Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 1998"

The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality and Poverty in the Western Countries

Abstract: the structure of welfare state institutions. (2) A trade-off exists between the degree of low-income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets. (3) Outcomes of market-based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings-related social insurance programs. We argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes. Using new data, our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution: The more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality. Social scientists and social reformers have long debated how the welfare state and social policies should be designed so as to best reduce poverty and inequality. This debate involves two different issues. One question concerns whether social policies should be targeted or universal, that is, should they be organized for the poor only or should the welfare state include all citizens? In the context of nontargeted programs, another question concerns the level of benefits: Should benefits be equal for all, or should they be related to previous earnings and in

How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children

Abstract: This study examines the impact of the level of income and the timing of economic deprivation in childhood on completed schooling in the US. Data were obtained from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics among a sample of 1323 children born during 1967 and 1973 and 328 sibling pairs. The average level of income increased across childhood. Income at ages 11-15 years was about 40% higher than income at ages 0-5 years. Only 39% of children with family incomes below $15000 in early childhood had incomes that low in adolescence. Almost 50% of siblings had 15-year average incomes that differed by over $5000. Multivariate analysis reveals that children with family incomes of $15000-25000 completed .82 years more schooling had 4.1 times greater odds of completing high school and had an insignificantly lower risk of a nonmarital birth. At the next higher income level children had a half a year higher schooling level than children with income of $15000-25000. A $10000 increase to income averaged over the 0-5 years of life for children in low-income families was associated with a .81 year increase in completed schooling and a 2.9 times increase in the odds of finishing high school. These estimated effects were larger than at ages 6-10 years and 11-15 years. Parental income during adolescence was less important in the completion of high school and more important for college decisions. Children with early childhood family incomes of $15000-25000 averaged .66 years more schooling than children in the lowest income group. Stage-specific income from all childhood stages did not strongly predict nonmarital childbearing. High income during adolescence enabled children to enter college but did not predict completion of college. Sibling findings supported the individual-based findings that economic conditions in early childhood particularly among low-income families were key determinants of completed schooling.

Trajectories of change in criminal offending: Good marriages and the desistance process.

Abstract: Building on R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, the authors draw an analogy between changes in criminal offending spurred by the formation of social bonds and an investment process. This conceptualization suggests that because investment in social relationships is gradual and cumulative, resulting desistance will be gradual and cumulative. Using a dynamic statistical model developed by D. S. Nagin and K. C. Land, they test their ideas about change using yearly longitudinal data from S. and E. Glueck and Glueck's classic study of criminal careers. Their results show that desistance from crime is facilitated by the development of quality marital bonds, and that this influence is gradual and cumulative over time

Assessing the oppositional culture explanation for racial/ethnic differences in school performance*

Abstract: The oppositional culture explanation for racial disparities in school performance posits that individuals from historically oppressed groups (involuntary minorities) signify their antagonism toward the dominant group by resisting school goals. In contrast, individuals from the dominant group and groups that migratedfreely to the host country (immigrant minorities) maintain optimistic views of their chances for educational and occupational success. Because of its historical and cross-cultural appeal, this explanation has been well-received by academics, although key implications of the theory have not been carefully tested. Proponents have failed to systematically compare perceptions of occupational opportunity and resistance to school across involuntary, dominant, and immigrant groups. Using a large sample of African American, Asian American, and non-Hispanic white high school sophomores from the first follow-up of the National Education Longitudinal Study, we provide the first rigorous test of the oppositional culture explanation. Upon close scrutiny, its key predictions fail. DR espite recent improvement on some measures, the gap in educational performance across racial groups persists. Finding explanations for that gap continues to frustrate academics. Some scholars point to characteristics of the minority family itself (Moynihan 1965), while others see differences in educational performance as primarily a function of social structural conditions (Bourdieu 1977; Bowles and Gintis 1976), such as the types of neighborhoods students live in (Massey and Denton 1993) and consequently the kinds of schools they attend. The oppositional culture explanation draws from both of these traditions, recognizing that social structural conditions shape opportunities but arguing that these conditions form students' motivation for schooling.

