Keller Tamás | Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences, (original) (raw)
Papers by Keller Tamás
EDUCATION ECONOMICS, 2024
This study uses a randomized vignette experiment to explore the impact of classroom composition o... more This study uses a randomized vignette experiment to explore the impact of
classroom composition on students’ teacher-perceived school performance.
It hypothesizes that in classrooms with a high share of disadvantaged
students, teachers rate the school performance of both disadvantaged and
non-disadvantaged students lower than in classrooms with a low share of
disadvantaged students. The experimental design disentangles two
mechanisms behind compositional effects: ethnicity and social-status.
Findings indicate the more disadvantaged perceptions of Roma and non-
Roma students in classrooms with a high (rather than a low) share of Roma
students. No similar findings were found concerning the share of poor students.
American Journal of Sociology
Contact theory predicts that interethnic exposure reduces antiminority discrimination. By contras... more Contact theory predicts that interethnic exposure reduces antiminority discrimination. By contrast, conflict theory predicts that interethnic exposure worsens discrimination. Received scope conditions, however, are vague and do not properly differentiate between the domains of the theories. Furthermore, prior evidence is mostly correlational, and supportive field experiments for contact theory have largely accrued in rarefied settings. This begs the question how interethnic contact affects interethnic relations in everyday situations. The authors test the causal effect of interethnic exposure on discrimination under quotidian conditions in a large preregistered randomized field experiment involving N 5 2,395 students in 39 Hungarian schools. The authors find that neither manipulating the closeness of interethnic exposure between students within classrooms nor variation in ethnic composition across grade levels affects antiminority discrimination. This indicates that the domains of contact and conflict theory are much narrower than previously thought. Interethnic contact may not affect discrimination either way in many everyday settings.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
We investigate how framing an information nudge impacts university students' anticipated ... more We investigate how framing an information nudge impacts university students' anticipated effort. We test the conflicting predictions of two social theories. According to prospect theory, a negatively framed nudge increases students' anticipated effort in general. However, according to regulatory focus theory, the beneficial effect of negative framing is concentrated in prevention focus when people orient toward negative outcomes. In promotion focus, when people orient toward positive outcomes, a positively framed nudge motivates students better. We conducted a large-scale randomized survey experiment among Hungarian university students. Between different vignettes (nudges), we systematically manipulated the particular vignette's framing and regulatory focus. In line with the predictions of prospect theory, we find that a negatively framed nudge generally increases students' anticipated effort relative to a positively framed nudge. In contrast with the predictions of regulatory focus theory, the negative framing increases students' anticipated effort in both prevention and promotion foci, but it boosts students' anticipated effort more in prevention than in promotion focus. Therefore, students' temporary induced regulatory focus does not moderate the framing effect according to the pattern predicted by the regulatory focus theory.
European Sociological Review
Social theories posit that peers affect students’ academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, ... more Social theories posit that peers affect students’ academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, Big-Fish-Little-Pond, invidious comparison, and relative deprivation theories predict that exposure to academically stronger peers decreases students’ ASC, and exposure to academically weaker peers increases students’ ASC. These propositions have not yet been tested experimentally. We executed a large and pre-registered field experiment that randomized students to deskmates within 195 classrooms of 41 schools (N = 3,022). Our primary experimental analysis found no evidence of an effect of peer achievement on ASC in either direction. Exploratory analyses hinted at a subject-specific deskmate effect on ASC in verbal skills, and that sitting next to a lower-achieving boy increased girls’ ASC (but not that sitting next to a higher-achieving boy decreased girls’ ASC). Critically, however, none of these group-specific results held up to even modest corrections for multiple hypothesis testing. ...
European Societies
This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified a... more This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers’ GPA and endogenous educational choices. Second, the paper investigates mechanisms behind peer-conforming educational choices (such as peers’ normative pressure and information potential), with a focus on two structurally different peer relationships: self-selected friends and randomly assigned deskmates. The study uses a unique dataset that merges administrative data with randomized field experiment data. The results show no evidence of peer influence, after accounting for unobserved classroom homogeneity. Within the classroom, peers’ ability did not decrease, and peers’ ambitious endogenous educational choices did not increase students’ own choice of the academic upper-secondary track. Concerning the mechanisms of peer- conforming educational choices, the results reveal that peers’ informational potential (but not their normative pressure) might be the mechanism that drives students to conform to peers’ choices. Thus, the absence of peer influence may contribute to the reproduction of pre-existing social inequalities in upper-secondary track choices since peer influence cannot derail students’ socially determined educational choices in Hungary.
