High-status Partners Research Articles

Neural responses to social partners' facial expressions are modulated by their social status in an interactive situation

Recently, several studies have found a recognition advantage for facial expressions, particularly angry expressions, when they appear on high-status faces rather than low-status faces. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the influence of social status on the neural responses to others' facial expressions in a context of performance monitoring. Specifically, we used an interactive rank-inducing task (i.e., time estimation task) to manipulate social partners' status (high versus low) and then told participants that they would receive social feedback (i.e., happy, neutral, or angry) from social partners with high or low status after completing the task. ERP results revealed the preferential processing of high-status targets at both early (P1/N170/FRN) and late (P3) temporal stages of facial expression processing. Notably, larger FRN amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were observed in happy, neutral, and angry expression contexts, whereas larger P3 amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were only evident in both neutral and angry expression contexts but not in happy expression context. Together, the present study extended previous studies by showing that the perception of facial expressions could be modulated by target status at multiple stages.

Accelerating emergence: the causal (but contextual) effect of social impact accelerators on nascent for-profit social ventures

Given the legitimacy challenges faced by entrepreneurs, gaining access to the resources necessary to create viable new ventures is often difficult. Accordingly, scholars advocate that entrepreneurs align with high-status partners to convey that they are an accepted part of the sociocultural and organizational landscape. Although startup accelerators have been argued to play this supportive role for high-tech, high-growth ventures, it remains unclear whether they are effective at serving the needs of ventures pursuing social missions alongside business structures, or for-profit social ventures (FPSVs). To explore this issue, we examine whether social impact accelerators (SIAs), accelerators specifically designed to support FPSVs, help such ventures make the transition from mere ideas to viable organizations, a process known as emergence. To determine a causal relationship, we employ a quasi-experimental design and adopt propensity score matching with the nearest neighbor matching algorithm to study 7185 startups that applied to 383 accelerators worldwide from 2013 to 2019. By matching accepted startups to a control group of rejected startups, we find that SIAs, on average, facilitate new venture emergence, with accelerated FPSVs raising more external financing, earning more revenues, and hiring more full-time employees than their unaccelerated counterparts. These results hold when controlling for selection bias, thereby providing robust evidence for a causal relationship between acceleration and startup emergence. However, a subsequent subgroup analysis reveals that this causal effect is contingent across a breadth of “who,” “when,” and “where” contexts, highlighting the idiosyncratic differences that different startups face in the acceleration process.

Before shooting star fade out: Positive status shifts and formation of status heterophilous ties

We investigate how social actors who become high-status select status of partners. Literature on status homophily explains that high-status actors work with same status ones. By doing so, they can avoid perceptions of low quality of product especially when uncertainty is high. However, literature on status heterophily explains that high-status partners can make a tie with low-status ones when they need to extract efforts from low-status ones. In this paper, we focus on the status heterophilous tie formation by considering when social actors just become high-status. After becoming high-status, they receive extraordinary amount of recognition, so that they want to avoid competing with other high-status actors for their recognition. To do so, we expect that these actors prefer to work with low-status actors. We also consider visibility of their product and brokerage positions of these actors and that can increase the effects of high-status actors on formation of status heterophilous ties. We test these hypotheses by collecting data on Oscar winner directors and nominees as their counterfactuals with difference-in-differences analysis.

When does Main Street prefer Wall Street? Legitimacy, status, and decision-making

PurposeWhen and why do organizations prefer high-status exchange partners? While past work has focused on status as a signal to the marketplace, this study shows that actors use the selected organization's status as a signal to legitimate their own selection decision.Design/methodology/approachThe context of the study is the selection of investment banks by local governments in the United States for the purpose of selling municipal bonds to investors. Hypotheses were developed through interviews with participants in the public and private sectors and were then tested using generalized estimating equations (GEEs). The models include 6,720 selection decisions nested within 1,032 local governments.FindingsInterview data reveal that governmental decision-makers struggle with interdepartmental conflict and are concerned about the perceived legitimacy of decisions in the “political arena”. The quantitative results confirm that with respect to selection decisions, the social context of the local government matters. Specifically, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, political competition and functional complexity—contexts where actors must signal independence and objectivity in decision-making—are each associated with an increased likelihood of retaining a high-status investment bank.Originality/valueThe study shows that a preference for a high-status partner is not just market driven. Rather, it emerges also from the legitimacy demands of the organization's own participants. More broadly, the study reveals how organizational decision-making—even that pertaining to the external market environment—is embedded in an organization-specific social reality.