How white attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations : Numbers count

Abstract: This research focuses on the white people's reactions to the racial composition of the local population. Multilevel modeling is applied to a micro/macro data file that links 1990 General Social Survey responses to census information about respondents' localities. On summary scales representing traditional prejudice, opposition to race-targeting, and policy-related beliefs, white negativity swells as the local black population share expands. Among non-Southern white, a 10-point rise in the local percentage of black brings an increase in traditional prejudice greater than the decrease in prejudice that comes with three additional years of education. South/non-South differences in the white people's views about black are generally reduced to about one-half of their original size and fall short of statistical significance when local racial composition is controlled. Interestingly, concentrations of local Asian American and Latino populations do not engender white antipathy toward these groups. If the white people's reactions to the presence of black is a threat response, the specific dynamics of this threat await description

Early failure in the labor market : Childhood and adolescent predictors of unemployment in the transition to adulthood

Abstract: The authors investigate the childhood and adolescent predictors of youth unemployment in a longitudinal study of young adults who have been studied for the 21 years since their births in 1972-1973. They test hypotheses about the predictors of youth unemployment using information about each individual's human capital, social capital, and personal capital. In the human capital domain, lack of high-school qualifications, poor reading skills, low IQ scores, and limited parental resources significantly increased the risk of unemployment. In the social capital domain, growing up in a single-parent family, family conflict, and lack of attachment to school also increased the risk of unemployment. In the personal capital domain, children involved in antisocial behavior had an increased risk of unemployment. These predictors of unemployment reached back to early childhood, suggesting that they began to shape labor-market outcomes years before these youths entered the work force. In addition, these effects remained significant after controlling for the duration of education and educational attainment, suggesting that many early personal and family characteristics affect labor-market outcomes, not only because they restrict the accumulation of human capital (e.g., education), but also because they directly affect labor-market behaviors. Failure to account for prior social, psychological, and economic risk factors may lead to inflated estimates of the effects of unemployment on future outcomes

Social Networks, Gender, and Immigrant Incorporation: Resources and Constraints

Abstract: Most research on social networks and immigrant incorporation focuses on the short-term and positive functions of networks, neglecting changes in networks over time. Author present a dynamic and variable portrayal of networks to demonstrate how they gradually assume different forms and functions for women and for men that differentially affect settlement outcomes, particularly opportunities to become legal. The gendered social relations of neighborhood, work, and voluntary associations interact to produce this outcome. The conclusions suggest that social networks can both strengthen and weaken over time, can change differentially for different segments of the immigrant community, and therefore can have disparate effects on incorporation.

Racial disparities in official assessments of juvenile offenders : Attributional stereotypes as mediating mechanisms

Abstract: Despite extensive sociological research, little evidence exists on how court officials' perceptions of offenders influence their classification, assessment, and final recommendations for punishment. The authors examine the links among these factors, focusing specifically on the race of the accused. The analysis combines information from probation officers' written accounts of juvenile offenders and their crimes and court records about the offenders. They find pronounced differences in officers' attributions about the causes of crime by white versus minority youths. Further, these differences contribute significantly to differential assessments of the risk of reoffending and to sentence recommendations, even after adjusting for legally relevant case and offender characteristics. These results suggest that differential attributions about the causes of crime act as a mediating factor between race and sentencing recommendations

Socially Embedded Consumer Transactions: For What Kinds of Purchases Do People Most Often Use Networks?

Abstract: Why and to what extent do people make significant purchases from people with whom they have prior noncommercial relationships? Using data from the economic sociology module of the 1996 General Social Survey, we document high levels of within-network exchanges. We argue that transacting with social contacts is effective because it embeds commercial exchanges in a web of obligations and holds the seller's network hostage to appropriate role performance in the economic transaction. It follows that within-network exchanges will be more common in risky transactions that are unlikely to be repeated and in which uncertainty is high. The data support this view. Self-reports about major purchases are consistent with the expectation that exchange frequency reduces the extent of within-network exchanges. Responses to questions about preferences for in-group exchanges support the argument that uncertainty about product and performance quality leads people to prefer sellers with whom they have noncommercial ties. Moreover, people prefer to avoid selling to social contacts under the same conditions that lead buyers to seek such transactions; and people who transact with friends and relatives report greater satisfaction with the results than do people who transact with strangers, especially for risk-laden exchanges.

