Search results

This study engages an understudied presupposition that values are relatively impervious to situational pressures. We do this within a key sociological context, incorporating social status as a meso-level structure, by measuring values before and after a competition situation with an experimentally controlled outcome to determine the situational robustness of values.

We incorporate measures of values into a standard competition experiment, looking at how winning or losing and the status of the perceived competition influence peoples’ values.

Drawing on the well-established expectation states literature, we demonstrate that perceptions of gaining or losing a competition influence core values. Overall, positive, related situational feedback seemed to heighten all of the values-measures, while receiving (manipulated) negative, specific feedback dampened the rating of all values.

This is an initial exploration of the received wisdom; future work should involve different manipulations, wider arrays of values-measurement, and more diverse samples.

We hope that our interpretations of these results suggest how perceived status influences core internal experiences. The processes described have implications for the experiences of groups that win or lose political competitions, and other social interactions whereby people feel more or less affirmed in terms of their core beliefs.

This suggests that individuals and groups who perceive themselves as winning competitions, elections, or challenges will feel affirmed in their core beliefs, and be more motivated to pursue those valued ends. People who perceive themselves as being situationally unsuccessful will feel a general dampening of these core beliefs.

This chapter is the first to link the internal study of values with the general expectation states tradition. It is exploratory, and results suggest this is a fertile area for future inquiry.

The Spread of Status Value theory describes how new diffuse status characteristics can arise out of the association of initially non-valued characteristics to existing status characteristics that are already well-established in a society. Our objective is to extend this theory so that it describes how still other status elements, which have become of interest to researchers such as “status objects” (Thye, 2000) and “valued roles” (Fişek, Berger, & Norman, 1995), can also be socially created.

Our approach involves reviewing research that is relevant to the Spread of Status Value theory, and in introducing concepts and assumptions that are applicable to status objects and valued roles.

Our major results are an elaborated theory that describes the construction of status objects and valued roles, a graphic representation of one set of conditions in which this creation process is predicted to occur, and a design for a further empirical test of the Spread of Status Value theory. This extension has social implications. It opens up the possibility of creating social interventions that involve status objects and valued roles to ameliorate dysfunctional social situations.

Our elaborated theory enables us to understand for the first time how different types of status valued elements can, under appropriate conditions, be socially created or socially modified as a result of the operation of what are fundamentally similar processes.

All organizations have social standing, but only some seek to improve their status, despite evidence that benefits may come with status. However, research is lacking on understanding how organizations value status and whether status is valued equally across all organizations. This study aims to understand how different organizations value status and quality, as well as illustrate the impact of organizational status on these valuations.

Major League Baseball (MLB) free-agent market data from 2013–2017 are used to test hypotheses. Organizations and players each have a certain amount of status, and free-agent contract information is publicly available. A mixed-effect regression model was employed to account for the nested nature of the data. While MLB teams are not typical organizations, its results are relevant for many organizations operating in a socially stratified environment.

Overall, the findings suggest that status is expensive for organizations and is more expensive for high-status organizations. Specifically, high-status organizations need to increase their awareness of the costs associated with status to ensure that the benefits of status are equivalent or greater. By contrast, quality was valued practically equivalently by both low- and high-status organizations.

The results provide clarity regarding the valuations of quality and status. The authors find that low-status organizations can avoid status costs. The results may allow organizations the opportunity of reflection on their perceived value of status, allowing for a separation of the value of quality from status.

This chapter proposes and provides evidence for a conceptual framework for understanding the restoration of justice. Specifically, there is a fundamental distinction between two primary symbolic concerns that follow from transgressions: concern over the status/power relations between the involved parties, and over the violation of the values those parties expect to share. Recognizing these concerns is paramount to understanding the psychological needs of injustice victims, how they conceptualize the restoration of justice, and the processes by which various interventions instill feelings of justice. This framework also elucidates when alternative avenues towards justice might be more effective than traditional retributive responses.

According to status construction theory, a social attribute becomes imbued with status value through its association with valued resources. Yet, explanations for such associations have received scant attention. I propose that social identity processes may lead agents controlling resources to over-allocate to in-group members. This generates a doubly dissimilar situation in which actors are differentiated both with respect to a nominal characteristic and resources, leading the characteristic to become imbued with status value. I find support for this elaboration in a sample of newly founded organizations. I discuss the implications of this elaboration for further developments in status construction theory.

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.

We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly describe theories and branches in the program.

We also focus on a few theories that illustrate distinct patterns of theory growth, using them to show the variety of ways in which the research program has grown.

The program structure developed from a single set of theories on development and maintenance of group inequality in the 1960s to six interrelated branches by 1988. Between 1988 and today, the overall structure has grown to total 19 different branches. We briefly describe each branch, identifying over 200 resources for the further study of these branches.

Although the various branches share key concepts and processes, they have been developed by different researchers, in a variety of settings from laboratories to schools to business organizations. Second, we outline some important issues for further research in some of the branches. Third, we emphasize the value of developing new research methods for testing and applying the theories.

