Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

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Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

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Emergence of Stratification
in Small Groups
NOAH ASKIN, MATTHEW S. BOTHNER, and WONJAE LEE

Abstract
Stratification within small groups is virtually inevitable. Understanding the precise
mechanisms by which it occurs and the nature of its consequences is an important
sociological endeavor. Individuals’ preexisting qualities, as well as advantages
emerging from intra-group interactions, affect the flows of respect and deference
accruing to each member of a group. Differences in these flows in turn create a
hierarchy. In this essay, we first discuss foundational research on the causes and
consequences of stratification before turning to more current trends. We focus on
the ways in which status, the primary determinant of one’s location in a group’s
hierarchy, is created and maintained or lost. We discuss the Matthew Effect—a
process by which high-status group members receive disproportionate credit for
their contributions, and also more easily maintain their status. We also address the
circumstances and activities that can curb the Matthew Effect. We then move to
current research, which centers on two main concepts. First, we consider peer effects,
discussing the various means by which an individual’s closest peers shape his or her
status; second, we take a broader perspective by examining small groups as open
systems. This section considers how a group’s external environment, including
other nearby groups, affects the level and stability of within-group stratification. We
emphasize key issues and implications for future research on these topics.

INTRODUCTION
Much like aging for the individual, stratification within groups is everywhere and inexorable (Michels, [1915] 1962; Bales, 1950; Sherif, White, &
Harvey, 1955), although in some contexts it is reversible. Even in groups
where the understood goal is to preserve equality, parity, or homogeneity,
hierarchies regularly emerge and persist (Bothner, Kang, & Stuart, 2007;
Leifer, 1995). Whether group members become differentiated because of
variations in preexisting qualities or by virtue of uneven access to positional
advantages emerging from interaction, a typical pattern is for members of
groups to receive different levels of deference and respect, and thus to “fan
out” in status (cf. Dannefer, 1987).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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Understanding the precise mechanisms that give rise to this stratification
is an exciting and important intellectual mission. Some mechanisms create
status hierarchies that are highly unequal and stable, yielding, for example,
a small handful of superstars to whom middle-status counterparts obediently conform (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). Consider, for instance, an executive team led by “old sages,” in which the CEO and his trusted heir easily
control their lieutenants. Yet other mechanisms foster status orderings that
are more tightly packed and fluid, producing a very different “felt reality”
in which positions are shifting and slippery. Consider now an organization
filled with “young Vikings” whose CEO must stave off weekly mutinies.
Occasionally, such mutinies succeed, throwing the incumbent status hierarchy into upheaval.
These examples help bring into relief our primary motivations for pursuing a better understanding of stratification in small groups. First, we wish to
consider the topic generally, as stratification generates a host of positive and
negative outcomes: these include incentives, opportunities, and constraints
faced by individuals as inequality mounts, as well as the overall welfare
of whole groups as stratification gets sharper (Frank & Cook, 1995; Bothner, Podolny, & Smith, 2011). Our second motivation is to understand the
specific mechanisms by which stratification emerges. Focusing on mechanisms is important not only because distinct patterns of interaction result in
different levels of stratification; it is also the case that diverse paths to stratification may yield identical “final” status orderings, but very different levels
of stability. Stratification varies across small groups by intensity, but also by
permanence, so that some groups face durable inequality (Tilly, 1998), while
others possess hierarchies that are compressed and volatile. Gaining greater
clarity around the specific mechanisms at play permits us to learn more about
what shapes the level of status inequality, the degree of status stability, and
their consequences.
Toward these ends, our aim in this essay is to sketch new directions for
better understanding why, how, and to what extent stratification emerges in
small groups. Our point of departure is foundational work on the subject—an
important stream focused on how stable characteristics such as race, gender, and skill induce stratification among locally interacting individuals (e.g.,
Berger, Cohen, & Zelditch, 1972). While we lead with a brief review of this
literature in our next section, we also pursue a wider perspective on two
levels. First, although we subsequently discuss a classical example of the
small group—the Nortons street gang of Boston’s North End (Whyte, [1943]
1993)—we believe that small group research will benefit from a wider definition of the group. In particular, we envision relevant small groups not only
as executive teams (Morrill, 1995), laboratory task groups (Bales, 1950), and
bomber crews (Torrance, 1954). We also believe that important small groups

