Social Status Differences in Altruism, Fairness and Retaliatory Defection in an Unequal Country

Previous research has claimed that higher-status individuals tend to be less prosocial than lower-status individuals, especially under conditions of inequality. It is also argued that lower-status individuals have more hostile reactions and more retaliatory defection to non-cooperators. Thus, low-status individuals are expected to be both prosocial and antisocial. Using simple behavioral games, we study the relationship of the objective and subjective socioeconomic status of individuals with altruism, fairness, and retaliatory defection in Chile, a country characterized by deeply entrenched socioeconomic inequality and segregation. Study 1 shows that under manipulated economic inequality conditions, higher objective status participants are more altruistic when enjoying a slight financial advantage. In contrast, lower objective status participants did not condition their altruistic behavior to their relative economic rank. Study 2 shows that manipulated economic inequality did not moderate the relationship between social status (either objective or subjective) and fairness. Finally, Study 3 indicates that participants of lower subjective status retaliated more strongly against non-cooperative peers. These results qualify the allegedly negative effect of social status on prosocial and antisocial behavior under conditions of socioeconomic inequality.

Status–Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status–authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with the functional authority to oversee higher-status professionals and elicit compliance from them on specific processes or tasks. Eliciting such compliance is ridden with challenges. How and when can lower-status professionals with functional authority elicit compliance from higher-status professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination to understand how 911 dispatchers (lower-status professionals with functional authority) can elicit compliance from police officers (higher-status professionals). I identify a set of relational styles—entailing interactional practices and communication media—enacted by the dispatchers. My findings suggest that dispatchers whose relational styles involved customizing the workflow via private communications with police officers or privately escalating cases of officers’ noncompliance to supervisors did not elicit greater compliance. In contrast, dispatchers who did elicit compliance used a peer publicizing relational style: they shared news of the noncompliant behavior—generally in a bantering, humorous manner—with an officer’s immediate peers using a communication medium that all officers in the police unit could hear. Publicizing noncompliant behavior among the immediate peers triggered the officer to self-discipline, as that noncompliant officer’s trustworthiness was on the line in front of the peer group. More generally, through enrolling an alter’s peers in the compliance process, the lower-status professionals with functional authority could generate second-degree influence and elicit compliance from the higher-status professionals.

The Story of "I" Tracking: Psychological Implications of Self-Referential Language Use

We review extant research on the psychological implications of the use of first-person singular pronouns (i.e., “I-talk”). A common intuition is that I-talk is associated with an overly positive, highly agentic, and inflated view of the self—including arrogance, self-centeredness, and grandiose narcissism. Initial (small-sample) research provided evidence that frequent I-talk was associated with grandiose narcissism. More recent (large-sample) research, however, has found that the correlation is near zero. Frequent I-talk is, however, positively correlated with depressive symptoms, in particular, and negative emotionality (i.e., neuroticism), more broadly. Frequent I-talk is also positively related to the neurotic variety of narcissism called vulnerable narcissism. In addition, frequent I-talk has a positive association with sociodemographic characteristics such as (lower) status, (younger) age, and (female) gender; I-talk has a conditional association with truth-telling and authenticity—a correlation that appears to hinge on context. This review summarizes the literature on I-talk, provides some speculations about the emergent psychological meanings of I-talk, and provides a guide for future research.

FRIENDSHIP IS SKIN (COLOR) DEEP

Friendships between members of different ethnoracial groups can help to reduce prejudice and ease tensions across ethnoracial groups. A large body of literature has explored possible determinants for the formation of these friendships. One unexplored factor is the role of an individual’s skin color in influencing their opportunities to befriend members of other ethnoracial groups. This study seeks to answer two questions: For ethnoracial minorities, how is an individual’s skin color associated with the likelihood that they will engage in a cross-ethnoracial friendship? Does the role of skin color depend on the ethnoracial combination of the two groups that befriend one another? Using waves 1, 2, and 3 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen and a series of multinomial logit models, the results suggest that the role of skin color is a function of the relative levels of social status of the two ethnoracial groups that befriend one another. I argue that lighter-skinned members of lower status ethnoracial groups have a greater likelihood of having close friendships with members of higher status ethnoracial groups. There is also limited evidence that darker-skinned members of a higher status group, specifically Asians, have a greater likelihood of having close friends from a lower status group.

