Status Organizing Processes

This chapter reviews theory and research on status organizing processes. A status organizing process is any process in which evaluations of and beliefs about the characteristics of actors become the basis of observable inequalities in face-to-face social interaction. The key concept in the study of status organizing processes is the status characteristic, any characteristic of actors around which evaluations of and beliefs about them come to be organized. Examples include age, sex, race, ethnicity, education, occupation, physical attractiveness, intelligence quotients, reading ability-but there are many others. In the present article we review (a) the current state of the theory of such processes; (b) relevant theoretical research as of September, 1979; (c) a selection of the relevant applied research, with particular reference to sex, race, and physical attractiveness; and (d) some of the interventions that have been devel­ oped to reduce undesired consequences of the process. The phenomenon with which a theory of status organizing processes is concerned is most commonly observed in the study of problem-solving groups whose members differ in status characteristics significant in the larger society. Such groups do not create a social organization de novo, out of the interaction of their members, but instead maintain external status differences inside the group. That informal problem-solving groups evolve inequalities in participa­ tion, evaluation, and influence was shown by Bales in the early fifties