Status and Behavior

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SES-1250342Murray WebsterLisa WalkerUniversity of North Carolina, CharlotteThis project develops and elaborates theories of status generalization. These theories describe how status characteristics that confer advantages and disadvantages in the larger society (such as gender, education, or age) get "imported" and affect dimensions of power and prestige (such as participation rates, influence, and leadership choices) in face to face task groups. The work has led to theoretically guided interventions to reduce or eliminate unwanted status generalization from race, gender, ethnicity, and other status characteristics in schools and organizations. A previous NSF funded grant developed this research by adding effects of behavior patterns (such as deference and assertiveness) to status effects. This new project further expands the scope of this line of inquiry to include interactions of cultural beliefs (such as appropriate behaviors associated with gender) with status and behavior. The research will investigate how various combinations of status and behavior affect the formation of performance expectations within task work. The study will employ a complex experimental design to explore these relationships. Participants in the experiment will be male and female paid volunteers recruited from large classes. Broader ImpactResults of this research contribute to the status generalization theoretical research program and can lay a foundation for further investigations of beliefs, structure and behavior. They will suggest new ways to control status effects by adding behavior and making cultural beliefs salient. They also help track changing cultural beliefs, such as possible decline in the significance of gender for task focused interaction. Findings also have implications for developing new experimental techniques that will be used by other investigators, training a graduate student in all stages of theory building, experimental design and operations, and data analysis and archiving. The project also will train undergraduates in recruiting, computer scheduling and face to face interviewing.