PLOS ONE
Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect... more Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect, our paper contributes to exploring the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory. Specifically, in a randomized experiment, we depleted students’ self-control with a cognitively demanding task that required students’ effort. We measured the effect of depleted self-control on a subsequent task that required self-control to not engage in fraudulent cheating behavior—measured with an incentivized dice-roll task—and tested ego-depletion in a large-scale preregistered field experiment that was similar to real-life situations. We hypothesized that treated students would cheat more. The data confirms the hypothesis and provides causal evidence of the ego-depletion effect. Our results provide new insights into the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory, contribute methodological information for future research, and offer practical guidance for educational policy.
Economics and Business Letters, 2021
We show two examples of how attenuating school-context-generated automatic social comparison lead... more We show two examples of how attenuating school-context-generated automatic social comparison leads to an increase in students’ academic self-concept (ASC), which is known to regulate the effort students put into education. In Study 1, we exploited COVID-19 induced home-based education to find that students’ ASC in reading and writing increased outside the school context. In Study 2, we activated/attenuated the school context by different priming in a randomized survey experiment. Here, we found that students who first reported their ASC, and subsequently their grades, had higher ASC in reading (but not in writing) than those who first reported their grades. The results indicate that social comparison might indirectly harm students’ educational achievement and attainment via their ASC.
Applied Economics Letters, 2021
CERS-IE Working Papers are circulated to promote discussion and provoque comments, they have not ... more CERS-IE Working Papers are circulated to promote discussion and provoque comments, they have not been peer-reviewed. Any references to discussion papers should clearly state that the paper is preliminary. Materials published in this series may be subject to further publication.
Values and norms regarding income inequalities are important in the determination of both primary... more Values and norms regarding income inequalities are important in the determination of both primary (pre-tax) incomes and the extent of redistribution through taxes and transfers. This research note, based on the 2009 Special Eurobarometer on poverty and social exclusion, first presents a country-level analysis of the relationship between measured levels of inequality on the one hand and inequality tolerance and redistributive preference on the other hand. It shows that attitudes to inequality differ widely between EU countries and there is a substantial internal variance in most of the countries. It is also shown that inequality tolerance – which is to some extent a proxy for inequality perceptions do not always correspond to measured income inequality indicators. After testing various inequality and poverty measures, the analysis concludes that country level differences of inequality tolerance is most likely driven by levels of relative poverty. Using both time series and cross sect...
PLOS ONE, 2021
Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practi... more Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students’ engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students’ past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. The control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the treated and control students’ end-of-semester exam grades, obtained from the university’s registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students’ self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students’ exams. We did not find an average...
PLOS ONE, 2021
Can outside interventions foster socio-culturally diverse friendships? We executed a large field ... more Can outside interventions foster socio-culturally diverse friendships? We executed a large field experiment that randomized the seating charts of 182 3rd through 8th grade classrooms (N = 2,966 students) for the duration of one semester. We found that being seated next to each other increased the probability of a mutual friendship from 15% to 22% on average. Furthermore, induced proximity increased the latent propensity toward friendship equally for all students, regardless of students’ dyadic similarity with respect to educational achievement, gender, and ethnicity. However, the probability of a manifest friendship increased more among similar than among dissimilar students—a pattern mainly driven by gender. Our findings demonstrate that a scalable light-touch intervention can affect face-to-face networks and foster diverse friendships in groups that already know each other, but they also highlight that transgressing boundaries, especially those defined by gender, remains an uphill...
Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2010
It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, low-efficacy persons believe that their actions have li... more It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, low-efficacy persons believe that their actions have little outcome. Because greater fatalism lowers an employee’s desired effort level, it may result in lower wages, while the anti-fatalistic attitude translates into more effective work that in turn may be rewarded with a higher salary. The examined self-confidence scale is very similar than the most widely used Rotter locus of control scale. People with high self confidence are determined, feel to have an influence on their future and are optimistic. I examine not only the wage-impact, but also human capital impact of self-confidence.
