Controlling and Transferring Status Effects of Gender

University Of North Carolina At Charlotte, Charlotte NC

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0317985 Lisa Slattery Rashotte University of North Carolina-Charlotte This study consists of a two-year program of laboratory experiments that investigates ways to control how gender status affects interaction in mixed groups of women and men. A considerable body of research has demonstrated that status characteristics such as gender confer advantages and disadvantages in face-to-face groups, including differences in participation rates, influence over individuals and over group decisions, and perceptions of skill at group tasks. This study extends prior analytic work to develop and assess theoretically guided interventions for the case of gender. The theory guiding these experiments suggests three different kinds of interventions: (1) overcoming status effects by introducing additional characteristics, (2) reversing status effects by controlling task definitions, and (3) altering performance expectations for a particular partner and allowing those to generalize to other individuals possessing the same characteristic (here, same gender). The experiments create each kind of intervention. Next, the theory predicts that such treated expectations will transfer across actors and situations to new group settings and new tasks. Other experimental conditions permit assessing the theory's predictions regarding transfer effects. The research seeks to (1) assess theoretical derivations regarding status organizing processes, including the aggregation mechanism and a recent assumption regarding transfer effects that has not been fully assessed empirically; (2) develop new laboratory techniques to create complex status situations re; (3) develop theory-driven intervention strategies to counter undesirable cases of status advantages and disadvantages; and (4) provide a foundation for further research on other status characteristics such as age or skin color. Broader Impacts The study will provide research training in laboratory and interviewing techniques, and in data analysis and report writing for both undergraduate and graduate research assistants, and thus contributing to the infrastructure in the Sociology Department. The study design and results of the experiments will be integrated in the PI's advanced undergraduate and graduate theory courses that I teach. Also, results can potentially contribute the conceptualization of a coherent theoretical perspective for analyzing and intervening natural situations of undesirable gender-linked inequalities.