Status Legitimacy Research Articles

“The First Temple in the World” Status Legitimacy Problems: Göbekli Tepe in Scientific Discussions of the Last Two Decades

“The First Temple in the World” Status Legitimacy Problems: Göbekli Tepe in Scientific Discussions of the Last Two Decades

Facebook interfaith contact and social distance toward religious minorities

ABSTRACT In line with the contact hypothesis, several studies show that digitally mediated interfaith contact on social networking sites also improves relationships between members of different faiths. Yet most theoretical and empirical scholarships are mainly conducted in societies generally free of religiously driven violent incidents, lacking insights from contexts with more serious interfaith challenges. Additionally, factors that predict digitally mediated interfaith contact and condition its effect have not gained enough attention. Relying on survey data of Facebook users in Pakistan (n = 645), this study shows that Muslims’ favorable attitude toward potential Facebook interfaith contact is positively associated with their number of Facebook interfaith contacts, which is, in turn, negatively associated with social distance toward non-Muslim religious minorities. Moreover, status legitimacy plays a moderating role, suggesting that the mediating relationship above is only significant for those who perceive a low level of status legitimacy – a perception that the social status difference between ingroup and outgroups is legitimate. It exhibits the inhibiting role of status legitimacy in hindering the effects of Facebook interfaith contact on social distance. This study discusses the potentially positive role of digitally mediated interfaith contact and concludes with limitations and recommendations.

Does status stability benefit or hurt team creativity? the roles of status legitimacy and team conflict

Status stability, which refers to the stability of team members’ relative status levels, has a profound effect on team effectiveness, but this effect may be either constructive or destructive; the literature has failed to reach consensus on this topic. To reconcile two contradictory views based on differentiating between different types of conflict, we constructed a comprehensive theoretical model of the mechanism underlying the effect of status stability; this model features relationship conflict and task conflict as mediators, status legitimacy as a moderator, and team creativity as an outcome variable. We also proposed four hypotheses on the basis of theoretical analysis. In this study, we used SPSS 23.0, AMOS 24.0 and R software to conduct empirical analysis and testing of 369 valid questionnaires collected from 83 teams using a two-stage measurement method. The results revealed that status stability negatively affects team creativity via task conflict and positively affects team creativity via relationship conflict. However, under the influence of status legitimacy, the negative effect is restrained, while the positive effect is enhanced. This study thus expands the research on the process mechanism and boundary conditions associated with status stability, and can serve as a useful reference for the design of the status structure of modern enterprises.

Fostering social change among advantaged and disadvantaged group members: Integrating intergroup contact and social identity perspectives on collective action

Recent research on intergroup contact has shown how interactions with outgroup members may both decrease and increase motivations to achieve social equality. Similarly, social identity theory has identified the conditions that lead individuals to challenge unequal social systems. Integrating these two major theories, the current study examined the processes underlying the relationship between intergroup contact and participants’ willingness to engage in collective action to challenge social inequality. Specifically, we tested sociostructural variables (status legitimacy and stability, and permeability of group boundaries) as potential mediators of contact in a sample of both advantaged (Italian high school students, N = 392) and disadvantaged (immigrant high school students, N = 165) group members. We found that contact was positively associated with motivation for change, an effect mediated by decreased perceived legitimacy of status differences. Moreover, for the advantaged group, membership salience moderated the effects of quality (but not quantity) of contact. Indirect effects were instead not moderated by content of contact (an index considering the extent to which contact was characterized by a focus on differences vs. commonalities between groups). Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

The moderating effects of status and trust on the performance of age-diverse work groups

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to help organizations capitalize on the potential advantages of age diversity by offering insight into two new moderators in the age diversity, work group performance relationship – status congruity and cognition-based trust.Design/methodology/approachThe authors surveyed 197 employees and 56 supervisors across 59 work groups to test for the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship.FindingsThe results demonstrated, on the one hand, that under conditions of status congruity (i.e. when there were high levels of perceived status legitimacy and veridicality) and/or when perceptions of cognition-based trust were high within the group, the relationship between age diversity and work group performance was positive. On the other hand, under conditions of status incongruity and/or low levels of cognition-based trust, this relationship was negative.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings contribute to the literature by being the first to provide empirical evidence for the theorized effects of status on the performance of age-diverse work groups and also by demonstrating the effects of cognition-based trust in a new context – age-diverse work groups.Practical implicationsArising from the study’s findings are several strategies, which are expected to help organizations enhance perceptions of status congruity and/or trust and ultimately the performance of their age-diverse work groups.Originality/valueThe paper is the first to empirically demonstrate the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship. The study also establishes important distinctions between the effects of objective status differences vs status perceptions.