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include cliques of spatially dispersed scientists, who compete intensely for
peer recognition (Burt, 1978), and even strategically similar firms that closely
monitor each other (White, 2002). Small groups emerge and persist regardless of spatial distance among group members and irrespective of the kinds
of actors (people, organizations, or other aggregates) involved. What matters
in our estimation is that group members orient meaningfully to each other
and invest significantly in their relative standing. Further, defining groups
in this manner allows us to consider longitudinal dynamics and effects that
often fall outside the purview of research on small, colocated task groups.
Second, in addition to highlighting how individuals’ stable traits structure
dispersion in status, we draw attention to four additional bases for stratification. We contend that small groups are ultimately best seen as “open
systems” (Scott, 2002), and so after discussing internal processes, we close
with suggestions for future work that involves construing a focal small group
as embedded in a larger “group of groups.”
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
STATUS CHARACTERISTICS
Starting with Simmel and his discussion of triads, small groups—and especially differentiation within small groups—have been of interest to social scientists. Some of the earliest work on small group stratification aimed merely
to understand which individuals in a group held the highest position, and
what that meant for interaction and activity within the group (Bales, 1950;
Horvath, 1965). Horvath (1965), for example, proposed a model in which
those group members with the highest status speak first and interactions continue down the hierarchy, with each subsequent participant contributing less
than the previous. Similarly, in groups where status was experimentally produced (i.e., participants were given expectations about other group members’
status levels), judgments of contributions coincided with those status levels
(Sherif et al., 1955). That is, group members were judged as having performed
in accordance with their preestablished status levels, almost regardless of the
actual contributions made.
The logical next step to this research examined the effect of “status
characteristics”—race, gender, educational attainment—on participants’
preinteraction expectations. Each “level” within a status characteristic (e.g.,
“male” or “female”) is associated with preconceived notions about performance in different arenas, leading the members of newly established groups
to establish socially informed expectations about the future performance
of their colleagues based on those characteristics. This work has generally
found that those expectations are often manifested in the contributions

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of group members and in the consequential status hierarchy of the group
during a task. These phenomena, which are similar to the notion of the
self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1957), are the central elements of “expectation states theory,” a highly influential and foundational piece of research
on small group stratification. One of the main advantages of this line of
work is its ability to predict why some individuals and not others achieve
influence in groups tasked with reaching a common goal. Another attractive
theoretical feature of this research is its dual (i.e., nonreductionist) emphasis
on (i) individuals’ preexisting traits and (ii) group members’ perceptions of
the relevance of those traits for relative standing. For instance, occupational
differences are not simply “transplanted” (Tilly, 1998, p. 10) into a jury’s
emergent status order; rather, they “become salient when they either provide
a contrast among members in the situation … or are perceived to be relevant
to the shared task” (Ridgeway & Walker, 1995, p. 289).1
Before proceeding, an important distinction is essential for understanding the two main streams that have characterized research on stratification
in small groups. This distinction is between the previously described status characteristics—predominantly stable, although generally socially constructed, traits ascribed to an individual—and status more generally, which
refers to the amount of prestige and deference one is granted within a particular group or social context (Bonacich, 1987; Podolny, 1993). Status characteristics are external to a given group, while status itself is relational and
often coterminous with the group in which it was established. While status characteristics usually contribute to the formation of a status hierarchy
within a group, as seen in the expectation states work, the opposite is not
always possible. That is, although an individual may gain status in a particular group, that endowment of status does not automatically become a status
characteristic attached to that individual when she leaves the group in which
her status was gained. Unlike a status-conferring trait, status itself—defined
relationally—is inherently situational, rather than portable.
The effect of status on small group stratification is most interesting in situations where preexisting status levels are unknown or equal, meaning group
members are not easily differentiated via status characteristics.2 Accordingly,

1. See Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch (1980) and Ridgeway and Walker (1995, esp. pp. 287–296) for
more in-depth reviews of this early work on expectation states, status characteristics and small group
stratification.
2. Work on status characteristics has discussed such situations, as well. According to Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch (1980): “inconsistency in status characteristics increases equality—given a fixed number of status characteristics equally relevant to the task outcome, the greater the inconsistency of these
characteristics the less the differentiation among the actors in the group (see Humphreys and Berger 1979)”
(p. 500).

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dynamics and group outcomes are contingent on the status hierarchies that
develop ex post as opposed to ex ante.3
CURRENT RESEARCH AND KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
EMERGENT PROCESSES
The Matthew Effect Beyond their direct implications on stratification, status
characteristics can catalyze hierarchy formation even further when mixed
with an emergent process known as the Matthew Effect (Bothner, Haynes,
Lee, & Smith, 2010; Bothner, Podolny & Smith, 2011). When Merton (1968,
pp. 57–58, 62) first used this metaphor to discuss stratification among
scientists, he applied it on two planes: micro and macro.4 On a micro or
social-psychological plane, Merton used the metaphor to summarize a
process by which high-status scientists garner significantly more credit for
equal intellectual contributions than their less-well-regarded counterparts:
Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently in the late 1600s,
and although Leibniz’s calculus is closer to modern practice, Newton’s
status in the Royal Society channeled credit disproportionately in his
direction. On a macro or structural plane, Merton also used the metaphor to
depict a process, known as cumulative advantage, by which eminent scientists
benefit from positive feedback between intangible and tangible resources.
Although already of high status, these scientists end up even further ahead
of the rest of the field—much further out in front than one would predict
on the basis of skill alone: Einstein was certainly more gifted than his
contemporaries, but his monopolization of the genius label is also driven at
least in part by cumulative advantage. Such processes extend beyond the
scientific community to virtually any small group, proximate or otherwise,
leading to situations where the highest-status individuals in the group are
able, exclusively because of their existing status advantage, to extend their
advantage over others and reinforce an emergent hierarchical structure.
However, the self-reinforcing dynamic of the Matthew Effect may be
tempered by various factors, and so despite its tendency to fuel and
concretize inequality, the Matthew Effect also invites instability. It may
even trigger reversals in status. The countervailing factors fall into two
broad categories: predetermined checks and emergent by-products of status
hierarchy formation. Some examples of predetermined checks (i.e., external,
normative forces predating the focal small group’s founding) include strong
3. We refer those readers interested in the status characteristics work to the two review articles mentioned in footnote 2, as we will spend much of the remainder of this article further exploring the implications of the more general status on small group stratification.
4. Merton drew the term from a verse in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (25:29): “For unto every one that
hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath.”

