Status Characteristics, Reward Allocation, and Equity

In this article we report the results of two experiments which investigate the relationship between a group's power and prestige or status hierarchy and group members' patterns of reward allocation. Our theory suggests that the conditions Berger et al. (1974) specify as sufficient for the emergence of a power and prestige ordering are also sufficient to create differential reward allocation. However, the data suggest that it is only with the addition of evidence concerning actual task performance that the alignment of reeward and status rankings will occur. The data also indicate that evidence of differential task performance encourages the use of distribution rules stressing equity as opposed to equality, thus resulting in the hypothesized reward differentiation.