Low-status Actors Research Articles

“It’s a Battle You Can’t Win”: Domination and Class Differences in Real-World Trust among Black Families

How does class affect one’s propensity to trust? Previous research finds higher-status actors express less trust than lower-status actors in interpersonal and institutional contexts. Scholars explain this finding as an outcome of structural dependence—when people have few alternative means for accessing valuable resources. In contrast, I find dependence inadequate to explain the relationship I observe between class and institutional trust among black families whose children were recommended for special education and other remedial program placement in an affluent, predominantly white school district. Drawing on retrospective interviews from a community ethnography, findings show that real-world trust decision processes also involve domination. Empirical studies of trust have overlooked the ways trustees—those being given trust—exercise power to achieve deference in trust exchanges, and how trustors—those placing trust in others—deploy their power to withstand trustees’ influence. I argue that trust might best be conceptualized as a two-part decision process, because class and other status resources affect trustors’ freedom to choose at two key junctures: (1) in weighing options and costs of trust errors, and (2) in communicating distrust in face-to-face interactions, where the potential for domination is high. Focusing on intersecting systems of power in authentic trust exchanges, this study shows how middle-class black trustors use symbolic resources to “go up against” the institutional power of educational experts and refuse placement, whereas working-class trustors consent to placement.

High-Status Teammates: Award Evaluation in the National Basketball Association

Social evaluations proceed in stages. First, judges filter a broad pool of candidates and pick a subset for detailed assessment. Then, the chosen group undergoes a closer examination, during which winners are selected. At both stages of the process, judges are susceptible to bias. Bias is especially commonplace when contenders work in teams because each team member’s merit can be hard to distinguish from that of others. Our paper investigates evaluation bias originating in intrateam status asymmetries. Using the National Basketball Association’s data, we explore how high-status teammates are associated with their colleagues’ chances of winning awards. We find that bias stemming from high-status teammates’ presence is beneficial to their colleagues in the first stage of evaluations because high-status actors increase their team members ‘visibility to judges. However, our results also show that in the second stage of evaluations, the presence of high-status teammates could decrease their colleagues’ chances of winning awards because lower-status actors might seem less worthy of awards when evaluated alongside high-status individuals. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.13917 .

Sociocultural engagement in a colorblind racism framework moderates perceptions of cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation refers to an action whereby an individual makes use of, imitates, or takes possession of cultural products of an outgroup or source community. Compared to Black Americans, many White Americans do not differentiate between high (i.e., White) and low (i.e., Black) status actors when making judgments of cultural appropriation (Mosley & Biernat, 2021). The goal of the current research is to assess why some individuals exhibit a lack of recognition of structural and historical racism when making judgments of cultural appropriation. To answer this question, we draw on theoretical work on colorblind racism, a framework of racial ideologies that emphasize that group differences should be ignored, and that people should be treated as individuals (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Three experiments investigate the colorblind - racism hypothesis: perceivers who are highly invested in a colorblind racism ideology —assessed along three dimensions including racial group identification, historical knowledge of racism, and endorsement of assimilationist ideologies—will see equal levels of appropriation in the actions of White and Black perpetrators. In contrast, perceivers low in a colorblind ideology will see White (versus Black) actors as more culturally appropriative. We see for evidence for this hypothesis among White (Studies 1–2) and Black (Study 3) perceivers. These findings suggest that endorsement in a colorblind ideology can facilitate ignorance of power differences between groups when perceiving cultural appropriation.

How Do Nominal Characteristics Lose Status Value? Asymmetry in Status Deconstruction

Existing theories explain how the states of nominal characteristics acquire status value and the implications of status characteristics for the distribution of rewards, honor, and esteem in groups. It is less clear how characteristics lose status value. In this article, we combine the logic of status construction theory with loss aversion from decision theory to develop novel predictions about status loss. We predict that removing the mechanism of status construction theory will result in fading consensual status beliefs and that this will occur faster for low status actors. This results in a period of conflicting or asymmetric status beliefs between groups. Results from a six-condition controlled experiment support key predictions of consensual status loss, with low status actors viewing a gain in their status faster than high status actors view a loss to theirs. We discuss ways to extend and refine the work and the implications of our theory for racial and gender status-based inequalities.

