The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the…

Drawing upon identity theory, expectation states theory, and legitimation theory, we examine how the task leader identity in task-oriented groups is more likely to be verified for persons with high status characteristics. We hypothesize that identity verification will be accomplished more readily for male group members and legitimated task leaders…

Status construction theory (SCT) has established a set of sufficient conditions for the formation of status characteristics that define informal hierarchies. However, while it has proven successful in explaining the development of status-laden personal characteristics in the laboratory, relatively less attention has been devoted to its predictions…

We explore the capacity of positive sentiments, those enduring affective states one achieves when one likes another, to impact status structures. Do positive sentiments combine with existing aspects of interaction to create status hierarchies and potentially change the social order, or do they moderate the effects of extant structure by dampening…

We investigated the effects of gender and group size on perceptions of group variability, using groups of students taking different majors that varied in the proportion of men and women (female-majority, parity, and male-majority). We found that both group size and gender had consistent effects on perceived out-group variability, even when…

In this study, we integrate insights from the life-course and stress-process perspectives to argue that adult children's negative treatment of parents, as well as negative events that children experience, detrimentally affect elderly parents' mental health over time. We argue that these strains may affect mothers more than fathers, and blacks more…

This study investigates the influence of social status on attributions of blame in specific instances of hate crime. Two theoretical explanations for the impact of offender's and victim's social status characteristics on evaluations of hate crimes are examined. The stigma perspective suggests that the public will deride minority-status…