August 2025

A 2024 Saturday Night Live sketch takes viewers to an airplane cabin where a pregnant passenger in labor seeks a doctor, but no one on board is qualified. So, one passenger—a lawyer—volunteers to help on the basis that he has the “second best job” after doctor. Other passengers then jump in with their own claims about engineers, teachers, and mothers being the rightful number two. Debate ensues, leaving both the pregnant woman and the occupational hierarchy in limbo.

Yet previous sociological work on occupational prestige suggests there is one true ladder and ‘everyone’ knows it. If that’s the case, then why does the SNL sketch resonate?

In our recent research, and in previous work, we reconsider how Americans perceive the occupational hierarchy, a concept at the heart of stratification research. We find that the apparent consensus around occupational prestige primarily reflects the views of a small group of highly educated Americans. People outside this group deviate from this consensus, but not in systematic ways, leaving the elites’ consensus to dominate. In the end, there’s much less agreement about the status of occupations than estimates have suggested.

We all want to be recognized for doing good work. Whether it is winning an award, getting a shoutout from your boss, or receiving a great review online, recognition matters. But what happens when the recognition you get doesn’t match your performance?

In our new paper, published in the American Sociological Review, we explore how experiencing misrecognition—either being overlooked despite strong performance or being rewarded despite weak performance—shapes how people later evaluate others. We find that people tend to reproduce the same kind of recognition they themselves received, even when it means rewarding poor performers or ignoring top ones.