Dancing with the stars: what do foreign firms get from high-status local partners?

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of high-status local exchange partners on foreign firms.Design/methodology/approach– Bridging status research and international business literature, the study develops a framework that describes three prominent effects of high-status partners on foreign firms, and further links these effects to firms’ relationship outcomes. The proposed conceptual model is examined using partial least squares structural equations modeling on a sample of 96 foreign firms operating in China.Findings– The study provides evidence that high-status local exchange partners tend to seek higher relationship-specific investment from foreign firms, and in the meantime, provide firms with greater opportunities for local learning and networking; subsequently, foreign firms are more likely to achieve satisfactory outcomes in the relationships.Practical implications– These findings suggest that affiliation with high-status local actors can be a key approach to overcome the liability of foreignness in a host country. Firms therefore, should treat them carefully as an important category of exchange partner portfolios. These are particularly relevant to foreign firms competing in China, a society characterized by strong hierarchies.Originality/value– The study serves as a preliminary attempt to introduce status concept to the field of international business. It promotes status as a key criterion for local partner selection, and offers the status research a contextual insight in the dilemma of choosing high- vs low-status partner candidates.

Opportunities and opportunism with high-status B2B partners in emerging economies

PurposeThis study examines the potential of foreign business-to-business (B2B) firms to select high-status local partners in emerging markets to achieve positive relationship outcomes. Because a domestic firm’s high status may also promote opportunism, the study also examines if the foreign B2B firms may mitigate such behavior through either or both transaction-specific investments (TSIs) and socialization.Design/methodology/approachThe research is conducted via a model that suggests a positive correlation between high local partner status and the focal relationship outcomes and the moderating effects of structural TSIs and social governance systems. The model was developed and empirically tested using data collected from 96 foreign firms operating in China.FindingsUsing multiple regressions, the findings suggest that foreign B2B firms are likely to achieve more beneficial relationship outcomes with high-status local partners. Standing alone, foreign B2B firms’ TSIs mitigate the positive relationship outcomes, whereas their socialization with the high-status partners enhances the beneficial outcomes. Most importantly, combining socialization with TSIs increases beneficial outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThis study adds to B2B marketing, status theory and the application of transaction cost economics (TCE) and social exchange theory to foreign-local B2B exchange relationships in emerging markets. The findings confirm the attractiveness of high status in emerging markets by exploring how the selection, formation and chosen B2B governance processes may lead to competing outcomes of opportunism or success. Future research will benefit from simultaneously securing data from both sides of the dyad.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests that foreign B2B firms consider high status as a key criterion in selecting local partners in emerging markets and the importance of managing high-status partners’ potential opportunism by effective governance mechanisms.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to apply and explore the workings of status theory in the foreign-local B2B partner selection process and relationship outcomes in emerging markets and thereby contributes to B2B marketing, status theory and both TCE and social exchange theories in the focal foreign-local B2B context.

