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To determine the age at which influence peaks for men and women at work, then use empirical data to develop procedures predicting complex combining effects of diffuse status characteristics.

A survey experiment with a nationally representative sample is used to measure the age at which the status value of men and women at work reaches a maximum. Research results are then incorporated into equations adapted from current status characteristics theory (SCT) procedures to model the combined effects of age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, income, occupation, and beauty.

Analyses reveal that the status value of men and women reaches a maximum in middle age, and that women reach a maximum status value at work at an earlier age than men.

This approach maintains core assumptions of SCT and uses ongoing research results to calibrate a model predicting complex combining effects of diffuse status characteristics. Limitations include the need to develop additional empirical constants to make predictions in new research settings.

Predictions from the model can be used in hiring situations to adjust for interviewers’ nonconscious expectations related to status characteristics of job applicants.

The disadvantage for women at work that increases through mid-career helps to explain the continuing underrepresentation of women in senior leadership positions. Awareness of the impact of socially valued characteristics like age and gender can help individuals respond more effectively to challenging social situations.

Extend the current SCT model to make predictions in contexts where people are being evaluated such as elections, hiring, and promotions.

Two studies investigate gender and status effects on self-handicapping: selecting actions that can impair future performances, perhaps to protect self-image. Gender socialization and status processes suggest two potential explanations for the consistent finding that men self-handicap more than women. If status differences contribute to the tendency to self-handicap, then holding gender constant, those with high status on other characteristics would self-handicap more than those with low status. In Study 1, men assigned to high-status positions selected less study time (and thus self-handicapped more) than did men assigned to low-status positions. Women assigned high status, however, self-handicapped no more than did women assigned low status. Because study time as a measure of self-handicapping may be confounded with confidence or motivation, a second study assigned status and measured self-handicapping by the selection of performance-enhancing or -detracting music. Study 2 also found that high status increased self-handicapping among men but not among women. Both gender socialization and status processes may play roles in self-handicapping.

The processes of legitimation and institutionalization are difficult to study because they are hard to measure. Instead, theories of legitimacy use its elements to explain various effects. We propose that these effects are due to the trust-building aspects of legitimation and institutionalization. If research can establish the trust-building nature of legitimation, then theoretical research programs in the area may progress more rapidly. Research on leadership in groups can be used to assess fundamental questions of legitimacy and trust because group leadership represents an interface between research on organizations and basic group processes. We describe an experimental setting to investigate legitimation, institutionalization, and trust.

This chapter develops and tests a theory on relationships between perceptions of ability and adherence to rules, guidelines, and tradition. Drawing from theory and research on status processes in groups, the theory proposes that adherence to rules can provide an alternative to task ability in demonstrating competence at a group task and that persons who perceive themselves to be low in ability will become especially likely to strictly adhere to rules.

In an experimental study, participants received feedback that they had high or low ability at a group task that involved making judgments about bonuses in a fictitious organization.

Supporting the theory, participants who perceived themselves to be low in ability gave less money to employees technically ineligible for raises, even when the reason for the ineligibility was arguably trivial.

The proposed theory and supportive results have a number of theoretical implications for how status processes shape individual behavior in groups. For example, the theory might help explain collective enforcement against free riding, with people low in ability being motivated to enforce norms against free riding to compensate for their perceived lack of ability to contribute.

It is easy to conjure examples in which persons who are seen as exceptionally competent also seem to be given wide leniency in adhering to rules. The theory and experimental test presented here can help in understanding the extent to which the following of rules may be seen as the domain of the incompetent.

Fundamental theories of power and status have developed sufficiently to apply in educational and organizational contexts. The path from basic theory to program development is neither simple nor direct. We trace the application of theoretical principles taken from network exchange theories of power as well as status characteristics and expectation states theories through the interdisciplinary field of leadership studies to applications that interrelate basic research, applied research, undergraduate educational programs, and organizational development. Two proposals result (1) a leadership training program that will produce university graduates with effective leadership skills, while also bringing diverse high school students to participate in a university program and (2) basic status characteristics research to explain the glass ceiling phenomenon.

To investigate two explanations for how variations in social network structure might produce differences in cognitive and perceptual orientation. One explanation is that the extent to which structures lead people to feel strong social bonds encourages holism. The other is that the extent to which a network leads individuals to be concerned about distal network relations leads to holistic thinking.

An experimental study in which participants interacted in three-person networks of negotiated (with or without a one-exchange rule), generalized, or productive exchange before being administered the framed-line test, a common measure of cognitive and perceptual orientation.

Participants in network structures more likely to lead participants to be concerned about what was happening in relationships in the network of which they were not part performed relatively more holistically on the framed-line test. However, these effects did not extend to both modules of the test, and a check on the ordering of networks as reflecting concern with distal network relationships failed.

The experimental design was structured such that only one of the presented explanations could possibly be supported, whereas they both could be correct. Nevertheless, results do indicate that cognitive orientation did respond to variations in network structure.

Explanations for cultural differences typically implicate social structure, although the explanations often cannot be directly tested. Results show that social structure can produce effects that mirror differences thought to reflect profound cultural variations.