Sex differences in research productivity : New evidence about an old puzzle

Abstract: Numerous studies have found that female scientists publish at lower rates than male scientists. So far explanations for this consistent pattern have failed to emerge, and sex differences in research productivity remain a puzzle. We report new empirical evidence based on a systematic and detailed analysis of data from four large, nationally representative, cross-sectional surveys of postsecondary faculty in 1969, 1973, 1988, and 1993. Our research yields two main findings. First, sex differences in research productivity declined over the time period studied, with the female-to-male ratio increasing from about 60 percent in the late 1960s to 75 to 80 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Second, most of the observed sex differences in research productivity can be attributed to sex differences in personal characteristics, structural positions, and marital status. These results suggest that sex differences in research productivity stem from sex differences in structural locations and as such respond to the secular improvement of women's position in science.

Effects of parental divorce on mental health throughout the life course

Abstract: The long-term effects of parental divorce on individuals' mental health after the transition to adulthood are examined using data from a British birth cohort that has been followed from birth to age 33. Growth-curve models and fixed-effects models are estimated. The results suggest that part of the negative effect of parental divorce on adults is a result of factors that were present before the parents 'marriages dissolved. The results also suggest, however, a negative effect of divorce and its aftermath on adult mental health. Moreover, a parental divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect when a person is in his or her twenties and early thirties

Church culture as a strategy of action in the black community

Abstract: Culture consists of rhetorical, interactional, and material tools that are organized into strategies of action. Social movement theory is beginning to recognize the role of culture in facilitating or frustrating collective organizing. I use social constructionism as an analytical approach to bridge social movement and cultural theory. Social constructionists ask how social action is constructed, rather than what issues or ideas are being constructed. Using data from more than three years of ethnographic research in Groveland, an African American neighborhood in Chicago, I find that the black church provides a cultural blueprint for civic life in the neighborhood. Prayer, call-and-response interaction, and Christian imagery are important parts of the cultural tool kit of Groveland's black residents, and these cultural practices invigorate activism. Particular theological foundations of black Christianity -especially its collective ethos and the notion of God as active in earthly affairs- support the content of secular activism. Black church culture constitutes the taken-for-granted practices that put civic efforts into action.

Data collection mode and social desirability bias in self-reported religious attendance : Church attendance in the United States

Abstract: Compared to conventional interviewer-administered questions about attendance at religious services, self-administered items and time-use items should minimize social desirability pressures. In fact, they each reduce claims of weekly religious attendance by about one-third. This difference in measurement approach does not generally affect associations between attendance and demographic characteristics. It does, however, alter the observed trend in religious attendance over time : in contrast to the almost constant attendance rate recorded by conventional interviewer-administered items, approaches minimizing social desirability bias reveal that weekly attendance has declined continuously over the past three decades. These results provide support for the hypothesis that America has become more secularized, and they demonstrate the role of mode of administration in reducing measurement error

The evolution of trust and cooperation between strangers: A computational model.

Abstract: Social and economic exchanges often occur between strangers who cannot rely on past behavior or the prospect of future interactions to establish mutual trust. Game theorists formalize this problem as a one-shot prisoner's dilemma and predict mutual noncooperation. Recent studies, however, challenge this conclusion. If the game provides an option to exit (or to refuse to play), strategies based on projection (of a player's intentions) and detection (of the intentions of a stranger) can confer a cooperator's advantage. Yet previous research has not found a way for these strategies to evolve from a random start or to recover from invasion by aggressive strategies that feign trustworthiness. The authors use computer simulation to show how trust and cooperation between strangers can evolve without formal or informal social controls. The outcome decisively depends, however, on two structural conditions : the payoff for refusing to play, and the embeddedness of interaction. Effective norms for trusting strangers emerge locally, in exchanges between neighbors, and then diffuse through weak ties to outsiders

How do status beliefs develop ? The role of resources and interactional experience*