Czech Sociological Review, 2010
It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, ineffi cient persons believe that their actions have li... more It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, ineffi cient persons believe that their actions have little outcome. Because greater fatalism lowers an employee's effort level, it may result in lower wages, while the anti-fatalistic attitude translates into more effective work that in turn may be rewarded with a higher salary. In this article the author tests a self-confi dence scale that is similar to the most widely used Rotter locus of control scale. People with high self-confi dence have determination, feel they have an infl uence on their future, and are optimistic. In the analysis the author investigates the predictive power of self-confi dence in wage equations using Hungarian data.
Sociological Research Online, 2018
This article investigates applications to schools on the highest secondary track in Hungary (gram... more This article investigates applications to schools on the highest secondary track in Hungary (grammar schools). In Hungary, primary school pupils can apply to any secondary school. Pupils’ primary school grades play a crucial role only in the admissions procedure, and the exact cut-off point for admission is not known at the time of application. Pupils, however, might adjust their preferences according to their school grades and thus may not apply to schools on their preferred track. Dealing with the endogeneity of pupils’ preferences, the article applies an experimental vignette study. The respondents are primary school pupils who will shortly be applying to secondary schools. They assess the likelihood of a hypothetical pupil (described in the vignette) applying to schools on the highest track. The characteristics of the ‘vignette-person’ (such as his or her grades and preferences) are randomly allocated, and thus preferences are exogenous to grades. The results show no interaction...
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2019
Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Prev... more Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Previous studies found little evidence for the influence of peers on academic achievement, which might be a consequence of looking for peer effects in peer relationships without significant friendship potential. 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 are able to decide on the seating arrangements in class. This study examines whether deskmates have a positive impact on individual test scores that goes beyond the general influence of classmates and friends. The deskmate effect is investigated in ethnically mixed classrooms. Information on friendship and deskmates from a social network panel was merged with test score register data from secondary schools in Northern and Eastern Hungary. The study finds that, after controlling for prior test scores and classroom-fixed effects, deskmates influence reading scores positively. We found no evidence that deskmates' ability mediates or moderates the ethnic test-score gap between Hungarian and Roma students in these ethnically mixed secondary schools.
Journal of Happiness Studies, 2018
This research note links recent psychological research to literature about income aspiration, and... more This research note links recent psychological research to literature about income aspiration, and advances the monkey-trap hypothesis for further research. It argues that what people have not yet acquired makes them dissatisfied, because it prevents them from enjoying what they have already accomplished. Therefore, people's income aspirations limit their life satisfaction, in the sense that if they aspire to more, they feel less satisfaction. The empirical analysis, which uses two waves of Special Eurobarometer surveys in 27 European countries, finds support for this hypothesis, and reveals that income aspiration decreases life satisfaction. The results, however, should be interpreted with caution, on account of possible measurement issues. The implications of the results are discussed, in order to encourage future research on this question.
Research Papers in Education, 2016
This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribu... more This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribution to prior scholarship, it focuses on the role of self-perceived ability (self-assessment), which might impel pupils to make costly efforts in education now, in order to have an uncertain payoff later on. The paper builds on the assumption that while making educational decisions, especially low-educated families overemphasise ability relative to effort Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that contribute investing effort in education. It will be revealed that self-assessment might be such a factor in educational transitions. It especially helps the offspring of low-educated parents to reach their potential and to opt for college-bound secondary tracks. The paper concludes that it would be useful to concentrate more on how effort is influenced by parental background, since our knowledge is still limited about this kind of influence.
International Journal of Educational Research, 2016
This paper studies the transition to tertiary education, using data from a Hungarian panel datase... more This paper studies the transition to tertiary education, using data from a Hungarian panel dataset called Life Course Survey. A sample of 4500 students is analysed from a single school cohort which began secondary school in the academic year of 2006/07 and finished it between June 2010 and 2012. The question to be analysed is whether the students' selfassessment could modify the impact of their grades on the application to tertiary education. The results show that a more optimistic interpretation of the students' own ability increase the probability to submit application to tertiary education among students with lower than average grades. The students with good grades are likely to be influenced by their grades rather than by their self-assessment in the transition. Among those, however, whose transition to tertiary education is ambiguous because of low grades, selfassessment does play a role.
