Status Characteristics: Degrees of Task Relevance and Decision Processes

Status characteristics theories attempt to explain the emergence of observable power and prestige hierarchies in informal task groups based on the perceived performance expectations connoted by differential ranks on status characteristics. Generally, these theories have assumed that the task performance expectation-formation processes operate similarly regardless of whether the status characteristic has been made explicitly relevant to the task or not. An alternative theoretical model is presented that predicts the corresponding decision processes to differ. Using discrete-time, discrete-state event-history techniques to reanalyze Moore's (1968) data, the prediction that the processes are not the same is supported, with characteristics made explicitly relevant being more relied on than characteristics n,ot made explicitly relevant. The implications regarding the vulnerability of the effects of characteristics of different degrees of relevance to being overridden or eliminated are discussed.