Status inconsistency is a situation where an individual's social positions have both positive and negative influences on his or her social status. For example, a teacher may have a positive societal image (respect, prestige) which increases their status but may earn little money, which simultaneously decreases their status.
Advocates of the concept propose that status inconsistency has consequences for social action that cannot be predicted from the so-called "vertical" dimensions of status alone. (In statistical terms, it is an interaction effect). Introduced by Gerhard Lenski in the 1950s, the concept has remained controversial with limited empirical verification. One unresolved question is whether people who are judged by sociologists to be status inconsistent actually feel they are somehow under-rewarded or over-rewarded. Blocker and Riedesel (1978) employed more than the usual statistical controls and found evidence of neither a correlation between "objective" and "subjective" status inconsistency, nor of effects of either on hypothesized behavior that was independent of the vertical dimensions of status.
Read more about Status Inconsistency: General Description, Theory and Its Development, Outstanding Issues, See Also
Famous quotes containing the word status:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)