Education, Occupation and Social Origin
Chapter prepared for the volume Is education the great equalizer? Inequality in Educational Retur... more Chapter prepared for the volume Is education the great equalizer? Inequality in Educational Returns in 14 countries Word count: 6441 Introduction: Previous research and motivations Research on intergenerational social mobility as well as on returns to education has long traditions in Hungary. Already in the communist times, large-scale data collections with observations of ten-thousands of cases, aiming to study these topics have been carried out in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The first one for which the micro data are available is from the year as early as 1973; the last one is from 1992. 1 Father-to-son(-daughter)-type mobility analysis by Andorka (1990) reveals marked influence of structural changes behind the observed extensive occupational mobility processes in Hungary. At the same time, social fluidity has also increased, particularly between the time points represented by the data from 1949 and from 1962-64. This means that Hungary has become more open during the period of the communist transformation and the rapid industrialization. This tendency, however, did not continue in the 1970s and onwards. The most recent study on intergenerational class mobility by Róbert and Bukodi (2004) confirms the previous findings, on the one hand, but detects a decrease in social openness in Hungary on the ground of later datasets from 1992 and 2000, on the other hand. The examination of the role of achieved education in the process of intergenerational social mobility is based on the idea of path models by Blau and Duncan (1967). In the statusattainment models social origin has a direct effect on achieved status, on the one hand, and there is an indirect effect how social origin influences social status through education, on the other hand. This means that education is an intervening variable in the course of social mobility; in modern societies, it is considered as the main channel of distributing social rewards. In accordance with the industrialization thesis (Treiman 1970), meritocratic principle is an essential driving force in status attainment process. The 'increased merit selection' (IMS) hypothesis (Jonsson 1992) claims that merit becomes the key determinant of individuals' access to education and to social position. This would allow assuming that the impact of social origin on education declines over time, while the effect of education on social position increases over time. This hypothesis has been tested for several countries. For Hungary, based on the data by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office between 1973 and 1992, the comprehensive paper by Luijkx et al. (2002) applied the classic Blau-Duncan approach of status attainment model and investigated the long-term trends in the effects of social origin on educational attainment as well as in the impact of education on achieved social status. For the previous trend in the effect of father's occupation and father's education on offspring's education (measured in years), they found a marked fall for the influence of father's occupation for men and a more moderate decrease for women. The impact of father's education on respondent's education did not indicate any linear trend over time but turned out more persistent. For the latter trend on status returns to education, the effect of education on respondent's ISEI score increased
EDUCATION ECONOMICS, 2024
This study uses a randomized vignette experiment to explore the impact of classroom composition o... more This study uses a randomized vignette experiment to explore the impact of
classroom composition on students’ teacher-perceived school performance.
It hypothesizes that in classrooms with a high share of disadvantaged
students, teachers rate the school performance of both disadvantaged and
non-disadvantaged students lower than in classrooms with a low share of
disadvantaged students. The experimental design disentangles two
mechanisms behind compositional effects: ethnicity and social-status.
Findings indicate the more disadvantaged perceptions of Roma and non-
Roma students in classrooms with a high (rather than a low) share of Roma
students. No similar findings were found concerning the share of poor students.
American Journal of Sociology
Contact theory predicts that interethnic exposure reduces antiminority discrimination. By contras... more Contact theory predicts that interethnic exposure reduces antiminority discrimination. By contrast, conflict theory predicts that interethnic exposure worsens discrimination. Received scope conditions, however, are vague and do not properly differentiate between the domains of the theories. Furthermore, prior evidence is mostly correlational, and supportive field experiments for contact theory have largely accrued in rarefied settings. This begs the question how interethnic contact affects interethnic relations in everyday situations. The authors test the causal effect of interethnic exposure on discrimination under quotidian conditions in a large preregistered randomized field experiment involving N 5 2,395 students in 39 Hungarian schools. The authors find that neither manipulating the closeness of interethnic exposure between students within classrooms nor variation in ethnic composition across grade levels affects antiminority discrimination. This indicates that the domains of contact and conflict theory are much narrower than previously thought. Interethnic contact may not affect discrimination either way in many everyday settings.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
We investigate how framing an information nudge impacts university students' anticipated ... more We investigate how framing an information nudge impacts university students' anticipated effort. We test the conflicting predictions of two social theories. According to prospect theory, a negatively framed nudge increases students' anticipated effort in general. However, according to regulatory focus theory, the beneficial effect of negative framing is concentrated in prevention focus when people orient toward negative outcomes. In promotion focus, when people orient toward positive outcomes, a positively framed nudge motivates students better. We conducted a large-scale randomized survey experiment among Hungarian university students. Between different vignettes (nudges), we systematically manipulated the particular vignette's framing and regulatory focus. In line with the predictions of prospect theory, we find that a negatively framed nudge generally increases students' anticipated effort relative to a positively framed nudge. In contrast with the predictions of regulatory focus theory, the negative framing increases students' anticipated effort in both prevention and promotion foci, but it boosts students' anticipated effort more in prevention than in promotion focus. Therefore, students' temporary induced regulatory focus does not moderate the framing effect according to the pattern predicted by the regulatory focus theory.
