Status Characteristics Theory Research Articles

Who gets to lead the multinational team? An updated status characteristics perspective

This article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams. Building on and extending status characteristics theory, the article proposes and tests a model that describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, and accounts for who gets to lead these teams. It is argued that an individual’s language (i.e. a specific status characteristic) and nationality (i.e. a diffuse status characteristic) predict deference received from peers (i.e. leadership status). However, individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics by virtue of their core self-evaluations. A study of over 230 individuals from 46 nationalities working in 36 self-managing teams generally supports the expected main and moderation effects. Individual core self-evaluations enhance an otherwise weak effect of English proficiency, but compensate for low levels of national development. The article concludes with implications for practice, and linking micro- and macro-level theories of status and global inequality.

Status Characteristics and Ability Attributions in Hungarian School Classes

We study how the status characteristics gender and ethnicity affect the abilities that adolescents attribute to each other in the Hungarian school context. For this, we derive predictions from status characteristics theory that we test by applying exponential random graph models to data collected among students in 27 school classes. By that, we contribute to the few existing studies of status characteristics in a school context, and we propose a novel approach to handle structural dependencies between individual ability attributions. Our results suggest that across classes, gender does not consistently affect ability attributions, while ethnicity does affect ability attributions. Roma students are on average perceived as less able than their Hungarian peers, even after controlling for the structural embeddedness of these perceptions.

Status, Identity, and Ability in the Formation of Trust: Four Vignette Experiments

The sources of trust — or actor A’s belief about actor B’s trustworthiness with respect to particular matter Y — are myriad, ranging from the biological to the political. Despite the great amount of research that has investigated decision making as a function of another’s ascribed and achieved characteristics, we still know little about whether and to what extent these characteristics impact A’s trust in B regarding matter Y. In this paper, I draw on classic sociological traditions — status characteristics theory and social identity theory — to formulate hypotheses that link ascribed and achieved characteristics to trust. Four vignette experiments administered to Amazon.com Mechanical Turk workers (N=1,388 and N=1,419) and to public university undergraduate students (N=995 and N=956) showed that diffuse status characteristics (age, race, and gender) and social identities (co-age, co-race, and co-gender) produced weak to null effects depending on the population, hypothetical scenario, and nominal social category under study, while specific status characteristics (actual competence) consistently produced modest effects. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Status and User Participation in Competitive Crowdsourcing

We examine the effects of diffused and specific status on user participation in online crowdsourcing contests. Drawing on prior insights from status characteristics theory (SCT), we hypothesize tha...

Building adaptable organisations: role of personality and organisational tenure in change-oriented organisational citizenship behaviour

Organisations require change-oriented organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among employees to effectively manage change. The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on change-oriented OCB by examining its association with the personality and the moderating influence of organisational tenure on this association. Based on a sample of 272 employees, the current study investigates the interactive effect of personality and tenure on change-oriented OCB on the basis of human capital theory, social capital theory, self-efficacy, job demand resource model, and status characteristic theory using cross-sectional method. The results confirm that organisational tenure moderates the relationship between personality traits and change-oriented OCB. Practical implications and limitations are discussed.

How Do Entrepreneurial Founding Teams Allocate Task Positions?

How do founding team members allocate task positions when launching new ventures? Answering this question is important because prior work shows both that founding team members often have correlated expertise, thus making task position allocation problematic; and initial occupants of task positions exert a lingering effect on venture outcomes. We draw on status characteristics theory to derive predictions on how co-founders’ specific expertise cues and diffuse status cues drive initial task position allocation. We also examine the performance consequences of mismatches between the task position and position occupant. Qualitative fieldwork combined with a quasi-experimental simulation game and an experiment provides causal tests of the conceptual framework. We find that co-founders whose diffuse status cues of gender (male), ethnicity (white) or achievement (occupational prestige or academic honors) indicated general ability were typical occupants of higher ranked positions, such as CEO role, within the founding team. In addition, specific expertise cues that indicated relevant ability predicted task position allocation. Founding teams created more financially valuable ventures when task position occupants’ diffuse status cues were typical for the position; nonetheless position occupants with high diffuse status cues also appropriated more of the created value. Our results inform both entrepreneurship and status characteristics literature.

