Joseph Berger

Status Characteristics and Social Interaction

This paper discusses the small groups literature on status organizing processes in decisionmaking groups whose members differ in external status. This literature demonstrates that status characteristics, such as age, sex, and race determine the distribution of participation, influence, and prestige among members of such groups. This effect is independent of any prior cultural belief in the relevance of the status characteristic to the task. To explain this result, we assume that status determines evaluations of, and performance-expectations for group members and hence the distribution of participation, influence, and prestige. We stipulate conditions sufficient to produce this effect. Further, to explain the fact that the effect is independent of prior cultural belief, we assume that a status characteristic becomes relevant in all situations except when it is culturally known to be irrelevant. Direct experiment supports each assumption in this explanation independently of the others. Subsequent work devoted to refining and extending the theory finds among other things that, given two equally relevant status characteristics, individuals combine all inconsistent status information rather than reduce its inconsistency. If this result survives further experiment it extends the theory on a straightforward basis to multi-characteristic status situations.

Status characteristics and social interaction : an expectation-states approach

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Expectations, Legitimation, and Dominance Behavior in Task Groups

This paper proposes an expectation states theory of the legitimation of power and prestige orders in task groups. Valued status positions are a reward for those whose distribution members develop expectations. The more differentiated these expectations, the more likely that the power and prestige order will be treated as legitimate. Applying our formulation to various types of group structures we derive a set of theoretical assertions that relate the initial status composition of a group to the likelihood that its power and prestige order becomes legitimatized. These predict, among other things, that legitimation of structure is more likely to develop in heterogeneous status consistent groups than in groups that are initially homogeneous, and it is more likely to develop in the latter groups than in heterogeneous status inconsistent groups. If verified, these predictions will provide an explanation for the difficulty that those who operate from a disadvantaged external status position, such as women and minorities in mixed sex or bi-racial groups, often face in trying to wield directive power over their members even when they are task leaders.

The legitimation and delegitimation of power and prestige orders

Building on the work of Cecilia L. Ridgeway and J. Berger, the authors construct a set of assumptions that describe how the legitimation and delegitimation of informal power and prestige orders can be created in task oriented situations. Their conception is a multilevel one. Cultural beliefs begin the process by shaping the likelihood that one actor treats another with honorific deference. But to result in legitimacy, this process must be carried through by the contingent reactions of others who can provide consensual validation. In this way, actors can collectively construct a local reality that makes the power and prestige order normatively prescriptive. Using the graph-theoretical formulations of status characteristic theory and of the theory of reward expectations, and in conjunction with legitimation and delegitimation assumptions, they derive a set of general propositions. These propositions describe how different status and evaluation conditions affect the likelihood that a power and prestige order will be legitimated or delegitimated. Their formulation provides a theoretical account for observations on the stability of legitimated orders in task settings, for research on the impact of evaluations on delegitimation, and for findings on the effect of status consistency on legitimation

Gender and Interpersonal Task Behaviors: Status Expectation Accounts

In this paper we argue for the utility of status characteristics theory (Berger et al. 1977) in accounting for research concerned with gender differences in interpersonal task situations. We state and defend a basic status argument that differences in stereotypical gender task behaviors are a direct function of status differences or of attempts to cope with status differences. We show support for this argument in several areas of research: the influence, participation and performer evaluations of group members; their relative performance-reactor profiles; the relation of these behavioral profiles to the assignment of personality traits; the correlation of status position with the gender typing of tasks (i.e., male-identified, female-identified, or neutral); the relationship between gender status and salient information about other statuses; the role of expectations for rewards; and the emergence of mechanisms for coping with the implication of a low gender status position. We conclude that status characteristics theory can provide a set of interrelated explanations of the relationship of gender to interpersonal task behaviors.

Do Sociological Theories Grow

Although many observers assume that theoretical progress in sociology has been minimal, there in fact has been considerable growth. Most of the evidence, however, is hidden because sociologists generally (1) fail to differentiate kinds of theoretical activity, (2) focus almost exclusively on growth by means of increasing empirical support, and (3) ignore the variety of theoretical contexts within which growth can occur. Distinguishing among orienting strategies (i.e., metatheoretical frameworks), unit theories (individual theoretical arguments), and theoretical research programs (sets of interrelated theories) helps overcome these obstacles. A focus on programs reveals five types of relations among theories. Three types represent basic forms of theoretical growth; the other two are more specialized forms which usually emerge only in the context of programs based on one of the three basic types. These ideas are first explicated and then applied to several cases of ongoing theoretical activity in sociology. Such cases provide models or exemplars (in the Kuhnian sense) of theoretical growth. Detailed analysis of these exemplars should promote significant growth in other branches of sociology.

Participation in Heterogeneous and Homogeneous Groups: A Theoretical Integration

This article presents a theoretical formulation that integrates, within the framework of expectation states theory, theories of the emergence of power-and-prestige orders in status-heterogeneous and homogeneous task-oriented groups. A model based on this theoretical formulation is construted and used for predicting participation rates in open interaction settings. The article explores the fit of the moel to data from both status-heterogeneous and status-homogeneous groups.

Status inconsistency in task situations: A test of four status processing principles.

People working together on a task attend to one anothers ascribed and achieved status attributes and other characteristics that differentiate them. On the basis of these characteristics, people form performance expectations for themselves and each other regarding the task at hand. When the evaluated states of these characteristics are consistent, the broad outlines of this process are straightforward; when these states are inconsistent, the principle by which people resolve the status inconsistency is at issue. We report a laboratory experiment designed to distinguish among four alternative principles. Our results are clearly inconsistent with three of the principles, but are consistent with the organized subsets combining principle originally set forth by Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Zelditch (1977). The conclusiveness of these results suggests reframing some long-standing questions about social information processing. A generalized organized subsets principle extends the scope of status characteristics theory to new kinds of social settings and additional kinds of personal attributes.

Construction of Status and Referential Structures

Beliefs about diverse status characteristics have a common core content of performance capacities and qualities made up of two features: hierarchy (superior/inferior capacities) and role-differentiation (instrumental/expressive qualities). Whatever the status characteristic, its more-valued state tends to be defined as superior and instrumental, and the less-valued state tends to be defined as inferior but expressive. We account for this in terms of the typification of differences in behavioral inequalities and profiles that emerge in task oriented social interaction. Status construction theory argues that new configurations of the states of a nonvalued discriminating characteristic, status values, and status typifications of actors possessing these states arise from a similar process. The theory we present here makes new predictions on the construction and institutionalization of status characteristics and generalized beliefs about the relation of status characteristics to social rewards, called referential structures. This theory, we argue, integrates micro and macro elements in a way that may be applicable to explaining the social construction of cultural objects more generally.

Theoretical Consequences of the Status Characteristics Formulation

In this paper we derive five major theorems from the latest version of the status characteristics theory developed by Berger, Fisek, and Norman. The first set of three theorems is concerned with the effect of status characteristics on the degree of equality and inequality that obtains among the members of a task group. Included here is a result that establishes a direct relation between status inconsistency and power and prestige equality. The second set is concerned with the relations between different types of status and task structures. The first of these theorems deals with the relations between task assignments and status expectancies, while the second describes relations between status expectancies and status-task associations. While variants of these theorems have been formulated previously as theoretical assumptions, now for the fist time they are shown to be derivable from more basic status organizing principles.