Reputation in Hollywood: Between Scandals and Solidarity

In this study, we investigate how scandals, female solidarity and gender affect the reputations of male and female actors in the Hollywood system. Drawing both from an argument of stigmatization and celebration of evil geniuses and protection among peers, we formulate competing hypotheses on the impact of scandalous conduct on individual reputation. Then we investigate female solidarity as a process through which actors might gain support, status and friendship, reinforcing their reputation both directly and, indirectly, by complementing the effect of their personal misconduct. Finally, we investigate the role of gender in these relationships, assuming women, with respect to men, to be the ones who benefit more from female solidarity and who are hurt the most from personal scandals. We test our hypotheses on a person-year-event dataset involving 212 actors and 5,275 observations, using a multi-level longitudinal logistic regression model. Results support the view that both scandals and female solidarity are positive predictors of individual reputation, highlighting that both personal misconduct and the identification with the cause to fight gender injustice are relevant to individual reputation. In addition, while, as expected, women benefit from female solidarity more than men do, unexpectedly they can also leverage more on scandals than their male counterparts to gain reputation. To clarify the unexpected role of gender and its interplay with scandals, we conduct additional analysis to understand if specific categories of non-white women and female newcomers to the field are more likely than others to be subject to discrimination.