Do Men and Women Exhibit Different Preferences for Mates? A Replication of Eastwick and Finkel (2008)

Evolutionary theory predicts that men will prefer physically attractive romantic partners, and women will prefer wealthy, high-status partners. This theory is well-supported when examining ideal hypothetical partner preferences, but less support has been found when people interact face-to-face. The present study served as a direct replication of results reported in Eastwick and Finkel (2008). We recruited 307 participants and utilized a speed-dating methodology to allow in-person interactions, then administered follow-up surveys to measure romantic interest over 30 days. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling and were aggregated using meta-analysis. Consistent with previous findings, our results showed that participants were more romantically interested in potential partners if they were viewed as attractive and good potential earners, and these associations were not moderated by gender. Results suggest that gender differences predicted by evolutionary theory may not hold when people interact with potential romantic partners face-to-face. However, we discuss these results in light of some general methodological limitations and evidence from other lines of research.

Divisive Faultlines and the Unplanned Dissolutions of Multipartner Alliances

Received wisdom suggests that multipartner alliances are relatively unstable because of their complexity and the increased potential for free riding. Nonetheless, multipartner alliances do benefit from built-in stabilizing third-party ties that mitigate opportunism and conflict between partner pairs. Previous empirical research on multipartner alliance stability has been inconclusive. We shed some light on these inconsistencies by recognizing that within multipartner alliances, schisms can occur not only between a pair of partners but also between subgroups of partners that are divided by faultlines. We suggest that divisive faultlines can form between subgroups of partners within a multipartner alliance as a function of their prior experience with one another. When a subgroup of alliance partners has relatively strong ties to each other and weak ties to other partners, destabilizing factions can develop that hamper reciprocity among the partners. Using a longitudinal analysis of 59 multipartner alliances, we found that, in general, faultlines (as modeled by the dispersion of tie strength within multipartner alliances) increase the hazard of unplanned dissolutions. We also found that multipartner alliances comprising a mix of centrally and peripherally positioned partners within the industry network were less apt to suffer the effects of divisive faultlines. We suggest that this is due to the greater opportunity costs of dissolution and the presence of relatively high-status partners who can act as peacekeepers and coordinators of their lower-status partners.

The Costs and Benefits for Low-status Partners in Status-heterophilous Affiliations

We examine both the benefits and costs for those low-status members who they are affiliated with high-status partners. Grounded in the social status literature, we propose that in return for being ...

Adopting the System-Justifying Attitudes of Others: Effects of Trivial Interpersonal Connections in the Context of Social Inclusion and Exclusion

Although system justification research has focused most on the needs to explain and control the social world, system justification may also be regulated by the need to maintain social connections with others. Three experiments demonstrate that trivial interpersonal ties to system-justifying others can facilitate the endorsement of system-justifying attitudes, sometimes even in the face of social exclusion. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited stronger implicit pro-system, anti-labor attitudes after playing a game of catch with economically advantaged, high-status (vs. equal-status) partners. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that social exclusion (vs. inclusion) by system-justifying partners increased endorsement of implicit anti-system attitudes—unless participants believed that they shared a birthday or food preference with their partners. In sum, results suggest that system-justifying attitudes are based in part on motivations to regulate interpersonal relationships, including relationships that are temporary, superficial, and even exclusionary.

Interpersonal Sensitivity, Status, and Stereotype Accuracy

A classic question in social and organizational psychology is whether low-status persons are more accurate in the perception of their high-status partners than the latter are in their perception of their subordinates. In a series of studies, Snodgrass (1985, 1992) tested this idea. She found that subordinates were more accurate at judging how their bosses viewed them than bosses were at judging how their subordinates viewed them, but that bosses were more accurate at judging how subordinates viewed themselves than subordinates were at judging how bosses viewed themselves. We believe, however, that these results were obscured by stereotype accuracy. Using previously collected data, we found that stereotype accuracy does lead to the pattern previously observed by Snodgrass. We also discovered that when we controlled for stereotype accuracy, subordinates’ perceptions were generally more accurate than those of their bosses, which supports Snodgrass’s original hypothesis.

