People hold consensual beliefs about the status value, that is, about the competence and worthiness, of individuals. It is puzzling, however, that these beliefs are often based largely upon the unordered or nominal categories, such as gender and ethnicity, to which these individuals belong. This proposal examines the interactive processes by which such consensual status values may be acquired. A theory is proposed that argues that if a correlation occurs between a given nominal characteristic and the distribution of economic resources, it constrains face-to-face interaction within the population. In encounters between people differing in both resources and the nominal characteristic, these constraints lead to an association between that characteristic and status-type beliefs. When individuals bring this status association to other encounters and treat people according to it, the structural constraints on interaction allow it to diffuse widely, and it becomes consensual. Specifically, two experiments will be conducted to test this theory. The first experiment will show whether or not an individual participant who works with a person who has a different pay level and a different nominal characteristic will form expectations states which then transfer to a later situation where that individual differs from the other person only in nominal characteristics but not in pay level. A second experiment examines a more "advanced" stage of the process, exploring situations in which the nominal characteristic might acquire low status value even for people who have obtained a high value of the resource. This project will contribute better understanding of the linkage between social processes at the micro-level and the distribution of resources reflecting social and economic arrangements at the macro-level. It will also provide information for researchers and policy makers who are concerned with issues of inequality and equity.