Intergroup status differences as challenge or threat: The role of legitimacy

Based on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) we examined the motivational consequences of intergroup status differences as a function of the legitimacy of these differences. Motivational responses were conceptualized in terms of challenge and threat and operationalized by their cardiovascular markers, as described by the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS-CT; Blascovich & Mendes, 2010). Participants ( N = 104) were categorized in minimal groups. Group status and status legitimacy were manipulated in the context of an intergroup competition. High status elicited relatively more challenge (less threat) when status differences were legitimate than when they were illegitimate. Low status elicited relatively less threat (more challenge) when status differences were illegitimate than when they were legitimate. Cardiovascular reactivity in line with challenge mediated performance during the competition. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between social status and stress, and the BPS-CT as novel and useful motivational framework for studying social identity processes.

What Is in the Stars? The Effect of Status on Social Preferences

This experiment is an extension of that by Chen and Li (2009), having incorporated status in the group identities. Creating groups in the lab settings, we reward the high-status groups with ‘stars’, adapting the procedure from Ball et al (2001). In order to separate the effect of status from group bias, we use status ‘deservedness’ and ‘arbitrariness’ as proxies for legitimacy and illegitimacy. Using such decision-making tasks as other-other allocations and two-person mini-games, we estimate the effect of status on fairness, trust, and entitlement versus envy. We find a diverse effect of status allocation method on two types of players. In other-other allocations, both groups favour those with the same label, allocating them approximately 67%, however only lower-status participants are sensitive to status, showing less discriminatory behaviour in deserved-status sessions. Similar behaviour patterns of lower-status participants are observed in one-shot binary Dictator games and trust-related decisions, while those of higher status do not express any biases. Finally, as far as the decisions of second-movers in mini-Trust games are concerned, both types of players express group bias yet are insensitive to status. Overall, this study confirms the phenomenon of in-group love, also providing an insight of status effect on the other-regarding preferences. While we see a consistent effect of status legitimacy of low-status players, we should interpret the behaviour of players of higher status with care, as their actions can be resulting from either being oblivious to groups as such, or driven by a ‘noblesse oblige’ effect.

Intergroup emulation: An improvement strategy for lower status groups

The social psychological literature on social change has focused on how groups overcome oppression and inequality. In this paper, we investigate an alternative strategy that groups employ for social change—the emulation of successful outgroups. We propose that lower status group members will be likely to employ a learning strategy when they perceive the status relations as legitimate (i.e., fair system) and unstable (i.e., own position is improvable). In Study 1 (Romanian undergraduate students, N = 31), we manipulated status legitimacy, while in Study 2 (British undergraduate participants, N = 94), we manipulated legitimacy and stability orthogonally. Overall, when they perceived status hierarchies as legitimate and unstable, participants exhibited higher admiration for the higher status outgroup, higher support for learning-related help (e.g., transfer of know-how, training) from the outgroup and had the most positive attitudes toward intergroup help. We propose that social change sometimes occurs gradually, through help and learning from successful models, and this paper offers insight into such gradual social change.

A Contextual Approach to Stereotype Content Model: Stereotype Contents in Context

The present paper aims to review the strengths and weakness of the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske et al., 2002). Thus, a context sensitive perspective was provided to overcome the shortcomings of SCM. In the first section, contributions of SCM are discussed. Secondly, a special focus is devoted to the competence and warmth dimensions to identify several difficulties of the model. Finally, a context sensitive perspective is suggested to overcome these difficulties. In this perspective, three contextual factors suggested: the kinds of competition, legitimacy of status, and constraints of social re ality. Finally, limitations and suggestions for future studies are presented.