European Sociological Review
Social theories posit that peers affect students’ academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, ... more Social theories posit that peers affect students’ academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, Big-Fish-Little-Pond, invidious comparison, and relative deprivation theories predict that exposure to academically stronger peers decreases students’ ASC, and exposure to academically weaker peers increases students’ ASC. These propositions have not yet been tested experimentally. We executed a large and pre-registered field experiment that randomized students to deskmates within 195 classrooms of 41 schools (N = 3,022). Our primary experimental analysis found no evidence of an effect of peer achievement on ASC in either direction. Exploratory analyses hinted at a subject-specific deskmate effect on ASC in verbal skills, and that sitting next to a lower-achieving boy increased girls’ ASC (but not that sitting next to a higher-achieving boy decreased girls’ ASC). Critically, however, none of these group-specific results held up to even modest corrections for multiple hypothesis testing. ...
European Societies
This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified a... more This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers’ GPA and endogenous educational choices. Second, the paper investigates mechanisms behind peer-conforming educational choices (such as peers’ normative pressure and information potential), with a focus on two structurally different peer relationships: self-selected friends and randomly assigned deskmates. The study uses a unique dataset that merges administrative data with randomized field experiment data. The results show no evidence of peer influence, after accounting for unobserved classroom homogeneity. Within the classroom, peers’ ability did not decrease, and peers’ ambitious endogenous educational choices did not increase students’ own choice of the academic upper-secondary track. Concerning the mechanisms of peer- conforming educational choices, the results reveal that peers’ informational potential (but not their normative pressure) might be the mechanism that drives students to conform to peers’ choices. Thus, the absence of peer influence may contribute to the reproduction of pre-existing social inequalities in upper-secondary track choices since peer influence cannot derail students’ socially determined educational choices in Hungary.
PLOS ONE
Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect... more Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect, our paper contributes to exploring the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory. Specifically, in a randomized experiment, we depleted students’ self-control with a cognitively demanding task that required students’ effort. We measured the effect of depleted self-control on a subsequent task that required self-control to not engage in fraudulent cheating behavior—measured with an incentivized dice-roll task—and tested ego-depletion in a large-scale preregistered field experiment that was similar to real-life situations. We hypothesized that treated students would cheat more. The data confirms the hypothesis and provides causal evidence of the ego-depletion effect. Our results provide new insights into the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory, contribute methodological information for future research, and offer practical guidance for educational policy.
Economics and Business Letters, 2021
We show two examples of how attenuating school-context-generated automatic social comparison lead... more We show two examples of how attenuating school-context-generated automatic social comparison leads to an increase in students’ academic self-concept (ASC), which is known to regulate the effort students put into education. In Study 1, we exploited COVID-19 induced home-based education to find that students’ ASC in reading and writing increased outside the school context. In Study 2, we activated/attenuated the school context by different priming in a randomized survey experiment. Here, we found that students who first reported their ASC, and subsequently their grades, had higher ASC in reading (but not in writing) than those who first reported their grades. The results indicate that social comparison might indirectly harm students’ educational achievement and attainment via their ASC.
Applied Economics Letters, 2021
CERS-IE Working Papers are circulated to promote discussion and provoque comments, they have not ... more CERS-IE Working Papers are circulated to promote discussion and provoque comments, they have not been peer-reviewed. Any references to discussion papers should clearly state that the paper is preliminary. Materials published in this series may be subject to further publication.
Values and norms regarding income inequalities are important in the determination of both primary... more Values and norms regarding income inequalities are important in the determination of both primary (pre-tax) incomes and the extent of redistribution through taxes and transfers. This research note, based on the 2009 Special Eurobarometer on poverty and social exclusion, first presents a country-level analysis of the relationship between measured levels of inequality on the one hand and inequality tolerance and redistributive preference on the other hand. It shows that attitudes to inequality differ widely between EU countries and there is a substantial internal variance in most of the countries. It is also shown that inequality tolerance – which is to some extent a proxy for inequality perceptions do not always correspond to measured income inequality indicators. After testing various inequality and poverty measures, the analysis concludes that country level differences of inequality tolerance is most likely driven by levels of relative poverty. Using both time series and cross sect...
