Status Construction Theory

Abstract

Status construction theory focuses on the collective development of widely shared status beliefs about apparently nominal social differences among people such as sex or ethnicity (Ridgeway 1991; Webster & Hysom 1998; Ridgeway & Erickson 2000). Status beliefs associate greater respect and greater competence at socially valued tasks with people in one category of a social difference (e.g., men, whites) than with those in another category of that difference (women, people of color). A typical reaction to the recognition of social difference is for people in each category to assume that their own group is “better.” When status beliefs develop about a recognized social difference, however, they transform simple difference into an evaluative hierarchy so that the distinction becomes a status characteristic in society. The distinctive aspect of status beliefs is that those in the social category that is favored by the status beliefs and those in the less favored category both come to hold similar beliefs that “most people” view the favored group as better than the other group. Status construction theory describes one set of processes by which such beliefs could come to be accepted as a matter of social reality by those they disadvantage and by those they advantage. In this way, beliefs become roughly consensual in society. The theory claims that the processes it describes are sufficient to produce widely shared status beliefs but are not the only way such beliefs might develop in a society or collectivity.