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beliefs in the morality of redistribution (Merton, 1988) and a celebration
of bottom-to-top social mobility (Luhmann, 1987). The Matthew Effect is
marked by a “double injustice” in which marginal people are “unjustifiably
victimized” while their prestigious counterparts are “unjustifiably benefited” (Merton, 1968, p. 59). Consequently, it can attract and mobilize the
intervention of outsiders who wish to limit inequality or support underdogs’
ascent.
Four other checks on the Matthew Effect emerge reactively from within,
often as the result of the same forces that brought about the hierarchy in the
first place. These constraints typically arise after a wide chasm has formed
between elites and marginal actors. One such constraint is “that high-status
actors fear a loss of status because of any association with the low-status
actors” (Podolny, 2005, p. 37). Separate from elites’ need (by definition) to
ensure the presence of lower-ranked others, fear of guilt by association places
a limit on cumulative advantage. Although an “empire-builder” may wish
to take over the activities performed by other group members, he or she
also keenly wishes to avoid the stain of performing tasks tied to low status, and so the existing division of labor often persists. Second, to stay with
the empire-builder metaphor, an elite actor might grow distracted and complacent as a result of having achieved high status. Her inattention to the
core activities necessary for status-maintenance may trigger a fall from grace
(Bothner, Kim, & Smith, 2012).
A third check can surface from the bottom of the hierarchy. Imagine a group
leader desires to widen her influence by collaborating with those at the
group’s periphery. These peripheral members may eye the leader’s gesture
with suspicion, concerned that she lacks commitment and is reaching out
merely for show (Zuckerman & Kim, 2003, p. 30). The attempted land grab
and desired consequential status boost are thwarted. Lower-status members’
suspicion will be especially acute if the leader has historically been unable
(or unwilling) to send recognition back down the status hierarchy (Gould,
2002; Podolny, 2005, pp. 36–37).
A fourth restraint follows from the principle that high status individuals
must nonetheless endorse at least some members of the group. Expressing
the “dilemma of leadership,” Blau (1964, p. 203) noted that while elites must
keep some distance from their subordinates, full independence is untenable;
“earning [their] social approval” is also imperative. Without sending at least
some recognition down the hierarchy, influence (and thus status) would
cease. Yet, endorsing an underling can at times prove risky, leading to
positional churn and diminished stratification. This risk is the result of two
key features of status itself: its zero-sum nature and its tendency to diffuse or
be conducted through endorsements. When a leader endorses a lieutenant,
the status of the leader can so significantly “rub off” that the latter ends

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up catching, and even surpassing, the former in relative standing.5 In this
sense, elites may unwittingly sabotage their chances of benefiting from the
Matthew Effect.
What counteracts these counteracting factors are the “endogenous investments” (Sauder, Lynn, & Podolny, 2012; Simcoe & Waguespack, 2011)
of high-status actors. Individuals and organizations at the top of status
hierarchies are not only deeply interested in remaining at the top; given
the cost advantages associated with status, they are also uniquely poised
to shield their positions from others’ encroachments. High status organizations can more easily buy up talent (Podolny, 1993), and thus make hard
investments in the quality on which their status (at least partially) rests.
They can also send softer signals more readily than less prestigious rivals by
consuming conspicuously (Veblen, [1899] 1994): just as a top art critic might
host a Gatsby-like dinner party as a “feather display,” an elite winery can
ostentatiously use a helicopter to dry its vineyards to reiterate and reinforce
its top standing (Askin & Bothner, 2014; Mahenc & Meunier, 2006).
Other forms of endogenous investment include calculated gift-giving (e.g.,
Mauss, 1954)—designed to elicit future streams of deference—as well as
strategic role-reversals. High-status individuals often enjoy a remarkable
level of security (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001), and so can ephemerally allow,
or even encourage, their subordinates to “roast” them. In these orchestrated
role-reversals (cf. Wunderli, 1992), the “tough chin” and good humor of the
status-holder further lock in the existing status order.
Thus far, our discussion of emergent drivers of stratification in small
groups has revolved around a divide between high-status and lower-ranked
group members: often as a function of a salient characteristic, those with
a status advantage pull ahead, their lead is exaggerated by the Matthew
Effect, and what ultimately follows is a question of which social force wins
out: checks on cumulative advantage or elites’ endogenous investments.
While the Matthew Effect has been examined thoroughly in the literature,
it remains a topic of close scrutiny (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006). One interesting
path for taking this research further involves better understanding the
relative strengths of checks on cumulative advantage versus elites’ investments in status preservation. More specifically, under what conditions, and
through which specific strategies, are elites most likely to hold their ground?
5. As an example, Bothner et al. (2010, p. 85) describe a struggle for power between Steve Jobs and
John Sculley at Apple Computer: “Jobs, with charisma to spare but searching for a corporate mentor,
had successfully persuaded Sculley to leave a promising track at Pepsi and join him at Apple to “change
the world.” Jobs’ extraordinary status rapidly magnified Sculley in the Apple fold. Yet, after endorsing
Sculley, Jobs eventually found himself overtaken in stature by the former, as Sculley convinced Apple’s
board of directors in a moment of crisis to strip Jobs of his power. Thus, Jobs was (at least for several years)
surpassed in status by the one he had anointed to assist him.”