PLOS ONE, 2021
Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practi... more Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we investigate how simple school practices can forge students’ engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students’ past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. The control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the treated and control students’ end-of-semester exam grades, obtained from the university’s registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students’ self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students’ exams. We did not find an average...
PLOS ONE, 2021
Can outside interventions foster socio-culturally diverse friendships? We executed a large field ... more Can outside interventions foster socio-culturally diverse friendships? We executed a large field experiment that randomized the seating charts of 182 3rd through 8th grade classrooms (N = 2,966 students) for the duration of one semester. We found that being seated next to each other increased the probability of a mutual friendship from 15% to 22% on average. Furthermore, induced proximity increased the latent propensity toward friendship equally for all students, regardless of students’ dyadic similarity with respect to educational achievement, gender, and ethnicity. However, the probability of a manifest friendship increased more among similar than among dissimilar students—a pattern mainly driven by gender. Our findings demonstrate that a scalable light-touch intervention can affect face-to-face networks and foster diverse friendships in groups that already know each other, but they also highlight that transgressing boundaries, especially those defined by gender, remains an uphill...
Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2010
It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, low-efficacy persons believe that their actions have li... more It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, low-efficacy persons believe that their actions have little outcome. Because greater fatalism lowers an employee’s desired effort level, it may result in lower wages, while the anti-fatalistic attitude translates into more effective work that in turn may be rewarded with a higher salary. The examined self-confidence scale is very similar than the most widely used Rotter locus of control scale. People with high self confidence are determined, feel to have an influence on their future and are optimistic. I examine not only the wage-impact, but also human capital impact of self-confidence.
Czech Sociological Review, 2010
It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, ineffi cient persons believe that their actions have li... more It is easy to see that highly fatalistic, ineffi cient persons believe that their actions have little outcome. Because greater fatalism lowers an employee's effort level, it may result in lower wages, while the anti-fatalistic attitude translates into more effective work that in turn may be rewarded with a higher salary. In this article the author tests a self-confi dence scale that is similar to the most widely used Rotter locus of control scale. People with high self-confi dence have determination, feel they have an infl uence on their future, and are optimistic. In the analysis the author investigates the predictive power of self-confi dence in wage equations using Hungarian data.
Sociological Research Online, 2018
This article investigates applications to schools on the highest secondary track in Hungary (gram... more This article investigates applications to schools on the highest secondary track in Hungary (grammar schools). In Hungary, primary school pupils can apply to any secondary school. Pupils’ primary school grades play a crucial role only in the admissions procedure, and the exact cut-off point for admission is not known at the time of application. Pupils, however, might adjust their preferences according to their school grades and thus may not apply to schools on their preferred track. Dealing with the endogeneity of pupils’ preferences, the article applies an experimental vignette study. The respondents are primary school pupils who will shortly be applying to secondary schools. They assess the likelihood of a hypothetical pupil (described in the vignette) applying to schools on the highest track. The characteristics of the ‘vignette-person’ (such as his or her grades and preferences) are randomly allocated, and thus preferences are exogenous to grades. The results show no interaction...
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2019
Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Prev... more Peer effects have been shown to be important for educational development during adolescence. Previous studies found little evidence for the influence of peers on academic achievement, which might be a consequence of looking for peer effects in peer relationships without significant friendship potential. 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 are able to decide on the seating arrangements in class. This study examines whether deskmates have a positive impact on individual test scores that goes beyond the general influence of classmates and friends. The deskmate effect is investigated in ethnically mixed classrooms. Information on friendship and deskmates from a social network panel was merged with test score register data from secondary schools in Northern and Eastern Hungary. The study finds that, after controlling for prior test scores and classroom-fixed effects, deskmates influence reading scores positively. We found no evidence that deskmates' ability mediates or moderates the ethnic test-score gap between Hungarian and Roma students in these ethnically mixed secondary schools.
