Current Research

Copies of published manuscripts available upon request.

Status characteristics theory applies in task-oriented, collectively-oriented settings, but status structures often seem to persist beyond those task groups. For example, when a meeting disbands and employees go to lunch together, we tend to see that the manager does most of the talking, guides the discussion, and so on–just as we would expect in a task group. I conducted a pilot study experimentally testing the conditions under which status structures that arise in task groups continue to produce behavioral inequality in social groups. Pilot results support the hypothesis that when actors anticipate future task-oriented interaction, the status structure continues to affect behavior even in social groups. The full study is in progress.

This study examines whether people perceive higher status actors as more or less likely to honestly report the amount of work that they do compared to lower status actors. We expect that those with higher status characteristics are more likely to exaggerate their performance, and we use this vignette study as a proof of concept ahead of a laboratory experiment (under way) that behaviorally tests this prediction.

This is a methodological study comparing the behavioral predictions of AI models and of affect control theory (ACT) to human behavioral predictions; that is, do AI predictions or ACT predictions more closely match human predictions? If AI models more closely match human predictions, can AI supplement ACT research?

This meta-analysis examines changes in status effects of personal and social characteristics (e.g., race and gender) over time by comparing effects to those of specific ability characteristics. Both published and unpublished research reports mixed findings regarding the behavioral inequality that characteristics like gender produce. By comparing the effects of social and ability characteristics over time, we investigate whether characteristics like gender no longer produce significant behavioral differences within task groups in US society or if there are methodological explanations for the reported decline in behavioral inequality among some types of social characteristics.