Gender, status, and psychiatric labels

We examine a key modified labeling theory proposition—that a psychiatric label increases vulnerability to competence-based criticism and rejection—within task- and collectively oriented dyads comprised of same-sex individuals with equivalent education. Drawing on empirical work that approximates these conditions, we expect the proposition to hold only among men. We also expect education, operationalized with college class standing, to moderate the effects of gender by reducing men’s and increasing women’s criticism and rejection. But, we also expect the effect of education to weaken when men work with a psychiatric patient. As predicted, men reject suggestions from teammates with a psychiatric history more frequently than they reject suggestions from other teammates, while women’s resistance to influence is unaffected by their teammate’s psychiatric status. Men also rate psychiatric patient teammates as less powerful but no lower in status than other teammates, while women’s teammate assessments are unaffected by their teammate’s psychiatric status. Also as predicted, education reduces men’s resistance to influence when their teammate has no psychiatric history. Education also increases men’s ratings of their teammate’s power, as predicted, but has no effect on women’s resistance to influence or teammate ratings. We discuss the implications of these findings for the modified labeling theory of mental illness and status characteristics theory.

Waistlines and Ratings of Executives: Does Executive Status Overcome Obesity Stigma?

Top executives hold positions that convey power, prestige, and competence as predicted by status characteristics theory. Nevertheless, the impressions generated through this status characteristic may be vulnerable when executives also possess characteristics that reflect a devalued social identity, such as obesity. Data from health examinations and multisource evaluation surveys of 757 CEOs, vice presidents, and upper managers suggest that the observable cue of umbilical waist circumference is negatively associated with evaluations of leaders across hierarchical levels, even after controlling for Body Mass Index, physical activity, personality, and demographic characteristics. Thus, hierarchically based status characteristics are insufficient in overcoming the stigma of obesity: even CEOs are subject to the pernicious effects of obesity stigma. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Status, emotional displays, and the relationally-based evaluation of criminals and their behavior

This research uses status characteristics theory to expand our knowledge of the effects of status variables (e.g., race, education) and emotional displays on the antecedents of sentencing – evaluations of offender dangerousness and offense seriousness. We present a theoretical formulation that combines three areas of status characteristics research – reward expectations, individual evaluative settings and valued personal characteristics. The result is a quantitative measure that aggregates relative differences in demographic and emotional characteristics between offenders and their victims. The significance of this expectation advantage measure (e) in predicting evaluations of offender dangerousness and offense severity is tested using data from a vignette study. We find empirical support that expectation advantage significantly predicts these sentencing antecedents but not sentencing outcomes directly. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future status and criminological research.

Predicting performance expectations from affective impressions: Linking affect control theory and status characteristics theory

Affect control theory (ACT) and status characteristics theory (SCT) offer separate and distinct explanations for how individuals interpret and process status- and power-relevant information about interaction partners. Existing research within affect control theory offers evidence that status and power are related to the affective impressions that individuals form of others along the dimensions of evaluation and potency, respectively. Alternately, status characteristics theory suggests that status and power influence interaction through the mediating cognitive construct of performance expectations. Although both theories have amassed an impressive amount of empirical support, research has yet to articulate theoretical and empirical connections between affective impressions and performance expectations. The purpose of our study is to address this gap. Elaborating a link between ACT and SCT in terms of their central concepts can serve as a stepping stone to improving the explanatory capacity of both theories, while providing a potential bridge by which they can be employed jointly.

Social workers and volunteers in Israel

SummaryThis study examines factors associated with Israeli social workers’ investment of effort in, and inclusion of, volunteers in their work. The variables are drawn from three theories: status characteristic theory, psychological contract theory, and organizational culture theory, and from claims regarding training in working with volunteers. The sample consisted of 118 randomly selected direct social workers in 26 municipal social service departments in Israel. The instruments were designed specifically for the study.FindingsSocial workers’ effort investment and inclusion increased when they: (a) viewed volunteers as contributing to social workers and the organization; (b) expected themselves to invest effort in their volunteers; (c) believed their volunteer met their expectations with regard to service users and social workers; (d) trusted their volunteer; (e) perceived their managerial culture, peer culture, and artifacts as encouraging effort investment and inclusion; and (f) received training in working with volunteers.ImplicationsOn a theoretical level, the findings expand our knowledge about factors that may impact on social workers’ investment of effort in volunteers and their inclusion. On a methodological level, instruments with good psychometric properties were developed to examine the associations studied and these can serve in future research. On the practical level, the findings highlight the importance of training in working with volunteers and underscore the value for managers and volunteer coordinators discussing the workers’ psychological contract with them and of fostering an organizational culture that encourages effort investment in, and inclusion of, volunteers.