Journal of Happiness Studies, 2018
This research note links recent psychological research to literature about income aspiration, and... more This research note links recent psychological research to literature about income aspiration, and advances the monkey-trap hypothesis for further research. It argues that what people have not yet acquired makes them dissatisfied, because it prevents them from enjoying what they have already accomplished. Therefore, people's income aspirations limit their life satisfaction, in the sense that if they aspire to more, they feel less satisfaction. The empirical analysis, which uses two waves of Special Eurobarometer surveys in 27 European countries, finds support for this hypothesis, and reveals that income aspiration decreases life satisfaction. The results, however, should be interpreted with caution, on account of possible measurement issues. The implications of the results are discussed, in order to encourage future research on this question.
Research Papers in Education, 2016
This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribu... more This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribution to prior scholarship, it focuses on the role of self-perceived ability (self-assessment), which might impel pupils to make costly efforts in education now, in order to have an uncertain payoff later on. The paper builds on the assumption that while making educational decisions, especially low-educated families overemphasise ability relative to effort Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that contribute investing effort in education. It will be revealed that self-assessment might be such a factor in educational transitions. It especially helps the offspring of low-educated parents to reach their potential and to opt for college-bound secondary tracks. The paper concludes that it would be useful to concentrate more on how effort is influenced by parental background, since our knowledge is still limited about this kind of influence.
International Journal of Educational Research, 2016
This paper studies the transition to tertiary education, using data from a Hungarian panel datase... more This paper studies the transition to tertiary education, using data from a Hungarian panel dataset called Life Course Survey. A sample of 4500 students is analysed from a single school cohort which began secondary school in the academic year of 2006/07 and finished it between June 2010 and 2012. The question to be analysed is whether the students' selfassessment could modify the impact of their grades on the application to tertiary education. The results show that a more optimistic interpretation of the students' own ability increase the probability to submit application to tertiary education among students with lower than average grades. The students with good grades are likely to be influenced by their grades rather than by their self-assessment in the transition. Among those, however, whose transition to tertiary education is ambiguous because of low grades, selfassessment does play a role.
Education, Occupation and Social Origin
Chapter prepared for the volume Is education the great equalizer? Inequality in Educational Retur... more Chapter prepared for the volume Is education the great equalizer? Inequality in Educational Returns in 14 countries Word count: 6441 Introduction: Previous research and motivations Research on intergenerational social mobility as well as on returns to education has long traditions in Hungary. Already in the communist times, large-scale data collections with observations of ten-thousands of cases, aiming to study these topics have been carried out in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The first one for which the micro data are available is from the year as early as 1973; the last one is from 1992. 1 Father-to-son(-daughter)-type mobility analysis by Andorka (1990) reveals marked influence of structural changes behind the observed extensive occupational mobility processes in Hungary. At the same time, social fluidity has also increased, particularly between the time points represented by the data from 1949 and from 1962-64. This means that Hungary has become more open during the period of the communist transformation and the rapid industrialization. This tendency, however, did not continue in the 1970s and onwards. The most recent study on intergenerational class mobility by Róbert and Bukodi (2004) confirms the previous findings, on the one hand, but detects a decrease in social openness in Hungary on the ground of later datasets from 1992 and 2000, on the other hand. The examination of the role of achieved education in the process of intergenerational social mobility is based on the idea of path models by Blau and Duncan (1967). In the statusattainment models social origin has a direct effect on achieved status, on the one hand, and there is an indirect effect how social origin influences social status through education, on the other hand. This means that education is an intervening variable in the course of social mobility; in modern societies, it is considered as the main channel of distributing social rewards. In accordance with the industrialization thesis (Treiman 1970), meritocratic principle is an essential driving force in status attainment process. The 'increased merit selection' (IMS) hypothesis (Jonsson 1992) claims that merit becomes the key determinant of individuals' access to education and to social position. This would allow assuming that the impact of social origin on education declines over time, while the effect of education on social position increases over time. This hypothesis has been tested for several countries. For Hungary, based on the data by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office between 1973 and 1992, the comprehensive paper by Luijkx et al. (2002) applied the classic Blau-Duncan approach of status attainment model and investigated the long-term trends in the effects of social origin on educational attainment as well as in the impact of education on achieved social status. For the previous trend in the effect of father's occupation and father's education on offspring's education (measured in years), they found a marked fall for the influence of father's occupation for men and a more moderate decrease for women. The impact of father's education on respondent's education did not indicate any linear trend over time but turned out more persistent. For the latter trend on status returns to education, the effect of education on respondent's ISEI score increased