2010/06/01 by Elizabeth Pontikes, Giacomo Negro, Hayagreeva Rao · 3 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Association (psychology) #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Crime, Deviance, and Social Control #Criminology #Economics #Harm #Law #Moral panic #Political science #Psychiatry #Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology #Spillover effect #Stigma (botany) #Wrongdoing
paper · doi:10.1177/0003122410368929
openalex publication_date 2010/06/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
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.