PI: Shelley Correll Co-PI: Alec Watts Stanford University
Across the social sciences, research has demonstrated that status is an omnipresent and consequential cultural concept associated with both social categories (e.g., race, gender) and social roles (e.g., occupations). This dissertation research is concerned with the interactions of status, focusing specifically on the consequences of a person occupying a social role that is culturally associated with a level of generalized status, respect or esteem that is inconsistent with their social category. Examples of such individuals are black women engineers, stay-at-home dads, male secretaries, and college students who pursue majors atypical for their gender. This project refines the concept of status inconsistency and develops an original, general theoretical model of the consequences of occupying a status-inconsistent role. The project is centered on three primary research questions: 1) How does status inconsistency bias judgment? 2) What are the tangible consequences of these biases? And 3) In what ways do justifications for being status-inconsistent moderates these biases and consequences? The research will use social science experimental techniques to measure participants' perceptions, attitudes, and justifications of those responses in a variety of contexts.
Broader Impact The contribution of this project is to develop a single, general model of how status inconsistency can shape an individual's experiences in a social role. The generalizability of the model allows for its applicability across a vast range of situations, such as diversity recruitment in higher education and high status occupations, as minority individuals are often status-inconsistent in these settings. As another example, stay-at-home dads are status-inconsistent and the negative social consequences men face as caretakers may be partly responsible for the dearth of men being more involved in housework and childcare. Thus, this project contributes to understanding inequalities in education, workplaces, and in homes.
