The gap between public evaluations and interactional status in social networks

Actors occupying central positions in networks created from deferential interactions are perceived as high in social status and quality. Status can also be read from increasingly ubiquitous third-party evaluations of actors involved in interactions based on surveys of field participants (e.g., publicly observable ratings). Although evaluations can be reflections of interaction-based positions, I argue the two measures of status can also be discrepant for two reasons: (1) tie formation being a more constrained process than evaluation and (2) differences in determinants of social construction. I propose a creative use of exponential random graph models focused on poorly fit configurations to analyze the divergence between evaluations and statused social networks. I test my framework on a network of PhD exchange relations and peer evaluations. I find that evaluations ‘undervalue’ both elite and mid-ranked departments relative to their structural positions. I discuss potential explanations and implications of these findings.