Alison J. Bianchi

Examining Medical Interview Asymmetry Using the Expectation States Approach

In this study we examine medical interview asymmetry using the expectation states approach. Physicians lead clinical interviews because of a feature inherent in those interviews, namely the status difference between doctor and patient. This power differential varies: it is greatest when the biomedical aspects of the interview are emphasized. These observations are consistent with status characteristics theory (SCT), which is based on the expectation states approach to understanding the emergence of power-prestige orders in groups facing shared tasks. From an SCT perspective, when the required scope conditions are met the status characteristics of doctor and patient trigger expectation states that result in inequalities relevant to the biomedical tasks of the interview. We examine interactions between medical students and standardized patients from the perspective of SCT. We observe the emergence of vocal spectrum inequalities when the interview task is biomedical. Other nonverbal behavioral outcomes emerge as well, which are consistent with the asymmetry literature.

The Organizational Selection of Status Characteristics: Status Evaluations in an Open Source Community

Organizations mediate societal cultural belief systems and group-level encounters by filtering, and sometimes transforming, social information regarding which status characteristics are salient during group encounters embedded within organizations. This study uses status characteristics theory to add to our understanding of social status within organizations by explaining why organizations matter in determining which status characteristics will be activated within task groups. By analyzing status rankings within an organization of open source software programmers, we find that the organization develops its own unique shared belief system, which inculcates actors with beliefs about status characteristics that are potentially unique within the boundaries of the organization. Specifically, in this study we find that through a process of status generalization, organizational members create new status markers (location) that are potentially only meaningful for the given social situation, and they selectively nullify others (education and age). To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first work in the expectation states tradition to demonstrate an outcome for an organization-level selection process for status characteristics. This paper adds to status characteristics theory by empirically analyzing how organizational contexts create boundaries around groups in which new and extant status characteristics are activated and in which predefined characteristics inherited from more global, society-level contexts are deactivated.

Activating Performance Expectations and Status Differences through Gift Exchange: Experimental Results.

Early theoretical work on social exchange focused on how exchange relations generate social structural outcomes. Specifically, gift giving was said to evoke status structures. No experimental evidence exists to verify or refute the notion that gift giving during exchange processes generates status hierarchies. We present experimental results demonstrating the emergence of status inequalities directly from social exchanges in dyads. Our findings support the assertion that the receiving of a gift causes the recipient to feel deferential toward the exchange partner. More formally, we demonstrate how gift giving, linked to a behavioral interchange pattern, has the capacity to induce differential performance expectations. These results are a first step toward testing the theory that status is an emergent property of exchange.

Accentuate The Positive: Positive Sentiments And Status In Task Groups

We explore the capacity of positive sentiments, those enduring affective states one achieves when one likes another, to impact status structures. Do positive sentiments combine with existing aspects of interaction to create status hierarchies and potentially change the social order, or do they moderate the effects of extant structure by dampening the magnitude of status differences? Using the theoretical framework of Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) and the Camilleri-Berger model of decision-making, we designed an experiment to adjudicate between these two potentialities. Participation in the study consisted of 168 students. Results found support for the notion that positive sentiments moderate the effects of structural factors on indicators of social status; interestingly, this moderation effect varies by gender. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings, and new directions for research concerning sentiment and status processes.

Introduction of Murray Webster, Jr. Recipient of the 2015 Cooley Mead Award

Bernard de Chartres, the twelfth-century Neoplatonist scholar, once described himself and his contemporaries as being able to see the world much more clearly because they benefitted from the wisdom of those who had gone before them. John of Salisbury once quoted Bernard: ‘‘And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.’’ Young expectation states theorists share this insight: we, too, stand on the shoulders of the giants and, with lucidity, see what others could not see and reach even higher. How fortunate I have been to be trained, nurtured, and encouraged by some of the giants of my field—and, of course, included in this group of giants is this year’s Cooley Mead Award winner, Dr. Murray Webster, Jr. Murray was very much one of the founding scholars of the expectation states research tradition during the mid1960s, when he was a talented PhD candidate at Stanford University. The fortuitous ‘‘linked lives’’ (Elder 1994) of the early expectation states theorists cannot be understated—Joseph Berger; Elizabeth and Bernard Cohen; Morris Zelditch, Jr.; Hamit Fisxek; Martha Foschi; and Murray Webster—all came together not only to produce some of the greatest works about social structure but also to create one of the most successful traditions in sociology. However, continuing with a life-course framing, one might also note that the ‘‘historical times’’ shaped these persons and the reasons why they become sociological social psychologists. Murray is no exception: his life journey to Stanford University shows that it is no accident that he decided to study how larger social forces initiate and maintain social inequalities during group interactions. Murray was born on December 10, 1941, within the small American and European expatriate community in the Philippines—three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By May 6, 1942, the Philippines were the occupied territory of the empire of Japan. Murray and his family were now official enemies of the state and were forced to live in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. So, if Murray tells you that he is the only Cooley Mead Award winner to ever have been in prison, know that this is a play on words: he was technically a prisoner of war during the first three years of his life. The story of the Santo Tomas camp is told eloquently by Ken Burns in his video history of World War II titled The War. As