Employee mobility networks and status transfer in U.S big law

Firms in organizational fields frequently hire and lose employees to competing firms. What is the impact of employee mobility on the status of organizations within a field? Unfortunately, empirical evidence is lacking about how hiring professionals from high or low-status actors, especially status that is obtained through third-party evaluation, impact the focal firm’s status. This research examines employee mobility across the largest law firms in the United States from 2010 to 2016 and employs fixed effects modeling to estimate associations among the status of firms from which partners were hired, network centrality, and the organizational status of hiring firms. Results showed that firms’ status increased when they hired, on average, from high-status firms, and that this association was stronger amongst more centrally located firms. Namely, we found that although the impact of sending firms’ status has a significant impact on the focal firms’ status, such an effect depends on network centrality of the sending firm. These results support the notion of status portability as well as the importance of the firm’s network position for status enhancement.

A Persistent Borderland: Glasgow, the Anglo-Scottish Border, and the Making of (North) British Identity, 1700–1730

Abstract Borderlands are not just zones bisected by a border but are also conceptual spaces and areas defined by ‘borderwork’ activities. Eighteenth-century Glasgow was one such area, in which the typical activities associated with borderlands – tax evasion, feuds, and violence as a hallmark of inter-community relations or resistance to an overmighty state and its lieutenants – shaped the effort to produce a new ‘British’ identity after 1707. This article examines two instances of riot in Glasgow and emphasises the importance of the role played by lower-status actors and prevailing concepts of fairness in forging the Anglo-Scottish Union in one of its most important cities.

Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige‐based status?

AbstractStatus is a complex, but crucially important, aspect of life across species. In recent decades, researchers have made significant contributions to our understanding of both the pathways by which status can be attained, as well as our underlying capacities for reasoning about these pathways. In 2001, Henrich & Gil‐White proposed a prestige‐based pathway to status where low status actors willingly defer to competent or knowledgeable high status actors, as a means of facilitating social learning and cultural transmission. Although this type of status hierarchy, and the capacity to reason about it, was hypothesized to be unique to humans, here I argue that there are several reasons why we might observe prestige‐based status, and the capacity for reasoning about this pathway to status, in some nonhuman species as well. These reasons focus on the prevalence, importance, and sophistication of social learning in certain taxa, as well as the marked variation in hierarchy characteristics and structure across species. I point out places where our current methodologies encounter difficulties distinguishing whether a hierarchy in the wild is based on dominance or prestige, where our experimental methods leave us unable to assess whether an individual is reasoning about a high status actor as being prestigious or formidable, and provide suggestions for addressing these limitations. Adopting a comparative approach will clarify whether prestige‐based status truly is unique to humans, and—if not—precisely what selective pressures facilitate the emergence of prestige‐based status and the capacity for reasoning about it.

Categorical Distinctions and Claims-Making: Opportunity, Agency, and Returns from Wage Negotiations

In this article, we examine wage negotiations as a specific instance of claims-making, predicting that the capacity to make a claim is first a function of the position, rather than the person, and that lower-status actors—women, migrants, fixed-term, part-time, and unskilled workers—are all more likely to be in positions where negotiation is not possible. At the same time, subordinate-status actors may be less likely to make claims even where negotiation is possible, and when they do make wage claims they may receive lower or no returns to negotiation. Analyses of wage negotiations by more than 2,400 German employees largely confirm these theoretical expectations, although the patterns of opportunity, agency, and economic returns vary by categorical status. All low-status actors are more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. Women, people in lower-class jobs, and people with temporary contracts are less likely to negotiate even when given the opportunity. Regarding returns, agency in wage claims does not seem to improve the wages of women, migrants, or working-class individuals. The advice to “lean-in” will not substantially lower wage inequalities for everyone, although men who lean in do benefit relative to men who do not.

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.

Stand Up or Stand By: The Effects of Network Positions on Whistle- Blowing

This paper examines which network positions enable individuals to engage in whistle-blowing in a context of sexual harassment in Hollywood movie industry. We hypothesize that individuals who are in an open network are more likely to engage in whistle-blowing. This is because they can get access to variety of information regarding the level of retaliation by sexual harasser and supporters of their whistle-blowing. We also hypothesize that high-status individuals are more likely to engage in whistle-blowing. This is because they can control relevant resources such as information and connections. Also, they can ask low-status actors to support their whistle-blowing when they form a tie with low-status ones. We test our hypotheses on the Hollywood film industry and find support for our hypotheses that different network positions determine whistle-blowing.

