Károly Takács
Biographic Data
| ID | 75731 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Károly Takács |
| GIVEN NAMES | Károly |
| FAMILY NAME | Takács |
| SIGNATURE | TAKÁCS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre for Social Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9126-3233 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Social networks and the emergence of informal norms and metanorms in transient working groups
While social norms and metanorms supporting sanctions are essential for norm compliance, their emergence in temporary settings, where long-term repeated interactions and reputational incentives are absent, remains poorly understood. This study analyzes survey, social network (N = 421), and interview (N = 65) data collected from volunteers at three Hungarian music festivals to explore the relationship between sanctioning support and social network…
Gender norms and couples’ conversations on childbearing intentions: A spontaneous speech corpus-based text analysis
Couples need balance in their relationships and, at the same time, try to adjust to the expectations of their social environment. These expectations create challenges particularly if they come from and are surrounded by an environment dominated by traditional gender values. We collected a unique corpus of 100 hours of unfiltered spontaneous dyadic conversations by couples living on the same floor of a Hungarian dormitory. We analysed the topics o…
Social Networks in Early Adolescence: Introduction to the Special Issue
Peer relations are increasingly important during early adolescence. Early adolescents spend considerable time among same-age others in school and during extracurricular activities. In these contexts, collective norms emerge, which guide behavior and determine how individuals can gain status and peer acceptance. Social networks shape young people’s attitudes, behavior, and identity development, while behavior and norms influence the dynamics of pe…
Friends Can Help to Aim High: Peer Influence and Selection Effects on Academic Ambitions and Achievement
During early adolescence, the influence of friends becomes more pronounced. This study models the effect of friends’ academic ambitions on adolescents’ ambitions while controlling for friends’ academic achievement and disentangling social influence from friendship selection using random coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) on a longitudinal sample of 19 school classes ( N = 407) in grades six through eight. The findings …
Voluntary play increases cooperation in the presence of punishment: A lab in the field experiment
Yes, You Can! Effects of Transparent Admission Standards on High School Track Choice: A Randomized Field Experiment
High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track in high school simply because they overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a randomized field experiment that communicated the admission standards of local secondary schools on the academic track to students in Hungary before the application deadline. We targeted the sub…
Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation: Content, Process, Honesty, and Structure
Research in various disciplines has highlighted that humans are uniquely able to solve the problem of cooperation through the informal mechanisms of reputation and gossip. Reputation coordinates the evaluative judgments of individuals about one another. Direct observation of actions and communication are the essential routes that are used to establish and update reputations. In large groups, where opportunities for direct observation are limited,…
More than one's negative ties: The role of friends' antipathies in high school gossip
Gossip is universal, and multiple studies have demonstrated that it can have beneficial group-level outcomes when negative reports help identify defectors or norm-violators. Gossip, however, seldom happens in a social vacuum. Instead, it is enmeshed in a fabric of positive and negative relationships that creates opportunities, constraints, and also motives to gossip. This article studies the importance of friendships and antipathies among the thr…
Grading in Hungarian Primary Schools: Mechanisms of Ethnic Discrimination against Roma Students
The present study aims to shed light on the mechanisms of ethnic discrimination in teacher assessments in Hungarian primary schools. For this purpose, we use data collected among Roma minority and non-Roma majority students. First, we identify a considerable ethnic difference in non-blind school grades, which is beyond the ethnic difference in blind standardized test scores. Then, we derive and empirically test predictions from different theories…
The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks
An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical m…
Collapse of an online social network: Burning social capital to create it
The last decade has shown that sometimes even the largest online social networks (OSNs) collapse. Significant cascading mechanisms have been identified in the pattern of abandoning the OSN iWiW at its peak of popularity and after. We set out to examine the key actors who were the first to leave their networks by contrasting explanations based on the structural position of users in the network. Using heterogeneous choice models, we found that a hi…
Relational Integration in Schools Through Seating Assignments
Traditional desegregation policies have improved but not fully solved the problems associated with the reproduction of inequalities and interracial prejudice in schools. This is partly because social networks are inherently segregated within integrated schools and the benefits of contact have not fully materialized. Therefore, new kinds of policies are needed to further improve the situation. This paper investigates the consequences and e iciency…
Peers that count: The influence of deskmates on test scores
Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Peer effect from classmates and friends, nevertheless, could be the target of interventions only to a limited extent. We hypothesize that deskmates may affect educational achievement. In contrast to friendship, deskmate relations could realistically be a target of policy intervention by teachers, who can decide on the seating arrangements in class. This s…
