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Status Characteristics and Social Interaction
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1972
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Status AttainmentBehavioral Decision MakingSocial PsychologySocial CategorizationSocial InfluenceOrganizational BehaviorSocial SciencesIntergroup RelationSmall Groups LiteratureBiasManagementSocial IdentityBehavioral SciencesGroup MembersStatus InconsistencySocial InteractionApplied Social PsychologySocial CharacteristicSocial CognitionInterpersonal CommunicationSocial BehaviorMinority InfluenceSociologyArtsExternal StatusSmall Group Research
The small‑group literature examines how external status differences shape decision‑making processes. The study aims to explain why status effects on participation, influence, and prestige persist regardless of cultural belief by positing that status determines evaluations and performance expectations. The authors stipulate conditions that produce this effect and assume a status characteristic is relevant in all contexts except when culturally deemed irrelevant. Experimental evidence supports each assumption, and later work shows that when two status characteristics are equally relevant, individuals combine all inconsistent status information, indicating the theory extends to multi‑characteristic situations.
This paper discusses the small groups literature on status organizing processes in decisionmaking groups whose members differ in external status. This literature demonstrates that status characteristics, such as age, sex, and race determine the distribution of participation, influence, and prestige among members of such groups. This effect is independent of any prior cultural belief in the relevance of the status characteristic to the task. To explain this result, we assume that status determines evaluations of, and performance-expectations for group members and hence the distribution of participation, influence, and prestige. We stipulate conditions sufficient to produce this effect. Further, to explain the fact that the effect is independent of prior cultural belief, we assume that a status characteristic becomes relevant in all situations except when it is culturally known to be irrelevant. Direct experiment supports each assumption in this explanation independently of the others. Subsequent work devoted to refining and extending the theory finds among other things that, given two equally relevant status characteristics, individuals combine all inconsistent status information rather than reduce its inconsistency. If this result survives further experiment it extends the theory on a straightforward basis to multi-characteristic status situations.