External Status, Legitimacy, and Compliance in Male and Female Groups

A process by which informal status hierarchies become legitimated is used to explain why those who operate from a disadvantaged external-status position, such as women or minorities, often have difficulty wielding directive power over other group members, even if they achieve high rank within the group. The theory predicts that a status structure is more likely to be treated as legitimate when high standing is based on the consistent advantages of externcd-status characteristics rather than on high task ability but low externad status. If true, then dominance attempts, as a type of directive behavior, from a high-ranking member with a consistent status advantage should be more effective in securing compliance from a lower-ranking member than dominance attempts from an equally high ranking member with high ability but low external status. In an experiment using same-sex dyads, our hypothesis was supported for male dyads and largely supported for female dyads.