Dubash, Soli and Markus Schafer. 2023. “Social Network Negativity and Physical Activity: New Evidence for Young and Older Adults 2015-2018”. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. DOI: 10.1080/02701367.2023.2205910

Purpose: Physical activity (PA) has considerable public health benefits. Positive aspects of the interpersonal environment are known to affect PA, yet few studies have investigated whether negative dimensions also influence PA. This study examines the link between changing social network negativity and PA, net of stable confounding characteristics of persons and their environments.

Method: Polling respondents in the San Francisco Bay Area over three waves (2015-2018), the UCNets project provides a panel study of social networks and health for two cohorts of adults. Respondents were recruited through stratified random address sampling, and supplemental sampling was conducted through Facebook advertising and referral. With weights, the sample is approximately representative of Californians aged 21-30 and 50-70. Personal social networks were measured using multiple name-generating questions. Fixed effects ordered logistic regression models provide parameter estimates.

Results: Younger adults experience significant decreases in PA when network negativity increases, while changes in other network characteristics (e.g., support, size) did not significantly predict changes in PA. No corresponding association was found for older adults. Results are net of baseline covariate levels, stable social and individual differences, and select time-varying characteristics of persons and their environments.

Conclusion: Leveraging longitudinal data from two cohorts of adults, this study extends understanding on interpersonal environments and PA by considering the social costs embedded in social networks. This is the first study to investigate how changes in network negativity pattern PA change. Interventions which help young adults resolve or manage interpersonal conflicts may have the benefit of helping to promote healthy lifestyle choices.

Brett, Gordon* and Soli Dubash*. 2023. “The Sociocognitive Origins of Personal Mastery”. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. DOI:10.1177/00221465231167558

This article examines the relationship between cognitive processing and mastery. While scholars have called for the integration of sociological and cognitive analyses of mastery, sociological research has focused almost exclusively on mapping its social correlates. As a result, sociologists have relied on untested and underspecified assumptions about cognition to explain the efficacy of mastery. Taking an interdisciplinary approach integrating research on mastery, dual-process models of cognition, and intersectionality, we specify and test the hypothesis that deliberate thinking dispositions are associated with a greater sense of control over one’s life chances and assess whether this relationship varies across different intersections of social positions. Regression results from survey data in a diverse student sample (N = 982) suggest a positive correlation between deliberate cognitive style and personal mastery. However, results from a quantitative intersectional analysis demonstrate that this relationship does not hold for East Asian women.

Dubash, Soli and Gordon Brett. 2023. “The Diffusion of Culture and Cognition Within and Beyond Sociology, 1997-2021”. Sociological Forum. Open access. DOI: 10.1111/socf.12894

In recent years, sociologists have lamented the fact that interdisciplinary exchange regarding Culture and Cognition has been largely asymmetrical. However, to date, no sociologist has empirically established the degree of interdisciplinary diffusion of Culture and Cognition scholarship. We add empirical detail to these discussions through a bibliographic analysis of 16 key Culture and Cognition articles, analyzing their citation patterns both within and beyond Sociology. Within Sociology, we find that citations of Culture and Cognition scholarship tend to cluster within culture, generalist, and theory journals. In terms of interdisciplinary diffusion, we find that while engagement with Culture and Cognition scholarship is indeed concentrated within sociology, almost half of the citations of this work come from other disciplines. This suggests that, while not entirely incorrect, the characterizations of Culture and Cognition’s interdisciplinary uptake have been somewhat exaggerated.

Marin, Alexandra, and Soli Dubash. 2020. “Relationship Change, Network Change, and the Use of Single Name Generators in Longitudinal Research on Social Support”. Field Methods. DOI: 10.1177/1525822×20958851

As relationships change and people change the kinds of support they provide, name generators that collect information about ties that provide particular kinds of support at repeated points of time may not effectively capture ties that are active but whose roles have changed. This paper shows that a significant minority of network members change the kinds of support they provide. They either discontinue a support previously provided or provide a new type of support. We examine the implications of this finding for longitudinal studies of support networks based on single name generators and show that this practice can result in frequent misperceptions of network membership change.