Status generalization in context: The moderating role of groups [An article from: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Status generalization has been described as a process directly linking social status at the societal level to influence in interpersonal interactions, providing one mechanism through which status inequalities in society are maintained. It is argued in this paper that groups can moderate status generalization when a status characteristic is non-prototypical of the group. Two experiments are reported that measured the relative influence of an older and younger target within different group contexts: an undergraduate student group and a broader university group. In both experiments, the older target was more influential than the younger target in the context of the university group, but the younger target was more influential in the context of the undergraduate student group. Findings are discussed in relation to status generalization and referent informational influence as separate influence processes.