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Conversely, what sorts of interventions and emergent reactions are most
pernicious for those at the top?
Peer Effects. We turn now to a different emergent process—the impact of
proximate peers. Our interest—and we believe a fruitful area for future
research on small group stratification—is in the competitive pressures peers
apply, and the implications of those pressures. While peers do sometimes
cooperate with one another, in-group interaction is much more often
characterized by competition (e.g., Zuckerman & Sgourev, 2006).
Consider first two individuals, J and K, who regard each other as close peers
because their standing within a small group is similar (Burt, 1987; White,
2002). Imagine further that K “pulls ahead” of J on some valued dimension
that is a basis for status in the group. As long as J, K, and other group members
significantly value their status, we envision five kinds of peer effects that we
expect to influence the degree and stability of group-level inequality (Askin
& Bothner, 2012, pp. 1–7):
1. An Ecological Peer Effect. When K advances past J, J fails to respond, causing the two to swap locations in the status hierarchy.
2. Status Diffusion. K moves past J, but K’s “halo” (passively) gets transferred to J, so K and J jointly surpass L and M.
3. BIRGing. As K advances past J, J’s affiliation with K allows him to
(actively) “bask in the reflected glory” of K (Cialdini et al., 1976),
allowing both of them to again rise in status together.
4. A Cosmetic Contagion Effect. As K ascends in status, J responds with predominantly political actions, characterized by lobbying and other “influence activities” (Milgrom & Roberts, 1988) designed to curry favor
with other endorsers.
5. A Material Contagion Effect. As K rises in status, J again responds, but in
this situation, J’s response is mainly productive—marked by actions that
raise J’s quality or the welfare of the group collectively.
In this set, (1) is a baseline case: J and K simply trade places. Cases (2) and
(3) are similar, but differ in that (3) involves J’s active pursuit of K’s halo,
while in (2) the halo passes “automatically” via reciprocated ties between J
and K or via third-party gossip. Put differently, in (2), the knight rises quietly
with the king’s fame, while in (3) the knight maneuvers to gain credit for
the king’s ascent. Cases (4) and (5) involve more agency by J than in (3), yet
differ from each other in the value of the reaction to status-anxiety. J’s rise
is more attributable to active improvements in quality in (5), as opposed to
mere “window dressing” in (4).

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Status stability

(5) Material contagion effects

(4) Cosmetic contagion effects
(3) BIRGing
(2) Status diffusion

(1) Ecological peer effects
Low
High

Low
Status inequality

Figure 1 Expected links between peer mechanisms and group-level stratification
outcomes.

We suggest that the dominant ways in which peers respond to each other’s
status-movements will discernibly affect the structure and stability of status
distributions in small groups. Consider Figure 1, which is a two-dimensional
space with the degree of status dispersion (i.e., inequality) running from low
to high along the horizontal axis, and the temporal stability of status positions
extending from low to high on the vertical axis.
Unsurprisingly, we expect small groups dominated by ecological (case (1))
peer effects to occupy the southwest corner, marked by minimal inequality
and considerable churn. Conversely, our main prediction is that small groups
dominated by material contagion (case (5)) generally inhabit the northeast
corner, marked by substantial inequality and little churn. In our view, the
core issue is that the “pack-like” nature of status mobility is especially likely
under case (5). We speculate that the nature of J’s response in case (5) will
draw others in, putting pressure on a select few capable of keeping up. This
able subset can join J and K, spiraling upward together and leaving others
behind.
In contrast, our hypothesis is that small groups characterized by cases (2),
(3), and (4) typically reside closer to the midpoint of this space. Going back
to our sketch of checks on the Matthew Effect, status diffusion necessarily
limits inequality: those with high status end up (perhaps unwittingly)
sharing status with the people they endorse, necessarily descending (relatively) in status as a result. Cases (3) and (4) are intellectually interesting
mechanisms because they point directly to the fact that status ascent is

