Is Popular More Likeable? Choice Status by Intrinsic Appeal in an Experimental Music Market

Abstract

There is widespread agreement from many areas of status research that evaluators’ judgments of performances can be distorted by the status of the performer. The question arises as to whether status distorts perceptions differently at different levels of performance quality. Using data from the Columbia Musiclab study, we conduct a large-scale test of whether the effect of popularity on private perceptions of likeability is contingent on songs’ intrinsic appeal. We discover that choice status (i.e., popularity) can boost perceptions of a song’s likeability but only for songs of lower quality. In effect, the likeability halo created by popularity is one mechanism for why it is that “bad” songs can sometimes become more successful than songs that are intrinsically more appealing. But this same mechanism does not explain why “good” songs sometimes turn into superstars. This study suggests that status theories be refined to consider heterogeneous effects.