Abstract: Status construction theory argues that interaction between people with unequal structural advantages is crucial in the development and spread of status value beliefs about people's distinguishing attributes. A central claim is that goal-oriented encounters between those who differ in material resources as well as in an easily observed nominal attribute create status beliefs about that attribute which favor the richer actors' attribute category. The authors conduct an experimental test using dyadic, same-sex encounters between participants who differ in pay level and a mere difference attribute; the claim is supported for males and females. Status beliefs are distinguished from own-group favoritism by their acceptance by those they disadvantage. A second experiment and other evidence suggest that the interactional hierarchy associated with pay and the distinguishing attribute in such doubly dissimilar encounters pressures low-pay subjects to accept beliefs that disadvantage them. This acceptance is key to the power of interaction to transform structural advantages into status beliefs

And then there were more ? The effect of organizational sex composition on the hiring and promotion of managers

Abstract: We study how organizational sex composition influences the intraorganizational mobility of male and female managers. We test hypotheses linking organizational sex composition to hiring and promotion using longitudinal data on all managers in the California savings and loan industry. We find that the impact of sex composition depends on hierarchical level: Not only does it matter what relative proportions of men and women are working in organizations, but it also matters at what levels in the managerial hierarchies they are working. Our findings demonstrate a catch-22 situation: Women are more likely to be hired and promoted into a particular job level when a higher proportion of women are already there. The question remains, how can women gain entry into these positions? We also find that women are more likely to be hired and promoted when there is a substantial minority of women above the focal job level, but not when women constitute the majority in those higher-level positions: Hence women in high ranks can sometimes be a force for demographic change. Finally, we find evidence that women are more likely to be hired and promoted when higher proportions of women hold positions below the focal job level, indicating that gains made by women are not entirely dissipated by endogenous organizational processes.

The legitimation and delegitimation of power and prestige orders.

Abstract: Building on the work of Cecilia L. Ridgeway and J. Berger, the authors construct a set of assumptions that describe how the legitimation and delegitimation of informal power and prestige orders can be created in task oriented situations. Their conception is a multilevel one. Cultural beliefs begin the process by shaping the likelihood that one actor treats another with honorific deference. But to result in legitimacy, this process must be carried through by the contingent reactions of others who can provide consensual validation. In this way, actors can collectively construct a local reality that makes the power and prestige order normatively prescriptive. Using the graph-theoretical formulations of status characteristic theory and of the theory of reward expectations, and in conjunction with legitimation and delegitimation assumptions, they derive a set of general propositions. These propositions describe how different status and evaluation conditions affect the likelihood that a power and prestige order will be legitimated or delegitimated. Their formulation provides a theoretical account for observations on the stability of legitimated orders in task settings, for research on the impact of evaluations on delegitimation, and for findings on the effect of status consistency on legitimation

Network structure and emotion in exchange relations

Abstract: Network structures promote cohesive social relations among some actors and not others. Based on the theory of relational cohesion (Lawler and Yoon 1996), we hypothesize that an emotional/affective process explains how and when network structures produce such effects. The main ideas are: (1) If a network produces differential exchange frequencies among component dyads then, ceterus paribus, that network will tend to produce different degrees of internal cohesion within those dyads and will do so through the positive emotions or feelings generated by successful exchanges. (2) This effect should be more evident in equal than in unequal-power relations, and it should be weaker when network members share an overarching group identity. We conduct an experiment to test these hypotheses. The results indicate: Dyadic cohesion develops through an emotional/affective process in equal-power relations, as hypothesized, but not in unequal-power relations; and an overarching group identity reduces the degree that central actors exploit peripheral ones but does not impact dyad-level cohesion. The larger implication is that in networks containing both equal and unequal-power relations, internal pockets of cohesion are more likely to emerge in the former because of the mild, everyday positive feelings produced by successful exchanges.

Normative versus social constructivist processes in the allocation of citations : A network-analytic model

Abstract: I assess competing arguments on the determinants of scientists' citation patterns by developing a new approach to the multivariate study of citations that builds upon a network-analytic model. Using data on articles about celestial masers, an astrophysics research area, logistic regressions with robust standard errors examine the extent to which characteristics of both potentially citing and potentially cited papers influence the probability that a citation exists between the papers. The results identify significant positive effects of cited article cognitive content and cited article quality, providing support for a normative interpretation of the allocation of citations in which citations reflect payment of intellectual debt. In contrast, indicators of an author's position within the stratification structure of science fail to significantly improve the fit of the model, and thus provide no support for the social constructivist claim that citations are rhetorical tools of persuasion. Furthermore, the lack of effects of social ties between citing and cited authors provides little support for the argument that authors who know one another are more likely to cite one another's work. Overall, these results suggest that authors are likely to cite those articles most relevant to their work in terms of intellectual content, and seem little concerned with the characteristics of authors who write them.

