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In this chapter, we outline the evidence regarding the status effects of physical attractiveness in the workplace. We frame the effects of attractiveness as power and status dynamics shaped by the context of the workplace. Attractiveness serves as a social status that mostly provides benefits in the workplace, although the results are not uniformly positive. We first explain attractiveness as a status characteristic and how it operates in general social interactions. We then examine these effects across three typical yet significant career development milestones in a worker's life: (1) the selection and hiring process of employment, (2) day-to-day interactions with colleagues and co-workers and (3) in leadership roles and positions.

To review three theoretical research programs accounting for the spread of status beliefs and their effects on inequality, and to identify similarities and differences in scope and theoretical principles in the three. We describe suggestions for further research that we hope readers may wish to pursue.

We summarize recent theory and research, identify areas of overlap and dissimilarity, and show how certain research topics could extend understanding of the processes and make connections among the three programs.

The three programs were built on ideas first codified more than five decades ago. Those ideas have been the foundation for empirical research and findings from that have been used to develop the theories, improving the range of situations addressed and the precision of predictions. While the programs here address similar issues, each presumes different initial conditions and behavioral outcomes. With some overlap, the programs also address different situations and propose different mechanisms for the spread of status.

Our review of the programs is necessarily incomplete, because work continues on the programs. The analyses and suggestions about important topics to pursue are ours, and others may identify other topics for theoretical and empirical development.

We hope that our interpretations of these programs make them more accessible to interested scholars who will extend the theoretical and empirical bases of the work. The processes described have implications for the status of immigrant groups, the social position of women, and the value attached to collector’s objects. We hope to foster applications of these theories to understand and alleviate some cases of unmerited inequality.

The processes involved affect mixed-gender interaction in businesses, hiring biases, anti-immigrant exclusion sentiments, influence and bargaining power of individuals, desirability of certain furniture and clothing styles, ability inferences, and other phenomena. We mention instances where these theories can help to understand processes and to develop interventions to produce desirable outcomes.

No readily accessible summary of these programs and no theoretical comparison of them has yet been developed. Formal theories such as these sometimes seem obscure and we hope to show how they apply to important actual situations. Of course, the interpretations and suggestions in this chapter are our own and the scholars whose work we discuss might interpret the work differently.

Second-order expectations refer to an actor's beliefs about what a co-actor believes with respect to their relative abilities on a shared task. The authors describe and compare three alternative programs of research that explain the effects of second-order expectations on behavioral inequalities in task groups. The authors’ overall goal is to work toward improving the precision and generality of theories of second-order expectations.

The authors conduct a thorough review of theory and research on each of the three alternative models of second-order expectations. In so doing, they highlight areas of convergence and divergence in terms of theory, method, and empirical support. They also suggest research designs that can help clarify the effects of second-order expectations in task groups and adjudicate among the models.

New empirical studies are needed that attempt to replicate findings across the three approaches to modeling second-order expectations. In addition, the three approaches need to be directly compared at the same time using a shared experimental design and the same participant population.

This is the first effort to systematically and critically compare and contrast three competing models of second-order expectations in structural social psychology. The authors offer a number of original, specific recommendations for future research.

This project tests two mechanisms for controlling and reversing unwanted status effects of the characteristic gender. Previous interventions have been developed regarding a number of status characteristics and have been tested and implemented to varying degrees. Theoretically based interventions, such as those I am testing here, hold great promise in alleviating status-based disadvantages faced unequally by different groups within society.

An experiment is described using the standard experimental setting for expectation states and status characteristics theory testing.

Results indicate that the theory’s predictions about reversing gender’s status effects are correct. The theory explains 87% of the variation in the observed data.

This work extends prior analytic work in developing and assessing theoretically guided interventions to overcome status disadvantages.

The purpose is to theorize and empirically estimate the impact of the gendered nature of the offender-victim dyad and crime type on time to arrest.

Predictions regarding the impact of gendered offender-victim dyads and crime type on time to arrest are constructed by extending role congruity theory and tested using data from the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System across five crime types using dyadic-based event history methods.

The authors find strong empirical support that role expectations derived from the gender composition of offender-victim dyads and the masculinity of the crime type affect time to clearance.

This research is the first to theorize and empirically test the relative impact of role congruency and the relational nature of the offender-victim dyad in the adjudication process. Furthermore, the research shows that the construction of “normal crime” can be enhanced by applying a gendered and relational approach, based on social psychological theory, which is predictive of crime clearance.

Future research is required to validate the results for crimes where law enforcement has less discretion and are feminine typed.

The results imply that by accounting for the expectations generated by gender roles when applied to offender-victim dyads a casual mechanism is established that better organizes previously inconsistent results with respect to the impact of gender on time to clearance. Thus, the authors' utilization of role congruity theory of gender provides a more consistent explanation for inequalities in time to clearance that may be fruitful for evaluating other steps in the adjudication process.