Categorical Distinctions and Claims-Making: Opportunity, Agency, and Returns from Wage Negotiations

In this article, we examine wage negotiations as a specific instance of claims-making, predicting that the capacity to make a claim is first a function of the position, rather than the person, and that lower-status actors—women, migrants, fixed-term, part-time, and unskilled workers—are all more likely to be in positions where negotiation is not possible. At the same time, subordinate-status actors may be less likely to make claims even where negotiation is possible, and when they do make wage claims they may receive lower or no returns to negotiation. Analyses of wage negotiations by more than 2,400 German employees largely confirm these theoretical expectations, although the patterns of opportunity, agency, and economic returns vary by categorical status. All low-status actors are more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. Women, people in lower-class jobs, and people with temporary contracts are less likely to negotiate even when given the opportunity. Regarding returns, agency in wage claims does not seem to improve the wages of women, migrants, or working-class individuals. The advice to “lean-in” will not substantially lower wage inequalities for everyone, although men who lean in do benefit relative to men who do not.

Status-Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status-authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with higher functional authority to oversee higher-status professionals and elicit compliance from them. However, eliciting compliance from the higher-status professionals is ridden with challenges. How and when lower-status professionals with functional authority could elicit compliance from higher-status professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination to understand how 911 dispatchers (lower-status professionals with functional authority) were able to elicit compliance from the police officers (higher-status professionals). I identify a set of relational styles – entailing interactional practices and communication media – enacted by the 911 dispatchers. Findings suggest that as compared to the customizing and the escalating relational styles enacted via the private communication medium, the publicizing relational style (i.e., publicizing the noncompliant behavior of an officer to his immediate peers) enacted via the peer communication medium enabled the dispatchers to elicit compliance. Such peer publicizing triggered self-disciplining, as that noncompliant officers’ trustworthiness is on the line in front of the peer group. More generally, through enrolling the alters’ peers in the compliance process, the lower-status professionals with functional authority were able to generate second-degree influence and elicit compliance from the higher-status professionals.

Epic Woman Stepping into Reality: Depiction of Draupadi with a Feminist Lens with Reference to Three Indian Novels

Lower status of women is a stain on any society. The problem is becoming glaring in India in the wake of atrocities caused against women ‘from womb to tomb’. Even in this twenty first century, the impact of manuvadi ideology is getting evidently felt. ‘A thinking woman spoils everything’ is still the mindset. Maladies like honour killing, bride burning are still gloating over the security of women in the wake of the internalized mindset of patriarchal dictum, viz. ‘A woman does not deserve any freedom’ (Na stri swatantryam arhati). Since time immemorial, she was always taken for granted though she had never remained silent. The depiction of Draupadi in various writings underscores woman’s protest against male dichotomy and her refusal to live by disabling definitions that mark women as inferior.

Lower-status experts' influence on health-care managers' decision-making

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate and theoretically explain how line managers and lower-status experts work together in public health-care organizations. Hence, this study explores how lower-status experts influence line managers' decision-making and task prioritizing in order to guide staff experts' cooperation and performance improvements.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a qualitative method for data collection and analysis of the experts' and line managers' explanations about their cooperation. A theoretical approach of experts' identity positioning, in terms of differences and similarities, was used in analyzing the interaction between managers and experts.FindingsThis study shows that similarities and differences in positioning acts exist simultaneously. Similarity is constructed by way of strategic and professional alignment with the line managers' core tasks. Differences stem from the distinction between knowledge-grounded skills and professional attributes such as language, analytical tools, and jargon. Lower-status experts need to leave their entrenched positions and match the professional status of line managers in both knowledge aspirations and appearance to reach a respected approach of experts' identity positioning.Originality/valueUnlike many previous studies, this study demonstrates that similarities and differences in positioning acts exist simultaneously.

Pragma-linguistic and Socio-pragmatic Transfer among Iraqi Female EFL Learners in Refusing Marriage Proposals

In the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively. The study’s findings indicated that Iraqi female EFL learners followed similar patterns of refusing marriage situations to American speakers. The most prevalent strategies used by the two groups were “reasons/ excuses and explanations,” followed by “statements of regrets,” and then “non-performative statements” with slight variation in frequency. However, the Iraqi learners’ native language and culture affected how they formulated their refusal; hence they manifested pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic transfer in particular areas. The areas of pragma-linguistic transfer included the literal translation of words, expressions, and structures into their refusal in English. As for the socio-pragmatic areas, the transfer occurred in certain Arabic culture features like elaboration, exaggeration, repetition, endearing terms, and many others in expressing the target language, English.