Status Construction Theory

Abstract

Status construction theory describes how structural conditions in society frame and constrain social encounters among people from socially different groups (e.g., racial, ethnic, or gender groups), so that these encounters foster the development of shared status beliefs about the social difference. Status beliefs are cultural beliefs that people in one category of a social difference (e.g., whites) are more socially esteemed and considered generally more competent than people in a contrasting category of the difference (people of color). The key structural condition that causes encounters to induce status beliefs is the unequal distribution between the groups of a factor like material resources or technology that allows actors from one group to become more influential in cross‐difference encounters than actors from the other group. When status beliefs about a social difference become widely shared in a population, they have widespread consequences for inequality among socially different individuals and groups.