Yan Li : Sociology : Reed College

Are people quick to adopt status beliefs about a social difference that lead them to treat others unequally? In a test of status construction theory, two experiments show that men and women form equally strong status beliefs from only two encounters with others. Men act powerfully on these new beliefs in their next encounters with others but women do not, possibly because women face greater social risks for acting on ambiguous status advantages. Women are just as likely as men, however, to treat someone unequally on the basis of an established status distinction. This suggests that men are first movers in the emergence of status distinctions, but women eventually adopt the distinctions as well. Our results show that people readily transform social differences into status distinctions.distinctions that act as formidable forces of inequality.

In spite of the relative success of equal opportunity laws on women's status in the workplace, we know little about the influence of such legal interventions on people's attitudes and beliefs. This paper focuses, in particular, on how sexual harassment policy affects men's beliefs about the gender hierarchy. We employ an experimental design in which we measure the effect of a policy intervention on men's explicit and implicit gender beliefs. Results show that the sexual harassment policy did not alter explicit gender beliefs. Explicit beliefs changed in a different way, however. Compared to the baseline condition, participants in the policy intervention condition believed that most people think both men and women are lower-status, less competent, and less considerate. The policy intervention also affected implicit gender beliefs. Participants in the policy condition displayed more entrenched male-advantaged gender beliefs compared to the baseline condition. We interpret this as evidence that sexual harassment policies may have the unintended effect of activating unequal gender beliefs, which run contrary to the policy's equalizing aims. This research also suggests the value of measuring both explicit and implicit gender beliefs.