A pletyka és a reputáció összefüggései középiskolai osztályközösségekben
A kamaszok körében tapasztalható intenzív státuszverseny egyik gyakori velejárója a pletykálkodás, amit a fiatalok gyakran használnak eszközként a csoporton belüli magasabb státusz elérésére. Ha valakiről sok negatív pletyka terjed, az előbb vagy utóbb veszít megbecsültségéből. Az alacsony megbecsültséggel rendelkező kamaszokról továbbá egyre több negatív pletyka terjedhet el. Ugyanakkor a gyakori pletykálás is vezethet alacsonyabb megbecsültségh…
The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks
Referrals and information flow in networks increase discrimination: A laboratory experiment
Referrals and information flow distort market mechanisms of hiring in the labor market, but they might assist employers under asymmetric information in finding better alternatives. This paper investigates whether an impartial information flow between employers in a cyclic network structure could generate more discrimination than when no information is exchanged between employers. We set up an artificial labor market in which there was no average …
Discounting of Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology Textbooks and Curricula
Despite being internally fragmented by clashes of paradigms, sociology textbooks and introductory courses show a remarkable similarity in their content, while they share a peculiar neglect of small scale societies, non-human social relations, as well as evolutionary explanations. The mistreatment is explained by the strong position of sociology in the nature vs. nurture debate, by paradigmatic and ideologically motivated condemnations, by the lat…
Double Standards or Social Identity? The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Ability Perceptions in the Classroom
This study aims at disentangling the effects of status generalization and social identity processes on ability perceptions among early adolescents. Double standards theory predicts that people use different standards for making inferences about others’ abilities based on social status. Social identity processes, however, imply that people evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members. We analyze cross-sectional dyadic peer nomi…
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 …
High Standards Enhance Inequality in Idealized Labor Markets
We built a simple model of an idealized labor market, in which there is no objective difference in average quality between groups and hiring decisions are not biased in favor of any particular group. Our results show that inequality in employment emerges necessarily also in such idealized situations due to the limited supply of high quality individuals and asymmetric information. Inequalities are exacerbated when employers have high standards and…
Status Perceptions Matter: Understanding Disliking Among Adolescents
The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This phenomenon is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in five 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 incons…
Social Simulation That 'Peers into Peer Review
This article suggests to view peer review as a social interaction problem and shows reasons for social simulators to investigate it. Although essential for science, peer review is largely understudied and current attempts to reform it are not supported by scientific evidence. We suggest that there is room for social simulation to fill this gap by spotlighting social mechanisms behind peer review at the microscope and understanding their implicati…
Collective action and network change
Structural Embeddedness and Intergroup Conflict
Social structure affects the likelihood of group conflicts, although it has been disregarded by previous explanations. This study extends the intergroup public goods game model and integrates the influence of structural embeddedness and social incentives in the analysis of harmful group conflict. The integrated model explains why intergroup conflicts are often promoted by segregation and describes conditions under which this effect does not occur…
Status Perceptions Matter: Understanding Disliking Among Adolescents
The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This phenomenon is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in five 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 incons…
Double Standards or Social Identity? The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Ability Perceptions in the Classroom
This study aims at disentangling the effects of status generalization and social identity processes on ability perceptions among early adolescents. Double standards theory predicts that people use different standards for making inferences about others’ abilities based on social status. Social identity processes, however, imply that people evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members. We analyze cross-sectional dyadic peer nomi…
Grading in Hungarian Primary Schools: Mechanisms of Ethnic Discrimination against Roma Students
The present study aims to shed light on the mechanisms of ethnic discrimination in teacher assessments in Hungarian primary schools. For this purpose, we use data collected among Roma minority and non-Roma majority students. First, we identify a considerable ethnic difference in non-blind school grades, which is beyond the ethnic difference in blind standardized test scores. Then, we derive and empirically test predictions from different theories…
Peers that count: The influence of deskmates on test scores
Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Peer effect from classmates and friends, nevertheless, could be the target of interventions only to a limited extent. We hypothesize that deskmates may affect educational achievement. In contrast to friendship, deskmate relations could realistically be a target of policy intervention by teachers, who can decide on the seating arrangements in class. This s…
Structural Embeddedness and Intergroup Conflict
Social structure affects the likelihood of group conflicts, although it has been disregarded by previous explanations. This study extends the intergroup public goods game model and integrates the influence of structural embeddedness and social incentives in the analysis of harmful group conflict. The integrated model explains why intergroup conflicts are often promoted by segregation and describes conditions under which this effect does not occur…