Becoming a gendered body: Practices of preschools

Abstract: Many feminist scholars argue that the seeming naturalness of gender differences, particularly bodily difference, underlies gender inequality. Yet few researchers ask how these bodily differences are constructed. Through semistructured observation in five preschool classrooms, I examine one way that everyday movements, comportment, and use of physical space become gendered. I find that the hidden school curriculum that controls children's bodily practices in order to shape them cognitively serves another purpose as well. This hidden curriculum also turns children who are similar in bodily comportment, movement, and practice into girls and boys-children whose bodily practices differ I identify five sets of practices that create these differences: dressing up, permitting relaxed behaviors or requiring formal behaviors, controlling voices, verbal and physical instructions regarding children's bodies by teachers, and physical interactions among children. This hidden curriculum that (partially) creates bodily differences between the genders also makes these physical differences appear and feel natural.

Hazards of the Market: The Continuity and Dissolution of Interorganizational Market Relationships

Abstract: We propose a theory of the market as an "intertemporal" process that integrates multiple theoretical perspectives. Using event-history methods, we analyze the dissolution of interorganizational market ties between advertising agencies and their clients as a function of three forces-competition, power, and institutional forces. The informal "rules of exchange" institutionalized in the "emergence" phase of the advertising services market include exclusivity (sole-source) and loyalty (infrequent switching). We find that most exchange relationships between advertising agencies and their clients are indeed exclusive, and most last for several years; but competition, power, and institutional forces support or undermine these rules. Most institutional forces reduce the risk of dissolution of agency-client ties. Powerful advertising agencies mobilize resources to increase tie stability, but powerful clients mobilize resources to increase or decrease stability. Competition is the weakest market force, but it has a consistent and substantial effect on tie dissolution: Competition always increases the risk of dissolution. We conclude that the market is institutionalized as imperfectly repeated patterns of exchange, because competition and changing norms about the duration of market ties destabilize market relationships.

Educational Homogamy in 65 Countries: An Explanation of Differences in Openness Using Country-Level Explanatory Variables

Abstract: Loglinear analysis is used to assess the degree of educational homogamy in 65 countries. Differences in educational homogamy among these countries are then explained in terms of level of economic development, degree of political democracy, the dominant religion, and the technological background of developing countries. An inverted U-curve relationship is found between level of economic development and educational homogamy. Furthermore, cultural characteristics are found to be important explanatory variables. Grouping countries into "families of nations" according to dominant religion and technological background helps explain the differences among countries. Catholic, Muslim, Confucian, and mixed Catholic/Protestant countries show significantly more educational homogamy than do Protestant countries, and industrializing societies with a horticultural background show significantly less educational homogamy than do industrializing societies with an agrarian background.

Leaving the `hood: residential mobility between black white and integrated neighborhoods.

Abstract: We use data from the [U.S.] Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore patterns and determinants of residential mobility between census tracts with varying racial composition. Among both blacks and whites age home ownership being married and having children are all inversely related to the probability of moving from the tract of origin. Conditional on moving higher socioeconomic status increases the likelihood of moving to a `whiter tract.... Blacks exhibit low rates of moving into white tracts but high rates of moving out while the reverse mobility streams dominate among whites. (EXCERPT)

The impact of family religious life on the quality of mother-child relations

Abstract: We investigate the impact of family religious life on a vital human relationship: the mother-child bond. We develop a theoretical framework that explains the mechanisms through which family religious involvement influences perceptions of the quality of the mother-child relationship. This framework acknowledges multiple dimensions of religious involvement and the dynamics of involvement across the life course. Intergenerational panel data show that these various dimensions of family religious life have enduring effects on mothers' and children's perceptions of the quality of the mother-child relationship. The extent to which individuals internalize religion as an important part of their lives has broad implications for individuals' social relationships.