Prismatic effects of negative ties

Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, we show that negative ties can also have beneficial effects. We argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers. As a result, we theorize that negative ties with high-status actors can benefit a focal actor, whereas negative ties with low-status actors can harm the focal actor. This prismatic effect depends on the existing status of the focal actor: a focal actor of low status is likely to benefit far more from negative ties with high-status actors and suffer more from negative ties with low-status actors than will an actor of high-status. To test our ideas, we analyze the phenomenon of "diss songs" in hip-hop music. A diss song is a song in which a rapper makes derogatory comments about another rapper, constituting a negative tie. We analyze the effects of negative ties among 53 rappers over 20 points in time on audience reaction as measured by record sales. We find that negative ties with high-status actors enhance future sales for low-status actors. However, negative ties with lower-status actors have no effect on the future sales of both low- and high-status actors. Just as some researchers have reported both positive and negative consequences of social capital, our study demonstrates that negative ties can also have both positive and negative outcomes.

“Invincibles” and “invisibles”: CEO status and the ‘Matthew effect’ in strategic decision-making

A failure of a large corporate investment project launched by a CEO may affect not only CEO's bonus and equity holdings, but also personal status and future career prospects. Yet, Merton's (1968) “Matthew Effect” would suggest that the risks and benefits associated with risky investment projects may be different for CEOs of different status. High-status CEOs are better able to decouple their status from their firm's performance failure and are in a better position to claim credit for the firm's successes. On the other hand, given that third parties have greater reluctance to accept quality claims of low-status actors, lower status CEOs might not receive a commensurate credit for the success of a project, but might be exposed to a disproportionate amount of blame in case of project failure. Since actors are usually aware of the presence of the Matthew Effect in their field, we can expect that the differential outcomes produced by it will be factored into actors' expected utility calculations, affecting CEOs' attitudes to risk and visibility of their investment prospects. The findings from a 19-year sample of U.S.-based cellular telephone operators provide support for the theorized relationship between the Matthew Effect and CEOs' investment choices.

Citizenship Status, Warm Glow, and Prosocial Behavior: A Quasi-Experiment on Giving Behavior by Host-Country Citizens and Asylum Seekers

Abstract This paper is concerned with the question of whether and how social class and status affect prosocial behavior among status groups.We conducted dictator games in which both host-country citizens (high social status) as well as asylum seekers (low social status) make monetary donations towards their respective in- and out-groups. As a novelty, we varied the number of recipients in the dictator game (i.e. one, two or three recipients). Our results indicate that host-country citizens donate significantly more than asylum seekers and that asylum seekers receive significantly higher donations than host-country citizens. Donations vary only marginally with the number of recipients. These findings and answers to a follow-up questionnaire show that prosocial behavior among status groups, and in particular prosocial behavior from high-status towards low-status actors, might be instances of impure altruism, i.e., motivated by a warm glow of giving or a purchase of moral satisfaction.

The Structure of Deference: Modeling Occupational Status Using Affect Control Theory

Current theories of occupational status conceptualize it as either a function of cultural esteem or the symbolic aspect of the class structure. Based on Weber’s definition of status as rooted in either cultural or class conditions, we argue that a consistent operationalization of occupational status must account for both of these dimensions. Using quantitative measures of cultural sentiments for occupational identities, we use affect control theory to model the network deference relations across occupations. We calculate a measure of the extent to which one occupational actor deferring to another is incongruent with cultural expectations for all possible combinations of 304 occupational titles. Because high-status actors are less likely to defer to low-status actors, the degree to which these events violate cultural expectations provides an indicator of the relative status position of different occupations. We assess the construct validity of our new deference score measure using Harris Poll data. Deference scores are more predictive of status rankings from poll data than are occupational prestige scores. We establish criterion validity using five theoretically relevant workplace outcomes: subjective work attachment, job satisfaction, general happiness, the importance of meaningful work, and perceived respect at work.

