Paths of Relevance and the Induction of Status-Task Expectancies: A Research Note

Abstract

Differences in individual's own and other's statuses often become the basis for stable and observable differences in their interaction. For example, Strodtbeck and his associates observed that differences in sex and occupational status strongly affect the choice of a jury foreman. Caudill found that position in a hospital's occupational hierarchy determines participation rates during ward rounds. Torrance discovered that rank in an Air Force bomber crew is closely related to influence on a variety of group decisionmaking tasks including some completely unrelated to crew responsibilities. The mechanisms through which these effects occur are called statusorganizing processes. Simmel, and later Park and Hughes, recognized the fundamental nature of these processes and theorized about them. Their conceptualization was basically interactional in character: statuses emerge from interaction; statuses govern interaction; and statuses are maintained by interaction. Status-organizing processes have been considered more systematically in a coordinated program of theory and research in status characteristics theory. Based largely on the Simmel-Park-Hughes tradition, this program attempts to answer three basic kinds of questions: 1. What are the status elements an individual group member may use to organize a task situation in terms of status? 2. How do these status elements become interrelated so as to organize the situation? 3. What are the behavioral consequences of such organization of the situation in terms of status? Status characteristics theory argues that status elements become salient (i.e., available as cues in defining the situation) for an individual p under any of three conditions: if the status p possesses is directly related,