Low Status Legitimacy of the Government and of Business: A Reanalysis of Brandt (2013)

Brandt (2013) analyzed data from three large data sets and suggested that there was little support for the low status legitimacy hypothesis derived from System Justification Theory (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003). The legitimacy measures for two of the data sets included confidence in both government (e.g., Police, Parliament) and private (e.g., Major companies) organizations. I reanalyze the data from these two data sets using two separate measures of legitimacy. Although there are some differences across the two measures, results largely reinforce the conclusions of Brandt (2013).

Insecure Status Relations Shape Preferences for the Content of Intergroup Contact

Recent work demonstrated that whereas high-status and low-status group members seek to address cross-group commonalities during intergroup contact, members of low-status groups show a greater desire to discuss status differences between the groups. Drawing on social identity theory, the current research investigated the combined influence of status legitimacy and status stability on these contact preferences. In Study 1, perceived stability and perceived legitimacy were measured among members of a high-status ethnic group in Israel. In Study 2, group status, status stability, and status legitimacy were experimentally manipulated in a U.S. sample. Although they generally preferred to discuss commonalities over status differences, across studies high-status group members' willingness to discuss status differences increased when they perceived the hierarchy as illegitimate but stable. By contrast, low-status group members were particularly inclined to address status differences and least interested in discussing commonalties, when the hierarchy was illegitimate and unstable.

Do the disadvantaged legitimize the social system? A large-scale test of the status–legitimacy hypothesis.

System justification theory (SJT) posits that members of low-status groups are more likely to see their social systems as legitimate than members of high-status groups because members of low-status groups experience a sense of dissonance between system motivations and self/group motivations (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003). The author examined the status-legitimacy hypothesis using data from 3 representative sets of data from the United States (American National Election Studies and General Social Surveys) and throughout the world (World Values Survey; total N across studies = 151,794). Multilevel models revealed that the average effect across years in the United States and countries throughout the world was most often directly contrary to the status-legitimacy hypothesis or was practically zero. In short, the status-legitimacy effect is not a robust phenomenon. Two theoretically relevant moderator variables (inequality and civil liberties) were also tested, revealing weak evidence, null evidence, or contrary evidence to the dissonance-inspired status-legitimacy hypothesis. In sum, the status-legitimacy effect is not robust and is unlikely to be the result of dissonance. These results are used to discuss future directions for research, the current state of SJT, and the interpretation of theoretically relevant but contrary and null results.

Anticipated and Perceived Intergroup Relations as Predictors of Immigrants’ Identification Patterns

The present study among Ingrian-Finnish remigrants (N = 153) from Russia to Finland examined the effects of anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage on the way intergroup relations are perceived and multiple cultural identities are formed in the post-migration stage. First, the results indicated that anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage affected perceived discrimination, permeability of group boundaries, and group status legitimacy in the post-migration stage. Second, anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage was not directly associated with any of the identities in the post-migration stage, but it was indirectly associated with national identification, via perceived discrimination and permeability of group boundaries. Perceived discrimination and impermeability of group boundaries in the post-migration stage were associated with lower levels of remigrants’ national (Finnish) identification in the new homeland. Third, the perceived legitimacy of Ingrian-Finns’ low status was associated with increased Russian minority identification. The findings extend previous research on the effects of anticipated intergroup contact on actual intergroup encounters on the one hand, and on the effects of perceived discrimination, status legitimacy, and permeability of group boundaries on national and ethnic identification among immigrants, on the other.

Constitutional Context: Women and Rights Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America. By Kathleen S. Sullivan. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xii, 181 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8018-8552-5.)

