A Boutyline
Biographic Data
| ID | 57265 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Boutyline |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Boutyline |
| SIGNATURE | BOUTYLINE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3120-6469 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 305 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Forging Better Axes: Evaluating and Improving the Reliability of Semantic Dimensions in Word Embeddings
Word embeddings are a powerful tool for measuring cultural meaning using large text corpora. In sociology, applications commonly estimate the meanings of concepts by projecting keywords onto axes constructed from pairs of opposing anchor keywords. At present, there are no established metrics for assessing axis reliability from embedding data. We investigate three potentially relevant forms of reliability: parallelism between offsets, synonymy bet…
Meaning in Hyperspace: Word Embeddings as Tools for Cultural Measurement
Word embeddings are language models that represent words as positions in an abstract many-dimensional meaning space. Despite a growing range of applications demonstrating their utility for sociology, there is little conceptual clarity regarding what exactly embeddings measure and whether this matches what we need them to measure. Here, we fill this theoretical gap by clarifying how cultural meaning can be understood in spatial terms. We argue tha…
School, Studying, and Smarts: Gender Stereotypes and Education Across 80 Years of American Print Media, 1930–2009
In this article, we apply computational word embeddings to a 200-million-word corpus of American print media (1930–2009) to examine how education-relevant gender stereotypes changed as women’s educational attainment caught up with and eventually surpassed men’s. This case presents a rare opportunity to observe how cultural components of the gender system transform alongside the reversal of an important pattern of stratification. We track six ster…
Holding a position: Public opinion as cognition in a disorganized field
All Roads Lead to Polenta: Cultural Attractors at the Junction of Public and Personal Culture
In the process of retelling information, individuals often inadvertently transform it to be more consistent with their cultural schemas. We explore the long‐term cultural change inherent in this process, focusing on utterances about cultural tastes as our case study (e.g., music, food, and outdoor hobbies). We use a word embedding model to simulate a “telephone game” where each actor partially hears an utterance, uses their cultural schemas to gu…
Cultural Schemas: What They Are, How to Find Them, and What to Do Once You've Caught One
Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently n…
Improving the Measurement of Shared Cultural Schemas with Correlational Class Analysis: Theory and Method
Measurement of shared cultural schemas is a central methodological challenge for the sociology of culture. Relational Class Analysis (RCA) is a recently developed technique for identifying such schemas in survey data. However, existing work lacks a clear definition of such schemas, which leaves RCA’s accuracy largely unknown. Here, I build on the theoretical intuitions behind RCA to arrive at this definition. I demonstrate that shared schemas sho…
The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers: Variation in Ideological Homophily in Online Networks
We predict that people with different political orientations will exhibit systematically different levels of political homophily, the tendency to associate with others similar to oneself in political ideology. Research on personality differences across the political spectrum finds that both more conservative and more politically extreme individuals tend to exhibit greater orientations towards cognitive stability, clarity, and familiarity. We reas…
Belief Network Analysis: A Relational Approach to Understanding the Structure of Attitudes
Many accounts of political belief systems conceive of them as networks of interrelated opinions, in which some beliefs are central and others peripheral. This article formally shows how such structural features can be used to construct direct measures of belief centrality in a network of correlations. This method is applied to the 2000 ANES data, which have been used to argue that political beliefs are organized around parenting schemas. This str…
The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers: Variation in Ideological Homophily in Online Networks
We predict that people with different political orientations will exhibit systematically different levels of political homophily, the tendency to associate with others similar to oneself in political ideology. Research on personality differences across the political spectrum finds that both more conservative and more politically extreme individuals tend to exhibit greater orientations towards cognitive stability, clarity, and familiarity. We reas…
Belief Network Analysis: A Relational Approach to Understanding the Structure of Attitudes
Many accounts of political belief systems conceive of them as networks of interrelated opinions, in which some beliefs are central and others peripheral. This article formally shows how such structural features can be used to construct direct measures of belief centrality in a network of correlations. This method is applied to the 2000 ANES data, which have been used to argue that political beliefs are organized around parenting schemas. This str…
Cultural Schemas: What They Are, How to Find Them, and What to Do Once You've Caught One
Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently n…
Improving the Measurement of Shared Cultural Schemas with Correlational Class Analysis: Theory and Method