Networks, Information Transfer, and Status Conferral: The Role of Social Capital in Income Stratification among Lawyers

The focus of this article is to examine how and to what extent social networks serve to alleviate information problems on both demand and supply sides of the market, and how this mechanism contributes to income inequality among legal service providers. The empirical context of this study is a random sample of urban lawyers in Chicago. The findings indicate that a lawyer benefits not only from having access to social capital that provides timely and novel information related to solving work-related tasks, but also from the endorsement by high-status network partners. In addition, empirical analyses reveal that the returns on ties to high-status others, net of control, and other social capital variables vary according to the level of client uncertainty in the market.

Should We Stay or Should We Go? Accountability, Status Anxiety, and Client Defections

Focusing empirically on what affected client defections from Arthur Andersen during its dramatic collapse in 2002, this study proposes that accountability-induced status anxiety is an important factor in the dissolution of interfirm relationships. Status anxiety—concerns about being devalued because other actors question the quality of a firm's partners—can motivate firms to disassociate themselves from their compromised high-status partners to protect their own status position. I hypothesize that accountability triggers status anxiety when firms are directly accountable to important audiences, when firms are surrounded by other firms that already have disassociated themselves from common partners, and when firms have committed themselves to a particular level of partner quality. Event-history analyses provide strong support for the accountability perspective on status anxiety: firms surrounded by stronger audiences, more defecting firms, and stronger commitments to audit quality were themselves more likely to defect.

When timeliness matters: The effect of status on reactions to perceived time delay within distributed collaboration.

This research examines the interactive effects of status and perceived time delay on acceptance of partner knowledge contributions within a distributive collaboration work environment. Results across 2 studies suggest that within distributed collaboration, time delays attributed to low-status partners had a significantly more harmful effect on influence acceptance than time delay attributed to high-status partners. This was so, despite the fact that partners' actual behavior was held constant across experimental conditions. In addition, results indicate that judgments of partner competence significantly mediated the interactive effects of perceived time delay and partner status on acceptance of partner influence.

Results of an explorative empirical study on human mating in Germany: Handsome men, not high-status men, succeed in courtship

Recent research on human mating depicts men as searching for physical attractiveness (PA) and women as searching for status. To identify the mechanisms which lead to universal, biologically interpretable structures in social processes, we focused on the proximate causes for inter- and intrasexual differences in human mating preferences, attraction, and tactics. We collected data on 180 young singles (mean age 26.9 years) without a steady relationship. A questionnaire and a video sequence (20-30 seconds) of each subject was taken. Next, each video sequence was rated by approximately 20 individuals of the opposite sex, who also participated in this study. Surprisingly, the answers given by male and female subjects regarding sociosexual behaviour and mating preferences are predominantly congruent. Sex differences among preferences for good looking and high-status partners were small or even insignificant. Lower educated subjects had considerably higher status preferences than higher educated individuals. In both sexes, PA was much more preferred in a potential partner than status. For both sexes, physical appearance was decisive for the subject's dating attractiveness. Male, but not female dating attractiveness also correlates with a kind and charismatic appearance. Furthermore, there was a positive linear relationship between men's PA and their number of sexual partners within the last year. Men with more than four sexual partners were all above-average in PA, while the most attractive women had a medium number of sexual partners. However, in this respect, status had no influence. The results show that sex differences in mating are more complex than hitherto assumed.

Communication Conflicts of Status and Authority in Dyadic, Task-Based Interactions

Status generalization theory predicts that high-status individuals will automatically assume high-authority roles controlling task-based interactions. However, temporary task demands may require low-status individuals to assume high-authority positions. If status generalizes, role conflicts may occur when high-status partners fail to yield control to low-status partners. lb test status generalization in legitimate role-reversal situations, airplane pilot crews who represented high- and low-status partners (i.e., captains and first officers)flew simulated missions during which transfers of authority (i.e.,pilotflying to pilot not flying) occurred. Results showed captains initiated more transfers and used more direct commands in initiations of transfers of authority than did first officers, even when captains were in low-authority roles. Only when using mitigated commands did first officers in high-authority positions initiate more transfers than did captains. Performative speech acts were shown to be effective, conventional devices for enacting transfers of authority.