Conservative protestant childrearing: authoritarian or authoritative? *

Abstract: Recent research on conservative Protestantism suggests that religion has reemerged as an important predictor of childrearing attitudes and practices This research has focused on the distinctive approach toward discipline among conservative Protestant parents No study, however, has explored the links between conservative Protestantism and positive parental emotion work (physical and verbal expressions of affection) I suggest, paradoxically, that this subculture is characterized both by strict discipline and an unusually warm and expressive style of parent-child interaction I review parenting advice offered by conservative Protestant leaders, which encourages parents to engage in positive emotion work with their children I then analyze data from the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to determine if religious affiliation and theological conservatism are related to positive parental emotion work I find that parents with conservative theological beliefs are more likely to praise and hug their children than are parents with less conservative theological views Modest positive net effects of conservative Protestant affiliation are also found

The continuing significance of race revisited : A study of race, class, and quality of life in America, 1972 to 1996

Abstract: More than a decade ago, we (Thomas and Hughes 1986) demonstrated that the subjective well-being of African Americans in the United States was significantly and consistently lower than that for whites over the 14-year period from 1972 to 1985. Since then, evidence has accumulated on several important dimensions of well-being that African Americans fare as well as or better than whites, suggesting a change in the pattern observed for nearly 40 years. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) for the period 1972 to 1996, we show that quality of life continues to be worse for African Americans than it is for whites, although anomia and mistrust have increased a little more rapidly in recent years for whites than for blacks. Racial disparities in quality of life do not vary by and are not explained by socioeconomic status. Although racial inequality appears to be the primary cause of these differences, the exact processes producing them are as yet unknown.

Neighborhood context and the risk of childbearing among metropolitan-area black adolescents

Abstract: The authors examine whether neighborhood racial composition or poverty is the more important predictor of premarital adolescent childbearing among metropolitan-area black people, and how family socioeconomic status moderates these neighborhood influences. They analyze data from a special release of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that appends census tract information to the individual records of 940 metropolitan black women. Using cluster analysis, they create neighborhood types that reflect the racial and economic composition of neighborhoods where metropolitan the black people live. Compared with living in a racially mixed neighborhood, living in a highly segregated neighborhood is associated with a 50-percent increase in the rate of a premarital first birth, regardless of neighborhood socioeconomic status. Living in a white middle-class neighborhood is associated with lower rates of a premarital first birth for affluent black teens, but has no effect on their less affluent black peers. These findings support the hypothesis that neighborhood racial composition directly influences adolescent childbearing by sealing off participation in mainstream social and economic arenas

Gender, the Welfare State, and public employment : A comparative study of seven industrialized countries

Abstract: Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the authors explore the influence of government employment on the gender gap in earnings in seven countries. They address four questions on the effects of public-sector employment on the gender gap in earnings : (1) do governments offer jobs that are comparatively high paying ? (2) does public employment benefit some workers, such as low-paid workers, more than others ? (3) are public-sector employment advantages explained by differences in worker characteristics and the occupational mix ? (4) what is the effect of public employment - its extent and its pay structure - on gender gaps in wages ? the results indicate marked variation across liberal, conservative, and social democratic Welfare States, but reveal a number of uniformities as well. In most of the seven countries in the sample, public-sector workers earn more on average than do workers in the private sector, and most earnings advantages are concentrated on the low end of the earnings distribution. The effect of public employment on the overall gender gap in wages is limited in most countries. The authors discuss the implications of these results for theory and research on gender and the Welfare State

Creating Status Characteristics

Abstract: Status characteristics constitute significant elements of small group and societal stratification systems, and understanding their creation has theoretical and practical importance. The authors generalize Cecilia L. Ridgeway's pathbreaking theory of status construction in three stages. First, they show that a conceptual change, using goal objects instead of exchangeable resources, permits to explain the creation of many more status characteristics. Second, they explicate an interaction mechanism, behavior interchange patterns, that can transform other characteristics into status characteristics, even creating status differences where no characteristic is salient. Third, they show how new characteristics themselves can be created and given status value from deviance and personality attribution processes. They briefly note some parallels with other theorists' work, suggest some independent tests, and consider theoretical and applied implications of this work