Kathleen S. Sullivan, a political scientist, aspires in her first book to join conversations on several topics: the lost capacity of common law to serve liberal society; dysfunctional narratives promulgated by suffragists; constitutionalism shaped by public discourse; and stubborn legal problems in women's rights litigation. She offers a historical narrative that implicates nineteenth-century women in “challeng[ing] the legitimacy of status in American political thought” and pushing the Supreme Court to adopt “the politically developed doctrine of abstract equality rather than the more contextually determined practice of equity” (pp. 5, 4). Her narrative is adventurous. It opens early in the century with debates between supporters of the common law and those who would codify American law. Common lawyers won the argument, but what matters is that “a language of derision toward [the common law] had been introduced” (p. 43). From there it is on to the abolitionist movement, where women, while asserting their right to free speech, claimed rights without regard for the social order or women's status in it; they developed an “abstracted rights discourse” (p. 59). With nary a road sign, Sullivan next turns to the married women's property acts and echoes a modern consensus that coverture was not terminated but modernized by the acts' small steps toward economic autonomy for wives. But activists, armed with the aforementioned derision for common law and discourse of abstract rights, constructed a “suffrage narrative” that painted common law as a relic of barbarism and celebrated the acts for putting an end to coverture. They thereby obscured the survival of coverture and distorted subsequent discussions about women's progress.

Ingroup vitality and intergroup attitudes in a linguistic minority

In this study we argue that predictions of the impact of group status, status stability and status legitimacy on intergroup attitudes can be refined using the subjective perceptions of various dimensions of ingroup vitality. We tested the main and moderating effects of perceived present, future and the legitimacy of present ingroup vitality and perceived discrimination on intergroup attitudes in a nation-wide probability sample (N= 1,411) of Swedish-speaking Finns, controlling for ingroup identification. We found that those who perceived the legitimacy of present ingroup vitality to be low had more negative intergroup attitudes than those who perceived the legitimacy to be high. Perceived present and future ingroup vitality had no main effects on the dependent variable. Instead, perceived future ingroup vitality moderated the effect of perceived discrimination on intergroup attitudes. In addition, the perceived legitimacy of present ingroup vitality mediated the effect of perceived present ingroup vitality on intergroup attitudes.

Devaluing domains in response to threatening intergroup comparisons: Perceived legitimacy and the status value asymmetry.

Group status and status legitimacy were tested as moderators of devaluing in response to threatening intergroup comparisons. In 3 experiments, participants received feedback comparing their in-group (based on school or gender) to a higher or lower status out-group. When the legitimacy of group status differences was assumed (Studies 1 and 2) or manipulated (Study 3), participants devalued the domain when their in-group compared unfavorably with a lower status out-group but did not devalue the domain when their in-group compared unfavorably with a higher status out-group. In Study 3, this status value asymmetry was eliminated when status differences were delegitimized. Mediational analyses suggested that the status value asymmetry was explained by the perceived utility of the domain for gaining status-relevant rewards.

Status differences and in-group bias: a meta-analytic examination of the effects of status stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability.

This work examines the moderating effects of status stability, legitimacy, and group permeability on in-group bias among high- and low-status groups. These effects were examined separately for evaluative measures that were relevant as well as irrelevant to the salient status distinctions. The results support social identity theory and show that high-status groups are more biased. The meta-analysis reveals that perceived status stability, legitimacy, and permeability moderate the effects of group status. Also, these variables interacted in their influences on the effect of group status on in-group bias, but this was only true for irrelevant evaluative dimensions. When status was unstable and perceived as illegitimate, low-status groups and high-status groups were equally biased when group boundaries were impermeable, compared with when they were permeable. Implications for social identity theory as well as for intergroup attitudes are discussed.

Status differences and in-group bias: A meta-analytic examination of the effects of status stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability.

Status differences and in-group bias: A meta-analytic examination of the effects of status stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability.

The Importance of Status Legitimacy for Intergroup Attitudes Among Numerical Minorities

This study investigated whether the legitimacy of the status structure influences the interactive effects of group status and numerical representation on intergroup attitudes. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (level of status; high, low) by 2 (legitimacy of status; legitimate, illegitimate) by 2 (numerical representation; majority, minority) between‐subjects design. The predicted three‐way interaction indicated that, when status was illegitimate, majority groups with high status showed more ingroup bias than majority groups with low status, but minority groups with high status did not show more ingroup bias than their counterparts with low status. By comparison, when status was legitimate, high‐status groups were more biased than low‐status groups, regardless of numerical representation.