Why do nominal characteristics acquire status value? A minimal explanation for status construction.
Abstract
Why do beliefs that attach different amounts of status to different categories of
people become consensually held by the members of a society? We show that two microlevel
mechanisms, in combination, imply a system-level tendency toward consensual status
beliefs about a nominal characteristic. (1) Status belief diffusion: a person who
has no status belief about a characteristic can acquire a status belief about that
characteristic from interacting with one or more people who have that status belief.
(2) Status belief loss: a person who has a status belief about a characteristic can
lose that belief from interacting with one or more people who have the opposite status
belief. These mechanisms imply that opposite status beliefs will tend to be lost at
equal rates and will tend to be acquired at rates proportional to their prevalence.
Therefore, if a status belief ever becomes more prevalent than its opposite, it will
increase in prevalence until every person holds it.
Type
Journal articleSubject
CultureHierarchy, Social
Humans
Models, Theoretical
Social Identification
Social Perception
Social Values
Socioeconomic Factors
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4360Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Lynn Smith-Lovin
Robert L. Wilson Professor Distinguished of Sociology
I study emotion, identity, and action. I’m interested in the basic question of how
identities affect social interaction. I use experimental, observational, survey and
simulation methods to describe how identities, actions and emotions are interrelated.
The experiments I do usually involve creating social situations where unusual things
happen to people, then seeing how they respond behaviorally or emotionally. I observe
small task group interactions to see how identities influence conversat

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info