.2003. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed.New York: Free Press.
44.
RozinPaulRoyzmanEdward B.2001. “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion.” Personality and Social Psychology Review5:296–320.
45.
SchreckerEllen W.1994. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
46.
ShaleRichard. 1993. The Academy Awards Index: The Complete Categorical and Chronological Record. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
47.
TverskyAmosKahnemanDaniel. 1974. “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science185:1124–31.
48.
VaughnRobert F.2004. Only Victims: A Study of Showbusiness Blacklisting. 2nd rev. ed.New York: Limelight Editions.
49.
WinshipChristopherMorganStephen L.1999. “The Estimation of Causal Effects from Observational Data.” Annual Review of Sociology25:659–706.
50.
ZuckermanEzra W.KimTai-YoungUkanwaKalindavon RittmanJames. 2003. “Robust Identities or Non-entities? Typecasting in the Feature Film Labor Market.” American Journal of Sociology108:1018–74.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