Physical Attractiveness and Social Status

AbstractIn this article, we outline the evidence regarding the status effects of physical attractiveness, paying particular attention to outcomes in the areas of jobs, crime, performance evaluations, power, health perceptions, and exchange. The framework of status characteristics theory is used to guide our explication. The role of attractiveness in marketing is also discussed. While the literature generally supports the idea that attractiveness is good for people, we also consider evidence that beauty can be detrimental for some individuals in certain situations. Issues of race and gender are also considered as well as future research directions.

Stigma, status, and population health

Stigma and status are the major concepts in two important sociological traditions that describe related processes but that have developed in isolation. Although both approaches have great promise for understanding and improving population health, this promise has not been realized. In this paper, we consider the applicability of status characteristics theory (SCT) to the problem of stigma with the goal of better understanding social systemic aspects of stigma and their health consequences. To this end, we identify common and divergent features of status and stigma processes. In both, labels that are differentially valued produce unequal outcomes in resources via culturally shared expectations associated with the labels; macro-level inequalities are enacted in micro-level interactions, which in turn reinforce macro-level inequalities; and status is a key variable. Status and stigma processes also differ: Higher- and lower-status states (e.g., male and female) are both considered normal, whereas stigmatized characteristics (e.g., mental illness) are not; interactions between status groups are guided by “social ordering schemas” that provide mutually agreed-upon hierarchies and interaction patterns (e.g., men assert themselves while women defer), whereas interactions between “normals” and stigmatized individuals are not so guided and consequently involve uncertainty and strain; and social rejection is key to stigma but not status processes. Our juxtaposition of status and stigma processes reveals close parallels between stigmatization and status processes that contribute to systematic stratification by major social groupings, such as race, gender, and SES. These parallels make salient that stigma is not only an interpersonal or intrapersonal process but also a macro-level process and raise the possibility of considering stigma as a dimension of social stratification. As such, stigma's impact on health should be scrutinized with the same intensity as that of other more status-based bases of stratification such as SES, race and gender, whose health impacts have been firmly established.

Physiological stress response to loss of social influence and threats to masculinity

Social influence is an important component of contemporary conceptualizations of masculinity in the U.S. Men who fail to achieve masculinity by maintaining social influence in the presence of other men may be at risk of stigmatization. As such, men should be especially likely to exhibit a stress response to loss of social influence in the presence of other men. This study assesses whether men who lose social influence exhibit more of a stress response than men who gain social influence, using data collected in a laboratory setting where participants were randomly assigned into four-person groups of varying sex compositions. The groups were videotaped working on two problem-solving tasks. Independent raters assessed change in social influence using a well-validated measure borrowed from experimental work in the Status Characteristics Theory tradition. Cortisol is used as a measure of stress response because it is known to increase in response to loss of social esteem. Results show that young men who lose social influence while working with other young men exhibit cortisol response. In contrast women do not exhibit cortisol response to loss of social influence, nor do men working with women. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that loss of social influence in men may be associated with a physiological stress response because maintaining social influence is very important to men while in the presence of other men. This physiological response to loss of social influence underscores the importance to men of achieving masculinity through gaining and maintaining social influence, and avoiding the stigma associated with the failure to do so.

Cultural determinants of status: Implications for workplace evaluations and behaviors

Status is a valued workplace resource that facilitates career success, yet little is known regarding whether and how cultural orientation affects status attainment. We integrate status characteristics theory with the literature on individualism and collectivism and propose a cultural patterning in the determinants of status. Four studies (N=379) demonstrate that cultural orientation influences the tendency to view high status individuals as competent versus warm (Study 1), uncover cultural differences in both individuals’ tendency to engage in competence and warmth behaviors to attain workplace status (Study 2) and evaluators’ tendency to ascribe status to individuals who demonstrate competence versus warmth (Study 3), and verify that cultural differences in the effects of competence and warmth on status perceptions, and in turn performance evaluations, generalize to real world interdependent groups (Study 4). Our findings advance theory on the cultural contingencies of status attainment and have implications for managing diversity at work.

