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...behavior. these general points, it is of considerable significance that gender is a key determinant of social status, as has long been noted (Linton, 1936). That women generally have lower status than men in Western societies (Rhoodie, 1989) is a major determinant of people's representations of gender (Deaux & LaFrance, 1998). The status difference is apparent in people's stereotypes of women and men. For example, women are perceived as more communal and less agentic than men (Conway, Pizzamiglio, & Mount, 1996). Communality refers to an emotional, interpersonal orientation, whereas agency refers to an assertive, instrumental orientation. Similarly, women relative to men may be perceived as more warm and less competent, in a manner analogous to how other lower status groups are perceived (Glick & Fiske, 1999).
Status can account for many other aspects of gender representation, as well as for many gender differences in social behavior. Some recent examples for gender representation include gender stereotypes of unmitigated (i.e., extreme) communality and unmitigated agency (Conway & Vartanian, 2000), of emotions (Conway, Di Fazio, & Mayman, 1999), and of worry (Conway, Wood, Dugas, & Pushkar, 2003). Status can account for gender differences in aggression observed in social psychological research (Conway, Irannejad, & Giannopoulos, in press), as well as certain gender differences in leadership style (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003). Status also relates to whether people individuate female and male targets in social perception (Stewart, Vassar, Sanchez, & David, 2000), how people judge female and male targets' ability (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997; Foschi, 1996), and people's perceptions of causality in cross-gender interactions (LaFrance, Brownell, & Hahn, 1997). See Conway et al. (1996) for a more exhaustive list of status-related findings in the domain of gender.
A status difference between two categories of individuals, such as women and men, refers to a "differentiation of prestige and deference" (Mayer & Buckley, 1970, p. 46; Shils, 1975). That is, some individuals are seen as more worthy and are given more respect than others. As a construct, status is best construed as unidimensional (Berger, Wagner, & Zelditch, 1985; Rosenberg & Sedlak, 1972; Tracey, 1994). Status is also inherently linked to different forms of power. At a psychological level, greater prestige and deference imply referent power, in that higher status individuals are admired and may be emulated (Raven & Kruglanski, 1970). Status leads to expert power, as higher status individuals are assumed to be more competent (Berger et al., 1985). Status allows for greater reward and punishment power, as higher status individuals' recognition is likely to be more valuable to others. These general statements regarding status hold for gender. For example, status accounts for higher respect for men than women being "an important element of contemporary sexism" (Jackson, Esses, & Burris, 2001, p. 48). In research on leadership in small groups, people behave as if men are more competent than women: people are more likely to acquiesce to men's assertive behaviors (Ridgeway & Diekema, 1992).
There is another aspect to the general construct of status, one that is apparent in society at large. Beyond psychological aspects of status, higher status is usually associated with other power bases (Lenski, 1966), due, for example, to higher status individuals' social position, control over various forms of rewards and punishments, or knowledge. It is also the case that people with greater power are often attributed greater status (Ridgeway & Balkwell, 1997): consider, for example the status of very wealthy individuals. These societal factors are highly relevant to gender: women are overrepresented in lower status caretaking positions, such as secretary or nurse. Many of the highest status social positions, such as senior executives of major companies, are nearly exclusively held by men (Jacobs, 1999; Valian, 1998).
In sum, whether related to gender or other aspects of identity, greater status means more prestige and deference. The particular forms of power linked to status may vary, depending on whether one is considering psychological aspects alone, or factors that operate in society at large, such as differential occupation of social positions. In any case, theoretical work on the nature of power suggests that a person's power, regardless of its particular type, is expressed in two ways (Depret & Fiske, 1993; Ng, 1980; Zelditch, 1992): one is in the person who has the competence and control to pursue his or her own interests and to choose activities; the other is in the person who controls others' outcomes, which implies the ability to influence them.
Gender seems to be an important status cue. Gender is an aspect of others' identity that is likely automatically processed in social perception. Gender is a pervasive construct (Brewer & Lui, 1989), as people assign a gender identity to all others with whom they interact. Research cited above provides strong evidence that people's perceptions of women and men are shaped by status. People hold a wide range of gender-differentiated expectations regarding the social roles and occupations held by others, as well as for others' behavior in a wide range of public situations. One of the authors, for example, is often amused by mentally switching the gender of an individual behaving in a public situation, such as a coffee or pastry shop, and imagining how others would react. This exercise is instructive when a man behaves very assertively, or a woman behaves very tentatively. If the loud person were a woman, or the tentative one a man, others might react quite differently.
The impact of status on the social representation of gender can be largely understood in terms of the underlying dimensions of potency, activity, and evaluation in implicit personality theory (Ashmore, 1981; Rosenberg & Sedlak, 1972). Implicit personality theory is the layperson's representation of others' personality characteristics, and it defines the connections that people assume exist among various traits (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Potency refers to the amount of power or force implied by or associated with a certain characteristic or construct. Activity refers to the amount of movement or change. Evaluation refers to the positive or negative quality of a characteristic or construct. Potency, activity, and evaluation are underlying dimensions in implicit personality theory (Ashmore, 1981; Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968; Rosenberg & Sedlak, 1972). The emergence of potency, activity, and evaluation in implicit personality theory reflects the more general phenomenon that these dimensions underlie human judgment of both social and nonsocial objects (Osgood, May, & Miron, 1975; Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957); the term objects is used here in the sense of targets of people's attention (Webster, 1981).
Higher status individuals are likely to be perceived as more potent and more active, which can account for some gender stereotypes. Consider the stereotypes of men as agentic and women as communal. Agency is higher in potency and activity than communality is...
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