Measurement of shared cultural schemas is a central methodological challenge for the sociology of culture. Relational Class Analysis (RCA) is a recently developed technique for identifying such schemas in survey data. However, existing work lacks a clear definition of such schemas, which leaves RCA’s accuracy largely unknown. Here, I build on the theoretical intuitions behind RCA to arrive at this definition. I demonstrate that shared schemas sho…
Meaning in Hyperspace: Word Embeddings as Tools for Cultural Measurement
Word embeddings are language models that represent words as positions in an abstract many-dimensional meaning space. Despite a growing range of applications demonstrating their utility for sociology, there is little conceptual clarity regarding what exactly embeddings measure and whether this matches what we need them to measure. Here, we fill this theoretical gap by clarifying how cultural meaning can be understood in spatial terms. We argue tha…
All Roads Lead to Polenta: Cultural Attractors at the Junction of Public and Personal Culture
In the process of retelling information, individuals often inadvertently transform it to be more consistent with their cultural schemas. We explore the long‐term cultural change inherent in this process, focusing on utterances about cultural tastes as our case study (e.g., music, food, and outdoor hobbies). We use a word embedding model to simulate a “telephone game” where each actor partially hears an utterance, uses their cultural schemas to gu…
Holding a position: Public opinion as cognition in a disorganized field
Improving the Measurement of Shared Cultural Schemas with Correlational Class Analysis: Theory and Method
Measurement of shared cultural schemas is a central methodological challenge for the sociology of culture. Relational Class Analysis (RCA) is a recently developed technique for identifying such schemas in survey data. However, existing work lacks a clear definition of such schemas, which leaves RCA’s accuracy largely unknown. Here, I build on the theoretical intuitions behind RCA to arrive at this definition. I demonstrate that shared schemas sho…
The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers: Variation in Ideological Homophily in Online Networks
We predict that people with different political orientations will exhibit systematically different levels of political homophily, the tendency to associate with others similar to oneself in political ideology. Research on personality differences across the political spectrum finds that both more conservative and more politically extreme individuals tend to exhibit greater orientations towards cognitive stability, clarity, and familiarity. We reas…
Belief Network Analysis: A Relational Approach to Understanding the Structure of Attitudes
Many accounts of political belief systems conceive of them as networks of interrelated opinions, in which some beliefs are central and others peripheral. This article formally shows how such structural features can be used to construct direct measures of belief centrality in a network of correlations. This method is applied to the 2000 ANES data, which have been used to argue that political beliefs are organized around parenting schemas. This str…
All Roads Lead to Polenta: Cultural Attractors at the Junction of Public and Personal Culture
In the process of retelling information, individuals often inadvertently transform it to be more consistent with their cultural schemas. We explore the long‐term cultural change inherent in this process, focusing on utterances about cultural tastes as our case study (e.g., music, food, and outdoor hobbies). We use a word embedding model to simulate a “telephone game” where each actor partially hears an utterance, uses their cultural schemas to gu…
Cultural Schemas: What They Are, How to Find Them, and What to Do Once You've Caught One
Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently n…
Holding a position: Public opinion as cognition in a disorganized field
School, Studying, and Smarts: Gender Stereotypes and Education Across 80 Years of American Print Media, 1930–2009
In this article, we apply computational word embeddings to a 200-million-word corpus of American print media (1930–2009) to examine how education-relevant gender stereotypes changed as women’s educational attainment caught up with and eventually surpassed men’s. This case presents a rare opportunity to observe how cultural components of the gender system transform alongside the reversal of an important pattern of stratification. We track six ster…
Meaning in Hyperspace: Word Embeddings as Tools for Cultural Measurement
Word embeddings are language models that represent words as positions in an abstract many-dimensional meaning space. Despite a growing range of applications demonstrating their utility for sociology, there is little conceptual clarity regarding what exactly embeddings measure and whether this matches what we need them to measure. Here, we fill this theoretical gap by clarifying how cultural meaning can be understood in spatial terms. We argue tha…
Forging Better Axes: Evaluating and Improving the Reliability of Semantic Dimensions in Word Embeddings
Word embeddings are a powerful tool for measuring cultural meaning using large text corpora. In sociology, applications commonly estimate the meanings of concepts by projecting keywords onto axes constructed from pairs of opposing anchor keywords. At present, there are no established metrics for assessing axis reliability from embedding data. We investigate three potentially relevant forms of reliability: parallelism between offsets, synonymy bet…
Psychology (6 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works)