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Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups? A Bounded Functionalist Account of Status

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The Psychology of Social Status

Abstract

Scholars have long debated the impact of status hierarchies on group welfare. On the one hand, functionalist accounts posit that the status hierarchies that emerge within groups benefit those groups by providing order, coordination, and incentives for individual sacrifice. In contrast, critical accounts argue that status hierarchies are only loosely tied to merit, create divisions among individuals, foster mistrust, and hamper communication and collective success. The current chapter integrates these two opposing views by proposing a bounded functionalist perspective of status hierarchies. Specifically, we argue that group members strive to form functional hierarchies that will foster their collective success, but they are constrained in their ability to do so by the difficulties in allocating status based on merit and by the opposing force of individual self-interest.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that here we specifically analyze the group-level effects of status hierarchies, setting aside the equally important individual-level effects of status hierarchies. Research is divisive on this issue as well, with some work suggesting that status-striving undermines individual well-being (Nickerson et al. 2003) and that much discrimination on the basis of characteristics like race, class, and gender occurs through status processes in groups. At the same time, other work emphasizes that status striving motivates collectively minded behavior (Willer 2009) and status attainment fosters happiness (Anderson et al. 2012) and health (Marmot 2004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

    Cameron Anderson

  2. Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

    Robb Willer

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  1. Cameron Anderson
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Correspondence to Cameron Anderson .

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  1. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

    Joey T. Cheng

  2. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Jessica L. Tracy

  3. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

    Cameron Anderson

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Anderson, C., Willer, R. (2014). Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups? A Bounded Functionalist Account of Status. In: Cheng, J., Tracy, J., Anderson, C. (eds) The Psychology of Social Status. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0867-7_3

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