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frequently self-presentational and unearned. At the same time, these are also
fragile strategies for status ascent (Bothner, Smith, & White, 2010), and are
likely to invite considerable backlash from those peers who were passed.6
Our falsifiable prediction is that, under such conditions, a tighter and more
fluid hierarchy will emerge.
Beyond-Group Factors. Peer effects are wholly contained within the group in
question—only physically or cognitively proximate peers bring such effects
about—but there also exist forces outside of groups that shape stratification
within groups. Consideration of these external forces by definition introduces
a wider perspective on within-group dynamics, permitting an analysis of the
focal group as itself a member of a larger “group of groups.” While this represents a higher level of abstraction, it also provides a measure of context often
neglected in prior research (cf. Askin & Bothner, 2012, pp. 25–26).
We are persuaded that three beyond-group factors merit close attention in
new research on small groups. The first of these factors is the global status
of the group under scrutiny. Consider, as a brief thought experiment, how
a large shift in global status might have affected the Nortons street gang of
Whyte’s (1993, pp. 3–51) classic ethnography of Boston’s North End.7 While
the Nortons were marked by established internal pecking order, Whyte is
also clear that the Nortons collectively resided near the bottom of the broader
societal status hierarchy: groups of college-bound peers, politically involved
locals and even community club members all enjoyed higher group-status
than the handful of young men known for hanging out on Norton Street.
Our primary question is the following: What would happen if the Nortons,
under the direction of “Doc,” the gang’s leader, were to ascend as a group relative to other small groups in Boston’s North End? Would intragroup status
dispersion (i.e., the Nortons’ internal hierarchy) dilate or contract? One can
plausibly imagine that those gang members largely responsible for lifting the
global status of the Nortons would, in accordance with the Matthew Effect,
receive a disproportionate amount of credit, distancing themselves from others in the group. Conversely, members of a low-status group may have extra
incentive to avoid being “the lowest of the low,” a pressure that may diminish with elevated group status. Weaker incentives to press upwards within a
6. In fact, if this backlash is extreme, which could be the case should the focal actor’s behavior be
discovered as disturbingly hollow, cases (3) and (4) will move south and east in our two-dimensional
space: the punishment of self-presentational behavior destabilizes the status order and also may push an
elite actor further ahead of the rest of the field.
7. Some readers may be unfamiliar with this group and, more broadly, with Whyte’s ethnographic
classic Street Corner Society ([1943] 1993). While we recommend Whyte’s work to anyone interested in
Sociology, status, or small groups, for the purposes of our discussion, the Nortons are a group of young
men from blue collar, Italian families living in Boston. As a group, they reside at or near the bottom of
the local status hierarchy, yet the within-group struggle for status is very real, and elegantly described
throughout the first half of the book.

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group could lead to a more condensed status hierarchy—all of the Nortons
are happy just to be in a group of elevated status—or a more dispersed one
where the lower status individuals in the group do not mind being significantly outpaced by others. Examining the impact of global status dynamics
on within-group stratification is thus a complex task, and one that offers a
potentially high-payoff avenue for future research.
A second promising area for future work concerns the permeability of the
local status hierarchy boundary. That is, how likely are members of a group
able to transition out of one group into an adjacent, higher-status group? A
“thin wall” around a group could foster one of two within-group structures.
On the one hand, permeability may create an internal status distribution
that is increasingly skewed: sensing the opportunity to “break out,” strivers
redouble their efforts to distinguish themselves from their peers. On the other
hand, the local status hierarchy might be temporarily compressed as aspiring individuals see themselves in an “end game.” Focused on breaking into
a more elite group, endogenous investments in their current status cease,
and their local standing (at least ephemerally) falls. Such a strategy would
then be seen—should these individuals ultimately make an upward leap in
groups—as a “trampoline effect”: the contraction of the initial group’s hierarchy was a transitory descent before a global ascension by one or more social
climbers.
Third, there exists the opportunity for an external third party to exert influence over a local status hierarchy. In prior research, third parties are often portrayed as role-stabilizers, confirming and solidifying an already-congealing
structure [see Sauder (2006) on third-party arbiters and Burt (2005) on echo
effects]. However, third parties also represent an opportunity to disrupt a
local hierarchy when they appear during or after its formation. Returning
to the Nortons, a relevant example is their introduction to the “Aphrodite
girls.” This was a group of young women that served as potential romantic targets for the Nortons and with whom the Nortons engaged socially.
With the introduction to an external group, there is the opportunity for a
shift in the way that the Norton members are “valued.” In particular, one
can imagine a potential shift that is perhaps best seen in a distinction drawn
by Podolny and Hill-Popper (2004). In their framework, a third party’s move
from a “hedonic” to a “transcendent” conception of value involves construing an object (e.g., a painting, a college education, or even a person) very
differently: instead of rooting an object’s value in the satisfaction it offers
relative to comparable items (hedonic), its value is now inherent and grows
with the third party’s idiosyncratic and personal relationship with that object
(transcendent).
When a shift like this occurs, status itself becomes less significant: although
it ultimately turned out to be otherwise in Whyte’s (1993) account, imagine

