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HOW DO STATUS BELIEFS DEVELOP? THE ROLE OF RESOURCES AND INTERACTIONAL EXPERIENCE*
Status construction theory argues that interaction between people with unequal structural advantages is crucial in the development and spread of status value beliefs about people's distinguishing attributes. A central claim is that goal-oriented encounters between those who differ in material resources as well as in an easily observed nominal attribute create status beliefs about that attribute which favor the "richer" actors ' attribute category. We conduct an experimental test using dyadic, same-sex encounters between participants who differ in pay level and a "mere difference" attribute; the claim is supported for males and females. Status beliefs are distinguished from own-group favoritism by their acceptance by those they disadvantage. A second experiment and other evidence suggest that the interactional hierarchy associated with pay and the distinguishing attribute in such doubly dissimilar encounters pressures low-pay subjects to accept beliefs that disadvantage them. This acceptance is key to the power of interaction to transform structural advantages into status beliefs.
How do cultural beliefs develop that attach status value to nominal distinctions among people? Status beliefs associated with characteristics such as gender or ethnicity have pervasive and sometimes painful effects on influence, respect, and power among actors (Carli 1991; Feagin 1991; Webster and Foschi 1988). The consequences of such interactional inequalities are not trivial. Interaction mediates many of the processes by which people are given access to rewards, evaluated, and directed toward or away from positions of power and wealth. As this suggests, status beliefs are an important part of the larger processes by which inequality in society is accomplished. But what social processes could foster such beliefs and make them roughly consensual in a population?
Status construction theory argues that structurally constrained interaction plays a crucial role in the construction and spread of status value beliefs (Ridgeway 1991). It does not argue that this is the only source of status beliefs, but that it is an important and persistent source. We present experimental tests of the theory's central claims about the power that certain types of interaction have in the creation of status beliefs about a distinguishing attribute of individuals.
Sociologists since Weber (1968) have observed that a social group's acquisition of superior material resources...