Morris Zelditch

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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Processes of Legitimation: Recent Developments and New Directions*

The Cooley-Mead Award is a great honor, and I am greatly honored to receive it. But I am also a little embarrassed because so much of the work it honors has been collaborative. The award in my case is for a collective, not an individual, accomplishment. I have spent half my life studying status and rewards, most of it in collaboration with Joseph Berger, Bernard P Cohen, Elizabeth Cohen, and the many others-most of whom are probably here today-who have been involved in the growth of the expectation states program. I have spent another quarter of my life studying power and authority, most of it in collaboration with Sanford M. Dornbusch, William Evan, W. Richard Scott, George Thomas, Henry Walker, and the many others-also probably here-who have been involved in the growth of the legitimacy program. The expectation states program was the subject of Bergers Cooley-Mead address in 1991 (Berger 1992). (Also see Wagner and Berger 2000). What I want to talk about today is recent developments and new directions in the study of legitimacy.

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 Research Programs Studies in the Growth of Theory

The past two decades has seen dramatic progress in the growth of theory in the sociological study of group processes. This progress has been manifested by the emergence of major theoretical research programs in the study of exchange processes and network structures; bargaining and conflict; status characteristics and status organizing processes; justice and equity; affect and control processes; social interaction; and legitimation processes. This book documents, describes, and analyzes the structure of these programs and their growth and includes ten papers that present major theoretical research programs. The analysis shows both the common elements in the growth of the programs and the special features of each. An Introduction considers the general problem of theory growth in sociology and gives a general overview of the ten research programs. The book concludes with two papers that deal with the application and integration of theory.

Sociological Theories In Progress: New Formulations.

Part 1: theoretical structures and the micro-macro problem, Joseph Berger et al. Part 2 Identity, status and social interaction: further developments in identity theory - singularity versus multiplicity of self, Sheldon Stryker status characteristics, standards and attributions, Martha Foschi fuzzy sets and double standards - modeling the process of ability inference, Margaret Foddy and Michael Smithson the evolution of status expectations - a theoretical extension, Joseph Berger et al understanding legitimation in informal status orders, Cecilia Ridgeway group structure and information exchange - introduction to a theory, Bernard Cohen and Steven Silver. Part 3 Differentiations, inequalities and organizations: a general theory of macrostructural dynamics, Jonathan Turner a biased net theory of social structures and the problem of integration, Thomas Fararo and John Skvoretz processes of allocation to open and closed positions in social structure, Aage Sorensen expectations, shared awareness and power, Yitzhak Samuel and Morris Zelditch Jr power structures - derivations and applications of elementary theory, David Willer and Barry Markovsky distributive-justice force in human affairs - analyzing the three central questions, Guillermina Jasso competitive and institutional processes in organizational ecology - a model, Michael Hannan.

New Directions in Contemporary Sociological Theory

Part 1 Part I. Introduction Chapter 2 Theory Programs, Teaching Theory, and Contemporary Theories Part 3 Part II. Affect and Status Chapter 4 Understanding Social Interaction with Affect Control Theory Chapter 5 Expectation States Theory: An Evolving Research Program Part 6 Part III. Norms, Exchange, and Networks Chapter 7 From the Emergence of Norms to Aids Prevention and the Analysis of Social Structure Chapter 8 Network Exchange Theory, by David Willer, Henry Walker, Barry Markovsky, Robb Willer, Michael Lovaglia, Shane Thye, and Brent Simpson Part 9 Part IV. Social Movements and Revolutions Chapter 10 The Resource Mobilization Research Program: Progress, Challenge, and Transformation Chapter 11 Recent Developments in Critical Mass Theory Chapter 12 Theory Development in the Study of Revolutions Part 13 Part V. Institutional Structures Chapter 14 The Development and Application of Sociological Neo-Institutionalism Chapter 15 The Selectorate Model: A Theory of Political Institutions Part 16 Part VI. Theory Construction and Theory Integration Chapter 17 Theoretical Integration and Generative Structuralism Chapter 18 Seven Secrets for Doing Theory Part 19 Part VII. Reflections on Careers in Theory Chapter 20 Reflections on a Career as a Theorist Chapter 21 The Itinerary of World-Systems Analysis, or How to Resist Becoming a Theory

THE LEGITIMACY OF REGIMES

A centuries-long history of theory and research shows that every authority system tries to cultivate a belief in its legitimacy. This paper focuses on the legitimation of regimes – social relationships and the rules that govern them. We use existing theory and research to identify a basic legitimation assumption that includes four conditions necessary to establish legitimacy. We also identify four corollaries of the assumption and use our own published and unpublished laboratory research to show (1) how successful experimental procedures satisfy the assumption’s conditions, and (2) how the failure of experimental procedures to establish legitimacy violate the assumption and its corollaries.

Uncertainty, Potential Power, and Nondecisions

The sheer existence of a power structure prevented or delayed attempts to redress inequity in an experimental study of redistributive agendas. As potential power over B suppressed attempts to change a centralized communication network that caused inequity even though A, at the center of the network, expressed no preferences, promised no rewards, threatened no penalties, and did not actually penalize attempts at change. Structure did not automatically determine outcomes; rather, its effect was due to perceptions of power and expectations for the use of power. Yet the issue of inequity was suppressed («nondecided»), even though As reactions were uncertain. Subjects did not know the amount or probability of reward for nondecisions or the penalty for attempts to change the structure of the communication network

The normative regulation of power

In most theories of authority, normative regulation is the price that power pays for legitimacy. But what are the mechanisms by which norms regulate power and under what conditions do they in fact constrain its use? In an experimental study of a three-level hierarchy of power and authority, we found that the internal constraint of conscience alone was not sufficient to constrain the abuse of power by authority: Where authority had something to gain, one in four Ss abused power out of self-interest; where it had nothing to gain, one in three followed their own conscience rather than the situations norms.But internal constraints are not the only constraints on the exercise of power by authority. The mechanisms of the normative regulation of power depend on the fact that the exercise of authority, at least in organizations, is a collective phenomenon. It is not simply a matter of a superior, A, exercising authority over a subordinate, B, but of multiple actors executing the directives of A in such a way that the behavior of B is in fact directed. The normative regulation of power depends on how norms regulate these other agents of power and how dependence on these other agents, in turn, controls the behavior of A.