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

that each woman in the Aphrodite group in fact found attractive the traits,
personality and quirks of each of the Nortons (and did so while uninfluenced
by status levels, their own or the Nortons). Suppose further that each Norton
was similarly attracted to a single member of the Aphrodite group, yielding a set of optimal matches. In our counter-factual scenario, each Norton
is “decoupled” from his status position in the street gang and “embedded”
in a new romantic relationship (White, 2002, pp. 200–220) within which he
is valued transcendently. Such a process could have rendered the Nortons’
internal hierarchy virtually moot even if the Aphrodite women had their own
highly stratified internal hierarchy. In our hypothetical, what matters is that
they each selected one of the Nortons in a manner that did not align with
that hierarchy. Extreme evidence of a shift to a transcendent conception of
value could have come in the form of the highest ranked Aphrodite woman
selecting one of the lowest-status Nortons for reasons having nothing to do
with his status, or lack thereof.
More generally, even though such situations are likely to be rare, it
behooves those at the floor of the internal status hierarchy to shift the rules
of interaction to the “transcendent plane” (White & White, 1993) in order
to render stratification less relevant. Such shifts cannot completely nullify
the preexisting (i.e., hedonic) status hierarchy, but instead draw attention
away from it. If a group, or a subset of that group’s members, finds new
social footing in relations with outsiders, the original hierarchy necessarily
becomes much less meaningful. Together with questions about group-level
status and the permeability of status boundaries, these potentially disruptive
third party effects represent additional ex-group processes worthy of deeper
exploration.
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strategy in U.S. higher education, 2006–2012. Working Paper.
Bales, R. F. (1950). A set of categories for the analysis of small group interaction.
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NOAH ASKIN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Noah Askin is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at
INSEAD in Fontainebleau. Noah received a joint PhD from the University
of Chicago’s Sociology Department and Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
He has an MA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and an MBA
from Booth, as well. Noah’s research interests include social and cultural
networks, status, the production and consumption of music, authenticity,
organizations, and higher education in the United States. His current
research focuses on two distinct areas. The first is the role and impact of
status among colleges and universities in the United States. The second is
on music: chart and industry dynamics, perceptions of authenticity, and
cultural innovation.
Personal webpage & CV: www.noahaskin.com
MATTHEW S. BOTHNER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Matthew S. Bothner is a Professor and Deutsche Telekom Chair in Leadership and HR Development at the European School of Management and Technology. His research examines the effects of individual and organizational
status on various outcomes in markets, including rates of tuition growth
among US colleges and universities and the life chances of venture capital
firms. He is also developing formal models to better understand the evolution and consequences of contests for status among individuals.
Personal webpage & CV: www.mattbothner.com
WONJAE LEE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Wonjae Lee is an Invited Professor at Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He received a PhD
in sociology from the University of Chicago. Before joining GSCT, he was a

16

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

senior researcher at ISDPR, Seoul National University, and a research associate at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. His research
interests include information diffusion, complex and social network analysis,
and economic sociology.
Email: wnjlee@kaist.ac.kr
RELATED ESSAYS
Elites (Sociology), Johan S. G. Chu and Mark S. Mizruchi
Enduring Effects of Education (Sociology), Matthew Curry and Jennie E.
Brand
Stratification in Hard Times (Sociology), Markus Gangl
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children (Sociology), Anne H.
Gauthier
The Emerging Psychology of Social Class (Psychology), Michael W. Kraus
Stratification and the Welfare State (Sociology), Stephanie Moller and Joya
Misra
Social Classification (Sociology), Elizabeth G. Pontikes
Class, Cognition, and Face-to-Face Interaction (Sociology), Lauren A. Rivera
The Future of Class Analyses in American Politics (Political Science), Jeffrey
M. Stonecash



Emergence of Stratification
in Small Groups
NOAH ASKIN, MATTHEW S. BOTHNER, and WONJAE LEE

Abstract
Stratification within small groups is virtually inevitable. Understanding the precise
mechanisms by which it occurs and the nature of its consequences is an important
sociological endeavor. Individuals’ preexisting qualities, as well as advantages
emerging from intra-group interactions, affect the flows of respect and deference
accruing to each member of a group. Differences in these flows in turn create a
hierarchy. In this essay, we first discuss foundational research on the causes and
consequences of stratification before turning to more current trends. We focus on
the ways in which status, the primary determinant of one’s location in a group’s
hierarchy, is created and maintained or lost. We discuss the Matthew Effect—a
process by which high-status group members receive disproportionate credit for
their contributions, and also more easily maintain their status. We also address the
circumstances and activities that can curb the Matthew Effect. We then move to
current research, which centers on two main concepts. First, we consider peer effects,
discussing the various means by which an individual’s closest peers shape his or her
status; second, we take a broader perspective by examining small groups as open
systems. This section considers how a group’s external environment, including
other nearby groups, affects the level and stability of within-group stratification. We
emphasize key issues and implications for future research on these topics.

