Status Inconsistency and Satisfaction with Sorority Membership

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Based on a modification of earlier work in inconsistency, three hypotheses concerning sorority dissatisfaction were tested: (1) Dissatisfaction will be higher among members of low-status sororities than members of high-status sororities. (2) For high family girls there will be a higher proportion of those in low-status sororities than high-status sororities who are dissatisfied. For low family girls, sorority will not be as strongly related to satisfaction. (3) The differences predicted in Hypotheses 1 and 2 will be greater when comparisons are based upon subjective sorority rankings as opposed to objective rankings. The data analyzed tended to confirm the three hypotheses. * This paper represents a joint effort in every respect. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Mon, 29 Aug 2016 05:09:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms STATUS INCONSISTENCY AND SATISFACTION 177 I n 1954, Lenski showed that, above and beyond the effect of per se, inconsistency, or in his words the absence of status crystallization, was associated with political liberalism. Since then inconsistency has been shown to be associated with a desire for change in power distribution (Goffman, 1957), symptoms of stress (Jackson, 1962), and even suicide (Gibbs and Martin, 1958). Following Lenski, these studies defined a person as a inconsistent if he was high on one, and low on another, objectively dlerived dimension such as education, occupation, income, or ethnicity. It is generally assumed that inconsistency between such structural positions leads to dissatisfaction with the social order and a subsequent attempt to resolve or adapt to the inconsistency. Recently the traditional use of the concept of inconsistency has coine under criticism (Sampson, 1963; Geschwender, 1967). It has been argued that a discrepancy between several dimensions, does not invariably lead to dissatisfaction and the desire for change. Rather, dissatisfaction occurs only when others, and especially when the person himself, generally expect that occupying a high on one dimension usually is or should be accompanied by high on the second dinmension. Both Sampson and Geschwender suggest that inconsistencies lead to a state of cognitive dissonance which the person will attempt to resolve in some way. However, for this to occur it is necessary that the person be aware that he is occupying discrepant statuses. Since a person's perception of his position in a hierarchy does not always agree with an objective assessment of his position he will experience dissonance only when he recognizes that he is occupying two discrepant statuses. This suggests that inconsistencies could be better measured by su bjective (i.e., person's perception of his own status) rather than objective indicators