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 …
Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation: Content, Process, Honesty, and Structure
Research in various disciplines has highlighted that humans are uniquely able to solve the problem of cooperation through the informal mechanisms of reputation and gossip. Reputation coordinates the evaluative judgments of individuals about one another. Direct observation of actions and communication are the essential routes that are used to establish and update reputations. In large groups, where opportunities for direct observation are limited,…
Friends Can Help to Aim High: Peer Influence and Selection Effects on Academic Ambitions and Achievement
During early adolescence, the influence of friends becomes more pronounced. This study models the effect of friends’ academic ambitions on adolescents’ ambitions while controlling for friends’ academic achievement and disentangling social influence from friendship selection using random coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) on a longitudinal sample of 19 school classes ( N = 407) in grades six through eight. The findings …
More than one's negative ties: The role of friends' antipathies in high school gossip
Gossip is universal, and multiple studies have demonstrated that it can have beneficial group-level outcomes when negative reports help identify defectors or norm-violators. Gossip, however, seldom happens in a social vacuum. Instead, it is enmeshed in a fabric of positive and negative relationships that creates opportunities, constraints, and also motives to gossip. This article studies the importance of friendships and antipathies among the thr…
Discounting of Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology Textbooks and Curricula
Despite being internally fragmented by clashes of paradigms, sociology textbooks and introductory courses show a remarkable similarity in their content, while they share a peculiar neglect of small scale societies, non-human social relations, as well as evolutionary explanations. The mistreatment is explained by the strong position of sociology in the nature vs. nurture debate, by paradigmatic and ideologically motivated condemnations, by the lat…
Structural Embeddedness and Intergroup Conflict
Social structure affects the likelihood of group conflicts, although it has been disregarded by previous explanations. This study extends the intergroup public goods game model and integrates the influence of structural embeddedness and social incentives in the analysis of harmful group conflict. The integrated model explains why intergroup conflicts are often promoted by segregation and describes conditions under which this effect does not occur…
Collective action and network change
Social Simulation That 'Peers into Peer Review
This article suggests to view peer review as a social interaction problem and shows reasons for social simulators to investigate it. Although essential for science, peer review is largely understudied and current attempts to reform it are not supported by scientific evidence. We suggest that there is room for social simulation to fill this gap by spotlighting social mechanisms behind peer review at the microscope and understanding their implicati…
High Standards Enhance Inequality in Idealized Labor Markets
We built a simple model of an idealized labor market, in which there is no objective difference in average quality between groups and hiring decisions are not biased in favor of any particular group. Our results show that inequality in employment emerges necessarily also in such idealized situations due to the limited supply of high quality individuals and asymmetric information. Inequalities are exacerbated when employers have high standards and…
Status Perceptions Matter: Understanding Disliking Among Adolescents
The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This phenomenon is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in five 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 incons…
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 …
A pletyka és a reputáció összefüggései középiskolai osztályközösségekben
A kamaszok körében tapasztalható intenzív státuszverseny egyik gyakori velejárója a pletykálkodás, amit a fiatalok gyakran használnak eszközként a csoporton belüli magasabb státusz elérésére. Ha valakiről sok negatív pletyka terjed, az előbb vagy utóbb veszít megbecsültségéből. Az alacsony megbecsültséggel rendelkező kamaszokról továbbá egyre több negatív pletyka terjedhet el. Ugyanakkor a gyakori pletykálás is vezethet alacsonyabb megbecsültségh…
The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks
Referrals and information flow in networks increase discrimination: A laboratory experiment
Referrals and information flow distort market mechanisms of hiring in the labor market, but they might assist employers under asymmetric information in finding better alternatives. This paper investigates whether an impartial information flow between employers in a cyclic network structure could generate more discrimination than when no information is exchanged between employers. We set up an artificial labor market in which there was no average …
Discounting of Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology Textbooks and Curricula
Despite being internally fragmented by clashes of paradigms, sociology textbooks and introductory courses show a remarkable similarity in their content, while they share a peculiar neglect of small scale societies, non-human social relations, as well as evolutionary explanations. The mistreatment is explained by the strong position of sociology in the nature vs. nurture debate, by paradigmatic and ideologically motivated condemnations, by the lat…
Double Standards or Social Identity? The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Ability Perceptions in the Classroom