These theories have been used to explain phenomena of gender, racial, and ethnic inequality among others, and for understanding some cases of personality attributions, deviance and control processes, and application of double standards in hiring.

Status and expectation state processes often operate to produce invidious social inequalities. Understanding these processes can enable social scientists to devise more effective interventions to reduce these inequalities.

Status and expectation state processes occupy a significant segment of research into group processes. This chapter provides an authoritative overview of ideas in the program, what is known, and what remains to be discovered.

This study aims to examine factors affecting Chinese adolescents’ purchase intention for local brands; this study focuses on the effects of perceived social status value and materialistic values.

A theoretical model relating perceived social status value of brands to purchase intention, including materialistic values as a moderator, was developed and tested, using a sample of 587 Chinese adolescent respondents. Another experimental study examined the variability of the moderation of materialistic values across different levels of peer pressure in a product usage occasion.

Perceived social status value associated with local and foreign brands significantly influences purchase intention for local brands. Moreover, influence of perceived social status value of local versus foreign brands on local brand purchase intention is greater for materialistic adolescents. Additionally, the moderation of materialistic values is found in a product usage occasion with high peer pressure, but not in an occasion with low peer pressure.

The findings show that perceived social status value associated with brands shapes purchase intention for local brands. The moderating effect of materialistic values is complex and suggests further research. The study’s scope is limited to Chinese adolescents.

The findings provide understanding of the drivers of purchase intention, and thus serve as a guideline for Chinese firms and foreign marketers seeking to enter the growing Chinese market, as well as consumer educators in China.

This study contributes to the limited empirical research into the factors shaping country-of-origin effects. Moreover, the findings suggest the need to consider the moderating role of materialistic values on purchase intention for local brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine customer attitudes toward purchasing counterfeit luxury products (ATPCLP) in two cities in two different countries (Saudi Arabia and Malaysia) by testing the relationships between the various reasons for purchasing those products: social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness.

Questionnaires were distributed conveniently to urban customers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Altogether 658 useable questionnaires were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, general linear model of univariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling.

Quality, price, popularity and status signaling represent the main motivating factors for their brand choices of counterfeit luxury products among the two country groups of customers. As expected, customers' social status insecurity influences their ATPCLP, but not their status consumption. However, status consumption does positively moderates the relationship of their social status insecurity and their ATPCLP. Furthermore, customers' value consciousness influences their ATPCLP and moderates the relationship between status consumption and ATPCLP. The impact of status consumption on ATPCLP depends on the importance one places on the value of the products. However, the authors found no differences in social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness, on their ATPCLP among the customers. Some implications and limitations of the results are discussed.

The use of convenience sampling and mainly college students (in Saudi Arabia) as respondents represent the main limitations of this study.

The practical implication of this study is to discourage the purchasing of counterfeit luxury products in their respective country Malaysian marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of top quality while Saudi marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of well-known brands that are sourced from well-known countries of origin. Besides, Malaysian marketers need to offer genuine products that are not overly priced or ones that indicate value-for-money while Saudi marketers need to convey the message that their genuine products could help enhance or uplift their customers' social status. In this study, the authors did not find any support for differences in ATPCLP between the two rather different Muslim-majority countries. This could be due to the fact that the majority of the respondents were females in their mid-20s and that both countries have a growing number of young customer base, which makes them particularly attractive target customers for branded/luxury products and, at the same time, easy preys to luxury products counterfeiters. This implies that there are still more opportunities for academics to study the topic or related topics in the future.

As far as the authors know, no one has undertaken a comparative study involving two very different Islamic majority countries (more conservative mono-cultural and mono-ethnicity Saudi Arabia versus less conservative multicultural and multi-ethnicity Malaysia) before.

This chapter has two central goals: (1) to present a foundational argument for status dissonance theory and (2) to apply its central propositions to understanding why some White Americans perceive anti-White bias. Building upon status construction theory, status dissonance theory generally posits that one’s overall status value determined by their combined status characteristics influences the degree they internalize normative referential structures. The salience of normative referential structures frames one’s justice perceptions, which creates status dissonance that manifests as a positional lens through which individuals perceive and interact with the social world. In an application of this framework, it is hypothesized that among Whites, one’s gender and class will impact one’s perceptions of resource reallocation (i.e., racial equality), which in turn impacts the likelihood one perceives anti-White bias generally and personally.

Using the Pew Research Center’s Racial Attitudes in America III Survey, this study employs logistic and ordered probit regressions on a nationally representative sample of White Americans to assess the above propositions.

Among Whites, males, those whom self-identified as lower class, and the least educated have the highest odds of perceiving resource re-allocation, and in turn all of these factors increased the odds of perceiving anti-White bias generally in society as well as perceiving personal encounters of “reverse” discrimination.

The findings and theoretical propositions provide a foundation for additional investigations into understanding the causes and consequences of within and between group variation in perceptions and responses to social inequality as well as mechanisms to counter status hierarchies.