INTRODUCTION
Much like aging for the individual, stratification within groups is everywhere and inexorable (Michels, [1915] 1962; Bales, 1950; Sherif, White, &
Harvey, 1955), although in some contexts it is reversible. Even in groups
where the understood goal is to preserve equality, parity, or homogeneity,
hierarchies regularly emerge and persist (Bothner, Kang, & Stuart, 2007;
Leifer, 1995). Whether group members become differentiated because of
variations in preexisting qualities or by virtue of uneven access to positional
advantages emerging from interaction, a typical pattern is for members of
groups to receive different levels of deference and respect, and thus to “fan
out” in status (cf. Dannefer, 1987).
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Understanding the precise mechanisms that give rise to this stratification
is an exciting and important intellectual mission. Some mechanisms create
status hierarchies that are highly unequal and stable, yielding, for example,
a small handful of superstars to whom middle-status counterparts obediently conform (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). Consider, for instance, an executive team led by “old sages,” in which the CEO and his trusted heir easily
control their lieutenants. Yet other mechanisms foster status orderings that
are more tightly packed and fluid, producing a very different “felt reality”
in which positions are shifting and slippery. Consider now an organization
filled with “young Vikings” whose CEO must stave off weekly mutinies.
Occasionally, such mutinies succeed, throwing the incumbent status hierarchy into upheaval.
These examples help bring into relief our primary motivations for pursuing a better understanding of stratification in small groups. First, we wish to
consider the topic generally, as stratification generates a host of positive and
negative outcomes: these include incentives, opportunities, and constraints
faced by individuals as inequality mounts, as well as the overall welfare
of whole groups as stratification gets sharper (Frank & Cook, 1995; Bothner, Podolny, & Smith, 2011). Our second motivation is to understand the
specific mechanisms by which stratification emerges. Focusing on mechanisms is important not only because distinct patterns of interaction result in
different levels of stratification; it is also the case that diverse paths to stratification may yield identical “final” status orderings, but very different levels
of stability. Stratification varies across small groups by intensity, but also by
permanence, so that some groups face durable inequality (Tilly, 1998), while
others possess hierarchies that are compressed and volatile. Gaining greater
clarity around the specific mechanisms at play permits us to learn more about
what shapes the level of status inequality, the degree of status stability, and
their consequences.
Toward these ends, our aim in this essay is to sketch new directions for
better understanding why, how, and to what extent stratification emerges in
small groups. Our point of departure is foundational work on the subject—an
important stream focused on how stable characteristics such as race, gender, and skill induce stratification among locally interacting individuals (e.g.,
Berger, Cohen, & Zelditch, 1972). While we lead with a brief review of this
literature in our next section, we also pursue a wider perspective on two
levels. First, although we subsequently discuss a classical example of the
small group—the Nortons street gang of Boston’s North End (Whyte, [1943]
1993)—we believe that small group research will benefit from a wider definition of the group. In particular, we envision relevant small groups not only
as executive teams (Morrill, 1995), laboratory task groups (Bales, 1950), and
bomber crews (Torrance, 1954). We also believe that important small groups

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

3

include cliques of spatially dispersed scientists, who compete intensely for
peer recognition (Burt, 1978), and even strategically similar firms that closely
monitor each other (White, 2002). Small groups emerge and persist regardless of spatial distance among group members and irrespective of the kinds
of actors (people, organizations, or other aggregates) involved. What matters
in our estimation is that group members orient meaningfully to each other
and invest significantly in their relative standing. Further, defining groups
in this manner allows us to consider longitudinal dynamics and effects that
often fall outside the purview of research on small, colocated task groups.
Second, in addition to highlighting how individuals’ stable traits structure
dispersion in status, we draw attention to four additional bases for stratification. We contend that small groups are ultimately best seen as “open
systems” (Scott, 2002), and so after discussing internal processes, we close
with suggestions for future work that involves construing a focal small group
as embedded in a larger “group of groups.”
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
STATUS CHARACTERISTICS
Starting with Simmel and his discussion of triads, small groups—and especially differentiation within small groups—have been of interest to social scientists. Some of the earliest work on small group stratification aimed merely
to understand which individuals in a group held the highest position, and
what that meant for interaction and activity within the group (Bales, 1950;
Horvath, 1965). Horvath (1965), for example, proposed a model in which
those group members with the highest status speak first and interactions continue down the hierarchy, with each subsequent participant contributing less
than the previous. Similarly, in groups where status was experimentally produced (i.e., participants were given expectations about other group members’
status levels), judgments of contributions coincided with those status levels
(Sherif et al., 1955). That is, group members were judged as having performed
in accordance with their preestablished status levels, almost regardless of the
actual contributions made.
The logical next step to this research examined the effect of “status
characteristics”—race, gender, educational attainment—on participants’
preinteraction expectations. Each “level” within a status characteristic (e.g.,
“male” or “female”) is associated with preconceived notions about performance in different arenas, leading the members of newly established groups
to establish socially informed expectations about the future performance
of their colleagues based on those characteristics. This work has generally
found that those expectations are often manifested in the contributions