This study aims at disentangling the effects of status generalization and social identity processes on ability perceptions among early adolescents. Double standards theory predicts that people use different standards for making inferences about others’ abilities based on social status. Social identity processes, however, imply that people evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members. We analyze cross-sectional dyadic peer nomi…
The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks
An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical m…
Collapse of an online social network: Burning social capital to create it
The last decade has shown that sometimes even the largest online social networks (OSNs) collapse. Significant cascading mechanisms have been identified in the pattern of abandoning the OSN iWiW at its peak of popularity and after. We set out to examine the key actors who were the first to leave their networks by contrasting explanations based on the structural position of users in the network. Using heterogeneous choice models, we found that a hi…
Relational Integration in Schools Through Seating Assignments
Traditional desegregation policies have improved but not fully solved the problems associated with the reproduction of inequalities and interracial prejudice in schools. This is partly because social networks are inherently segregated within integrated schools and the benefits of contact have not fully materialized. Therefore, new kinds of policies are needed to further improve the situation. This paper investigates the consequences and e iciency…
Peers that count: The influence of deskmates on test scores
Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Peer effect from classmates and friends, nevertheless, could be the target of interventions only to a limited extent. We hypothesize that deskmates may affect educational achievement. In contrast to friendship, deskmate relations could realistically be a target of policy intervention by teachers, who can decide on the seating arrangements in class. This s…
Grading in Hungarian Primary Schools: Mechanisms of Ethnic Discrimination against Roma Students
The present study aims to shed light on the mechanisms of ethnic discrimination in teacher assessments in Hungarian primary schools. For this purpose, we use data collected among Roma minority and non-Roma majority students. First, we identify a considerable ethnic difference in non-blind school grades, which is beyond the ethnic difference in blind standardized test scores. Then, we derive and empirically test predictions from different theories…
Yes, You Can! Effects of Transparent Admission Standards on High School Track Choice: A Randomized Field Experiment
High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track in high school simply because they overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a randomized field experiment that communicated the admission standards of local secondary schools on the academic track to students in Hungary before the application deadline. We targeted the sub…
Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation: Content, Process, Honesty, and Structure
Research in various disciplines has highlighted that humans are uniquely able to solve the problem of cooperation through the informal mechanisms of reputation and gossip. Reputation coordinates the evaluative judgments of individuals about one another. Direct observation of actions and communication are the essential routes that are used to establish and update reputations. In large groups, where opportunities for direct observation are limited,…
More than one's negative ties: The role of friends' antipathies in high school gossip
Gossip is universal, and multiple studies have demonstrated that it can have beneficial group-level outcomes when negative reports help identify defectors or norm-violators. Gossip, however, seldom happens in a social vacuum. Instead, it is enmeshed in a fabric of positive and negative relationships that creates opportunities, constraints, and also motives to gossip. This article studies the importance of friendships and antipathies among the thr…
Voluntary play increases cooperation in the presence of punishment: A lab in the field experiment
Friends Can Help to Aim High: Peer Influence and Selection Effects on Academic Ambitions and Achievement
During early adolescence, the influence of friends becomes more pronounced. This study models the effect of friends’ academic ambitions on adolescents’ ambitions while controlling for friends’ academic achievement and disentangling social influence from friendship selection using random coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) on a longitudinal sample of 19 school classes ( N = 407) in grades six through eight. The findings …
Social Networks in Early Adolescence: Introduction to the Special Issue
Peer relations are increasingly important during early adolescence. Early adolescents spend considerable time among same-age others in school and during extracurricular activities. In these contexts, collective norms emerge, which guide behavior and determine how individuals can gain status and peer acceptance. Social networks shape young people’s attitudes, behavior, and identity development, while behavior and norms influence the dynamics of pe…
Social networks and the emergence of informal norms and metanorms in transient working groups
While social norms and metanorms supporting sanctions are essential for norm compliance, their emergence in temporary settings, where long-term repeated interactions and reputational incentives are absent, remains poorly understood. This study analyzes survey, social network (N = 421), and interview (N = 65) data collected from volunteers at three Hungarian music festivals to explore the relationship between sanctioning support and social network…
Gender norms and couples’ conversations on childbearing intentions: A spontaneous speech corpus-based text analysis
Couples need balance in their relationships and, at the same time, try to adjust to the expectations of their social environment. These expectations create challenges particularly if they come from and are surrounded by an environment dominated by traditional gender values. We collected a unique corpus of 100 hours of unfiltered spontaneous dyadic conversations by couples living on the same floor of a Hungarian dormitory. We analysed the topics o…
Psychology (18 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (5 works)