Status Construction Theory

Historical Overview

Status construction theory developed in the context of a well-established body of theory and research on status hierarchies among individuals in groups. Beginning in the 1950s, a long tradition of empirical research, particularly that associated with status characteristics and expectation states theories, showed that the influence and deference individuals attain in groups is powerfully shaped by differences among them in social characteristics that carry status value in the larger society. Differences in occupation and sex, for instance, affect people's influence on juries.

It was unknown, however, how status beliefs developed about such social differences. Drawing on this body of research, status construction theory argues that if existing status beliefs are powerfully at play in encounters among people who differ in socially recognized ways, then such encounters are also likely to be arenas in which new status beliefs are created, spread, and maintained.

The theory takes as a starting point the existence of a social difference that is widely recognized in a population but about which no shared evaluation has yet developed. It also assumes that people from different categories of this social difference are interdependent in that they must regularly cooperate in order to achieve what they want or need. Under these conditions, the theory argues, the local contexts in which people from different social categories encounter one another have the potential to induce the participants to form shared status beliefs about their difference.

Basics of Status Construction Theory

The theory's arguments about how local encounters create status beliefs can be summarized as follows. In cooperative, goal-oriented encounters between categorically different people, interpersonal hierarchies of influence and status are likely to develop among the participants just as they do in virtually all goal-oriented encounters. Such interpersonal influence hierarchies develop implicitly, through multiple small behaviors. One person speaks up, for instance, while another holds back or responds hesitantly. Because participants rarely notice these behaviors, the actual origins of their influence hierarchy are usually obscure to them at the same time that the categorical difference between them is salient. As a consequence, there is a probability that the participants will associate their apparent difference in esteem and competence in the situation with their corresponding categorical difference.

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