Widely shared status beliefs are the key to the organization of status inequality, whether it be between social groups in society, such as occupations, races, or the sexes, or between individuals. Status beliefs are cultural beliefs that associate greater social worthiness and general competence with people who belong to one category of a recognized social difference (e.g., professional, whites, men) than those who belong to another category of that difference (laborers, people of color, women). Not only do widely held status beliefs signal the respect and honor culturally attached to different groups in society, they also shape the status hierarchies that develop among individuals. How do status beliefs develop? Although there may be many ways, status construction theory proposes one set of processes that are sufficient to create, spread, maintain, or potentially undermine status beliefs about a widely recognized social difference. This project seeks to increase our knowledge of how status beliefs about social differences are created and spread in society by testing a central argument of status construction theory. The theory argues that everyday encounters between people from different social categories are important contexts for the development and spread of status beliefs about social differences. In such encounters, there is a chance that participants will associate their influence and esteem in the encounter, whatever its true source, with their social difference and form status beliefs about the difference. Once people form such beliefs, they carry (i.e., transfer) them to their subsequent encounters with those from the other category. By treating others according to the new status beliefs, people teach these beliefs to at least some others, creating a diffusion process that spreads the beliefs through the population. Under structural conditions specified by the theory, this can lead to widely shared status beliefs about the social difference Previous research has shown that people do form status beliefs from encounters with socially different others and that if they transfer these beliefs to subsequent encounters, they can spread them to others as the theory argues But do people spontaneously transfer new status beliefs from one encounter to another, as they must if widely held status beliefs are to emerge in the population?
A two-phase experiment will conducted to study this question. In the first phase, paid undergraduate volunteers will be induced to form status beliefs about a social difference by replicating procedures from previous studies that had that effect. In the second phase a day or two later, these subjects will work with a new partner from the other social group. Subjects' deference and influence behavior toward the new partner will indicate whether they have transferred their status beliefs to the new encounter, as the theory argues.
The research will has several broader impacts in addition to addressing a significant social issue. It will promote education and training by involving a graduate student and up to a dozen undergraduates as experimenters, confederates, schedulers, and coders. As in previous related projects, 3 or more of these students are expected to be racial or ethnic minorities and about half will be women. All will receive first hand research training. Results of the research will be disseminated broadly in sociological journals and scholarly presentations.