Unequal and Unfair: Free Riding in One‐Shot Interactions

This study investigates the effect of status on perceptions of and reactions to free riders. Extrapolating from expectation states theory, I posit that higher status actors are granted a greater degree of social leniency than lower status actors when it comes to free riding. Specifically, I hypothesize that higher status actors are less likely to evoke the same negative emotional and behavioral responses elicited by lower status free riders. Using gender as an indicator of status, I employ a simple vignette to examine this relationship. Results validate previous findings related to the negative emotional and affective responses individuals have toward free riders. Furthermore, while findings fail to support the stated hypotheses, additional results demonstrate the subtle complexity of the relationship between gender, status, and free riding as well as its effect on the emotional and behavioral responses of individuals within small groups. As a result, I suggest that an outright rejection of the stated hypotheses may be premature and that further research in this area is warranted.

Academy Awards Speeches Reflect Social Status, Cinematic Roles, and Winning Expectations

An analysis of Academy Awards acceptance speeches revealed that social status is indicated through pronouns. Speeches from high status movie directors contained fewer self-references than relatively low status actors. Directors also communicated analytically compared with actors, who told stories and communicated narratively. A post hoc analysis revealed that unexpected award winners communicated more positively than those who were expected to win. The analyses emphasize the importance of replications in the social sciences and extending social and psychological phenomena to new settings.

Status Characteristics and the Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence

We present experimental evidence on the effects of status characteristics in problems involving the provision of public goods. According to Status Characteristics Theory (SCT), status differentials affect performance expectations, which in turn affect the power and prestige order in group tasks. Applied to problems of collective action, SCT suggests several intriguing hypotheses (cf. Simpson, Willer, and Ridgeway 2012). Most importantly, the theory proposes that high-status actors show a greater initiative in and also overall contribute more to the provision of public goods than low-status actors. We put this theoretical claim to a strict experimental test, in addition to other hypotheses and conjectures. In our experimental setup, the volunteer’s timing dilemma is used as the group task. Three experimental conditions are implemented, which differ with respect to the way status groups are formed on basis of the type of status characteristic. Our results validate the central hypothesis cited above and also lend support to a conjecture regarding the beneficial effects of heterogeneity in status.

Cross-National Variation in Occupational Prestige

This article investigates cross-national differences in occupational prestige amongst French, American and Canadian privacy officers. Privacy officers design and implement programs to protect private information in organizations. As a consequence, members of the privacy occupation serves as key interfaces between organizations and their information environments. The current study seeks to extend structuralist theories of occupational prestige- which suggest that all complex societies engender similar hierarchies of occupations. In contrast, in my chosen empirical case of privacy officers, I find that national contexts accord varying degrees of prestige to the privacy occupation. On the one hand, American privacy officers are upwardly mobile and endowed with the potentiality of being strategic organizational actors. On the other, French privacy officers are low-status actors- largely relegated to documentation and compliance tasks. Using a comparative case study method and a multimodal data corpus (intervi...

To The Manner Born: How Earned Status And Inherited Status Influence Conformity

How status affects conventionality is a question with a long tradition in sociology and organization theory. The bulk of this literature focuses on how “earned status”, that is the status that is acquired through recognition and deference by peers or audiences, affects actors’ conventionality. Literature in social psychology has shown however, that actors also inherit status on the basis of ascribed characteristics (such as gender or nationality). We investigate how the inconsistency between the status actors earn and the status they inherit affect their propensity to adopt conventional choices. We suggest, as we detail in our study, that the status inconsistency for low-status actors from a high-status group prompts a different behavior than status inconsistency for high-status actors from a low-status group. We study the role of status inconsistency on the repertoire choice of conductors of the major US orchestras between 1896 and 1970. We find that high status conductors from low status countries are more likely, than their peers from high status countries, to play compositions that are more adopted in the field. As different from this, low status actors from high status countries are more likely to play unconventional compositions than their peers from low status countries.

A Fish in a Pond: An Exploration of the Dynamics Between the CEO and Firm Status

Although research on individual and organizational status has deepened our understanding of the phenomena, little attention has been paid to the dynamics between the two. In this paper, we explore the linkage between CEO status and firm status and develop several hypotheses on its impact on CEO power, compensation, and dismissal likelihood. Drawing from relative standing theory and equity theory, we develop the notion of status disparity, or the relative dominance of CEO status over firm status. Specifically, we show how relative standing of CEO with respect to the firm affects one’s perceived level of equity and explains how low-status actors compensate high-status actors for having a status heterophilous relationship. We argue that both absolute and relative levels of status impact social actor’s perception and the following behavior. The results show that both absolute and relative value of CEO status have positive impact on CEO power and compensation.