Editing Popularity (section)

=== Zipf's Law ===
[[File:Facebook popularity.PNG|thumb|left|The popularity of [[Facebook]] over time illustrating Zipf's Law]]

The popularity of many different things can be described by [[Zipf's Law|Zipf's powerlaw]], which posits that there is a low frequency of very large quantities and a high frequency of low quantities. This illustrates popularity of many different objects.

For example, there are few very popular websites, but many websites have small followings. This is the result of interest; as many people use e-mail, it is common for sites like [[Yahoo!]] to be accessed by large numbers of people; however, a small subset of people would be interested in a blog on a particular [[video game]]. In this situation, only Yahoo! would be deemed a popular site by the public.<ref name="Adamic">Adamic, L. (2002). Zipf, power-laws, and pareto-a ranking tutorial. ''Glottometrics'', 3, 143–150.</ref> This can additionally be seen in [[social networking service]]s, such as [[Facebook]]. The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, while very few people have large social networks. However, some individuals do have more than 5,000 friends. This reflects that very few people can be extremely well-connected, but many people are somewhat connected. The number of friends a person has, has been a way to determine how popular an individual is, so the small number of people who have an extremely high number of friends is a way of using social networking services, like Facebook, to illustrate how only a few people are deemed popular.<ref name="dunbar">{{cite news|last = Dunbar |first = Robin |date = 25 December 2010|title = You've got to have (150) friends|newspaper = New York Times|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html|url-access = limited|url-status = live|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180906112636/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html|archive-date =6 September 2018}}</ref>
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Popular people may not be those who are best liked interpersonally by their peers, but they do receive most of the positive behavior from coworkers when compared to nonpopular workers.<ref name="Scott" /> This is a result of the differences between sociometric and perceived popularity. When asked who is most popular, employees typically respond based on perceived popularity; however, they really prefer the social interactions with those who are more sociometrically popular. For each individual to ensure that they are consistent with the group's popularity consensus, those who are high in perceived popularity are treated with the same positive behaviors as those who are more interpersonally, but privately, liked by specific individuals. Well-liked workers are most likely to get salary increases and promotions, while disliked (unpopular) workers are the first to get their salary cut back or laid off during recessions.{{Citation needed|date=April 2017}}

During interactions with others in the work environment, more popular individuals receive more organizational citizenship behavior (helping and courteousness from others) and less counter productive work behavior (rude reactions and withheld information) than those who are considered less popular in the workplace.<ref name="Scott" /> Coworkers agree with each other on who is and who is not popular and, as a group, treat popular coworkers more favorably. While popularity has proven to be a big determiner of getting more positive feedback and interactions from coworkers, such a quality matters less in organizations where workloads and interdependence is high, such as the medical field.<ref name="Scott" />

In many instances, physical appearance has been used as one indicator of popularity. Attractiveness plays a large role in the workplace and physical appearance influences hiring, whether or not the job might benefit from it. For example, some jobs, such as salesperson, benefit from attractiveness when it comes down to the bottom line, but there have been many studies which have shown that, in general, attractiveness is not at all a valid predictor of on-the-job performance.<ref name="Shahani">Shahani-Denning, C., Dudhat, P., Tevet, R., & Andreoli, N. (2010). Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Selection Decisions in India and the United States. ''International Journal of Management'', 27(1), 37–51.</ref> Many individuals have previously thought this was only a phenomenon in the more individualistic cultures of the Western world, but research has shown that attractiveness also plays a role in hiring in collectivist cultures as well. Because of the prevalence of this problem during the hiring process in all cultures, researchers have recommended training a group to ignore such influencers, just like legislation has worked to control for differences in sex, race, and disabilities.<ref name="Shahani" />