Relational trustworthiness: How status affects intra-organizational inequality in job autonomy

Recent accounts of trustworthiness have moved away from treating it as a stable, individual-level attribute toward viewing it as a variable situated in a relational context, but have not been formalized or supported empirically. We extend status characteristics theory (SCT) to develop formal propositions about relational trustworthiness. We posit that members of task- and collectively oriented groups (non-consciously) infer three qualities from their relative status that are commonly used to determine an individual’s trustworthiness: ability, benevolence, and integrity. We apply our formalization to clarify ambiguities regarding intra-organizational job autonomy inequality, thereby linking SCT to broader disparities rooted in job autonomy. We analyze data from a vignette experiment and the General Social Survey to test incrementally how well our propositions generalize across different settings and populations. Results generally support our proposed links between status and intra-organizational job autonomy. We discuss implications for SCT in understanding broader patterns of inequalities.

Stakeholder Status And The Effects On Product Usability

Organizations dedicate considerable resources to developing software tools and often utilize usability studies to improve their products. Unfortunately, usability studies can be costly and some companies are using internal employees as participants in an effort to improve their product while controlling costs. However, the effects of using internal employees on usability study requirement identification and implementation is not yet understood. This field research was conducted at a Fortune 100 Company and investigates the relationship between participants’ organizational status and the implementation of usability requirements they identify for an Enterprise Storage Resource Management product. A theoretical model based on status characteristics theory is proposed. Regression analysis suggests that organizational status is a significant indicator of the likelihood of usability study requirement implementation. Organizational status of an individual should be carefully considered when soliciting product feedback.

Foreign‐Born Academic Scientists and Their Interactions with Industry: Implications for University Technology Commercialization and Corporate Innovation Management

This study examines and characterizes the way foreign‐born academic scientists interact with private firms. Using status characteristics theory, this inquiry explores how foreign‐born tenured and tenure‐track academic scientists in the 150 most research‐intensive U.S. universities interact with the private sector by means of six discrete interaction modes. The study further investigates whether foreign‐born academic scientists' interactions with private firms are more of a formal or informal nature vis‐à‐vis those of native‐born scientists'. The empirical analysis indicates that foreign‐born academic scientists have lower odds of having been approached by private firms to ask about their research activities, lower odds of having served as a paid consultant to firms, and lower odds of having been engaged in the joint transfer and commercialization of technologies with private firms relative to their U.S.‐born counterparts. In contrast, foreign‐born academic scientists have significantly higher odds of having coauthored scientific articles with private firms than their U.S.‐born counterparts. The paper discusses the implications for university technology commercialization and innovation management in firms.

The Implications of Social Neuroscience for Expectation States Theories

AbstractWe review recent findings from the social neuroscience literature that links status differentiation between individuals to neurological processes, and draw out the implications of those findings for expectation states theories, including its dominant theory of status‐organizing processes – Status Characteristics Theory. Our underlying assumption and implicit argument is that social neuroscience research is useful for both bolstering and corroborating some core sociological claims. In addition, it sheds light on some of the ongoing theoretical debates within sociology. We highlight and discuss the following four social neuroscience findings: 1) Neural activity varies depending on whether an individual is interacting with someone of a lower, equal, or higher status; 2) There is an interplay between status and affect such that status processes may promote the control of emotional reactions; 3) Both men and women are neurologically attuned to high status opposite sex conspecifics; and, 4) Status differences are processed in the same region of the brain as numerical or size differences, and this region is responsible for the coding of information along continuous dimensions. The implications of these points are discussed with respect to sociological theories.

To Be or Not to Be: How do New Venture Teams Assign Task Role Positions?

this study we ask how founding team members allocate task- roles amongst themselves when they come together to launch a new venture. Answering this question is important because founding teams are formed largely based on homophily rather than complementary skills, thus making it is unclear exactly which team members will occupy which particular formal task- role positions; and initial functional structures in new ventures imprint subsequent performance. The predictions drawn from our conceptual framework drawn which was based on status characteristic theory were tested using data from a quasi- experimental design involving an experiential simulation of a new venture, with random assignment of MBA/EMBA participants to founding teams with a mix of pre-specified and idiosyncratic task-roles. Overall our findings suggest that founding teams use both specific cues of task expertise as well as more diffuse cues of general ability to allocate team members to task positions; with diffuse status cues predicting higher ranked positions. Interestingly we also find evidence that when roles are staffed by typical occupants, their venture was likely to create more value; although such typical role occupants also appropriate more of that created value.