Social Psychology:
Sociological Perspectives
David E. Rohall
Melissa A. Milkie
Jeffrey W. Lucas
This multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. The following are prohibited by law:
● any public performance or display, including transmission of any image of a network;
● preparation of any derivative work, including the extraction, in whole or in part, of any images;
● any rental, lease, or lending of the program
Social Psychology:
Sociological Perspectives
Chapter 4: The Social Psychology
of Stratification
Defining Stratification



Social stratification refers to ways in
which individuals or groups are ranked in
society
Important statuses include our social
class, race or ethnicity, gender, age, and
sexuality
Social psychologists study the effects of
stratification on the individual and how
individuals contribute the development and
maintenance of stratification systems
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SI: Basic Stratification Processes

There are three ways that interactionists
show the impacts of stratification:



Social structure shapes who we interact with
People in lower-status positions have to take
the role of the other more often than their more
powerful counterparts of higher status
Meaning-making itself is stratified; individuals
with higher statuses have more power to
define situations and to define themselves
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SI: Doing Gender



West and Zimmerman (1987) argued that
one of the foundational guidelines for
social interaction is our gender
Gender includes the cultural definitions of
masculinity and femininity associated with
individuals’ biological sex
Doing gender is a social process in which
individuals act according to the social rules
or norms associated with being a man or a
woman in society
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SI: A Gendered World


Barrie Thorne (1993) extends the idea of
doing gender by showing how gender
processes occur at very early ages
Her study of elementary school children
demonstrates that boys and girls act in
ways that separate themselves from the
others, a process called borderwork
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SI: Doing Gender in Adulthood



Heilman and colleagues (2004) show that
“doing gender” continues into adulthood
Their research generally found that people
who are disliked generally receive lower
evaluations than people who are liked
Women who achieve in work groups tend
to be less liked than their male counterpart
but only when women achieve success in
traditionally male work arenas
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SI: Doing Race and Ethnicity


Several notable studies have applied the
interactionist perspective to understanding
the complexities of race and poverty on a
day-to-day basis
Elijah Anderson (1999), for instance,
studied the effects of poverty on the lives
of poor African Americans in Philadelphia,
finding that at most residents hold
traditional middle-class values but must try
to maintain these values in the face of
poverty and a culture of crime and drugs
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Structures of Inequality



In industrialized nations, our status
derives from our social class position,
among other things
Social class refers to a group of
people who share the same relative
status in a given society
A more structural perspective takes
hierarchy as a “given” and “seeks to
understand the processes by which
individuals become distributed in that
hierarchy” (Kerchoff 1995: 476)
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Social Mobility and the Wisconsin
Model of Status Attainment



Social mobility refers to upward or
downward change in social class over time
The Wisconsin Model of Status
Attainment ties together the relative
impact of social background
characteristics and ability on long-term
status attainment
The project is based on a survey of highschool seniors in Wisconsin that began in
1957 among a group of researchers from
the University of Wisconsin
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Research Applying the Wisconsin
Model


The Wisconsin Model examines the
interaction of our early cognitive ability and
social background on important life
outcomes like education and income
Recent research using this model shows
that effects of family social class on longterm status operates almost entirely
through education and cognitive ability
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Networks and Social Capital


Social networks serve as the basis for the
exchange of both fiscal and social capital,
the trust and social support found in
relationships with other people
Granovetter (1973) original research
showed the importance of weak ties,
people we do not know as well, in finding
work
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Education, Occupations, and
Aspirations



Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler carried
out another research project to study the
long-term consequences of our social
class position on values
They argued that there is an ongoing
feedback loop in which our class position
influences the development of values that,
in turn, influences the type of job we look
for
The type of job we get then influences the
type of people we are—our personality
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
SSP: Social Backgrounds and LongTerm Work and Personality Outcomes



Kohn and Schooler (1983) showed that the
closeness of the supervision,
routinization of our work, and its
substantive complexity can have longterm effects on our values
Aspects of our personality, our intellectual
flexibility and self-directed orientation,
can also affect our job choices
These work and personality characteristics
interact to create the feedback loop
described earlier
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Stratification Processes in Groups


Group processes stratification is based on
the study of exchange relationships among
members of groups
Social exchange theory is based on the
premise that individuals enter into
relationships that provide some benefit to
them and end or leave relationships that
do not provide some sort of reward
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: The Principles of Social Exchange
Theory

The basic principles of social exchange
theory are:




Exchange relationships develop within groups
in which members have some degree of
dependence
Group members will act in groups in a way
that maximizes personal benefit
Interaction in groups will continue as long as
reciprocity between individuals continues
Groups operate on the satiation principle
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Types of Social Exchanges

There are two types of exchanges possible
in groups:



Direct exchanges are those that occur
between two people
Indirect or generalized exchanges occur
when people do not receive benefits directly
from those to whom they give benefits
Differences in the types of exchanges can
help explain the complexities involved in
our decision-making processes in groups
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Model of Direct and Indirect
Exchanges in Groups
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Exchange and Status in Groups


Peter Blau argued that exchange
processes lend themselves to the
development of status structures simply
because people bring different types and
quantities of resources into the process
Group studies have shown that leadership
status was often attributed to those
individuals perceived to contribute the
most to group discussions
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Status Construction Theory



Status characteristics theory links social
roles from a larger society to stratification
processes in groups
The theory was developed by Joseph
Berger and a group of colleagues at
Stanford University
The theory makes predictions about how
members of task groups will become
stratified
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Status Hierarchies in Task Groups



A common finding in research on task
groups is that task groups tend to organize
themselves into status hierarchies
High and low status are based, in part, on
status characteristics of group members
Social characteristics that can impact
status in groups include:


Diffuse status characteristics
Specific status characteristics
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Research with Status
Characteristics Theory



Research shows that status hierarchies in
task groups form based on the status
characteristics of group members
Members look to the status characteristics
of themselves and other group members
to develop expectations for performance
Low-status members (e.g., females)
generally receive lower status in task
groups, regardless of performance
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: How to Get Status in a Group

There are two primary ways that people
with low status characteristics can
effectively hold high-status positions in
groups:


Giving the lower-status person legitimacy in
the group
Individuals with low social status should make
it clear that they are carrying out behaviors
with the interests of the group in mind
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Power in Networks: Centrality



In the group processes perspective, a
network emphasizes the idea that these
people or groups are bound together
through connections
Traditionally, people with a central position
are considered most powerful
Modern theory and research emphasizes
individuals’ ability to exclude other people
in the network as the primary source of
power, not just centrality in gaining power
in groups
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
GP: Distinguishing Power and Status




Power and status are related but distinct
concepts
Power is structural; it rests in the positions
that people have in relation to others
Status arises from the features of people;
it rests in individual characteristics
Power and status are often related: Being
high in status can significantly affect
access to powerful positions
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007
Chapter 4: Bringing It All Together



The three perspectives in social
psychology provide insights into the ways
that stratification develops in society
Interactionists emphasize how individuals
construct inequalities while social structure
and personality scholars show how our
social background influences our work and
education decisions
Group processes work emphasize
stratification processes in task groups
Copyright (c) Allyn Bacon 2007