Expectation States and Interpersonal Behavior

Abstract

This chapter explores the discussion of expectation states theory and of status characteristics theory. Goals may also include things as maintaining group loyalty, winning athletic contests, improving an academic program, and other states of the world internal and external to the group. Expectation states theory itself is a set of theoretical statements designed to explain the fundamental principle of human behavior. Expectation states theory explains the development and maintenance of power and prestige structures as a result of the development and maintenance of differentiated performance expectations for self and other. The concept of expectations is basic in sociology, and its use as a fundamental building block of theory marks expectation states theory as distinctively sociological. Most of the empirical studies of expectation states use a variant of a standard experimental setting developed by Joseph Berger. The effects of experimentally established expectation states seem as predicted by the theory.