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

of group members and in the consequential status hierarchy of the group
during a task. These phenomena, which are similar to the notion of the
self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1957), are the central elements of “expectation states theory,” a highly influential and foundational piece of research
on small group stratification. One of the main advantages of this line of
work is its ability to predict why some individuals and not others achieve
influence in groups tasked with reaching a common goal. Another attractive
theoretical feature of this research is its dual (i.e., nonreductionist) emphasis
on (i) individuals’ preexisting traits and (ii) group members’ perceptions of
the relevance of those traits for relative standing. For instance, occupational
differences are not simply “transplanted” (Tilly, 1998, p. 10) into a jury’s
emergent status order; rather, they “become salient when they either provide
a contrast among members in the situation … or are perceived to be relevant
to the shared task” (Ridgeway & Walker, 1995, p. 289).1
Before proceeding, an important distinction is essential for understanding the two main streams that have characterized research on stratification
in small groups. This distinction is between the previously described status characteristics—predominantly stable, although generally socially constructed, traits ascribed to an individual—and status more generally, which
refers to the amount of prestige and deference one is granted within a particular group or social context (Bonacich, 1987; Podolny, 1993). Status characteristics are external to a given group, while status itself is relational and
often coterminous with the group in which it was established. While status characteristics usually contribute to the formation of a status hierarchy
within a group, as seen in the expectation states work, the opposite is not
always possible. That is, although an individual may gain status in a particular group, that endowment of status does not automatically become a status
characteristic attached to that individual when she leaves the group in which
her status was gained. Unlike a status-conferring trait, status itself—defined
relationally—is inherently situational, rather than portable.
The effect of status on small group stratification is most interesting in situations where preexisting status levels are unknown or equal, meaning group
members are not easily differentiated via status characteristics.2 Accordingly,

1. See Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch (1980) and Ridgeway and Walker (1995, esp. pp. 287–296) for
more in-depth reviews of this early work on expectation states, status characteristics and small group
stratification.
2. Work on status characteristics has discussed such situations, as well. According to Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch (1980): “inconsistency in status characteristics increases equality—given a fixed number of status characteristics equally relevant to the task outcome, the greater the inconsistency of these
characteristics the less the differentiation among the actors in the group (see Humphreys and Berger 1979)”
(p. 500).

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

5

dynamics and group outcomes are contingent on the status hierarchies that
develop ex post as opposed to ex ante.3
CURRENT RESEARCH AND KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
EMERGENT PROCESSES
The Matthew Effect Beyond their direct implications on stratification, status
characteristics can catalyze hierarchy formation even further when mixed
with an emergent process known as the Matthew Effect (Bothner, Haynes,
Lee, & Smith, 2010; Bothner, Podolny & Smith, 2011). When Merton (1968,
pp. 57–58, 62) first used this metaphor to discuss stratification among
scientists, he applied it on two planes: micro and macro.4 On a micro or
social-psychological plane, Merton used the metaphor to summarize a
process by which high-status scientists garner significantly more credit for
equal intellectual contributions than their less-well-regarded counterparts:
Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently in the late 1600s,
and although Leibniz’s calculus is closer to modern practice, Newton’s
status in the Royal Society channeled credit disproportionately in his
direction. On a macro or structural plane, Merton also used the metaphor to
depict a process, known as cumulative advantage, by which eminent scientists
benefit from positive feedback between intangible and tangible resources.
Although already of high status, these scientists end up even further ahead
of the rest of the field—much further out in front than one would predict
on the basis of skill alone: Einstein was certainly more gifted than his
contemporaries, but his monopolization of the genius label is also driven at
least in part by cumulative advantage. Such processes extend beyond the
scientific community to virtually any small group, proximate or otherwise,
leading to situations where the highest-status individuals in the group are
able, exclusively because of their existing status advantage, to extend their
advantage over others and reinforce an emergent hierarchical structure.
However, the self-reinforcing dynamic of the Matthew Effect may be
tempered by various factors, and so despite its tendency to fuel and
concretize inequality, the Matthew Effect also invites instability. It may
even trigger reversals in status. The countervailing factors fall into two
broad categories: predetermined checks and emergent by-products of status
hierarchy formation. Some examples of predetermined checks (i.e., external,
normative forces predating the focal small group’s founding) include strong
3. We refer those readers interested in the status characteristics work to the two review articles mentioned in footnote 2, as we will spend much of the remainder of this article further exploring the implications of the more general status on small group stratification.
4. Merton drew the term from a verse in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (25:29): “For unto every one that
hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath.”

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

beliefs in the morality of redistribution (Merton, 1988) and a celebration
of bottom-to-top social mobility (Luhmann, 1987). The Matthew Effect is
marked by a “double injustice” in which marginal people are “unjustifiably
victimized” while their prestigious counterparts are “unjustifiably benefited” (Merton, 1968, p. 59). Consequently, it can attract and mobilize the
intervention of outsiders who wish to limit inequality or support underdogs’
ascent.
Four other checks on the Matthew Effect emerge reactively from within,
often as the result of the same forces that brought about the hierarchy in the
first place. These constraints typically arise after a wide chasm has formed
between elites and marginal actors. One such constraint is “that high-status
actors fear a loss of status because of any association with the low-status
actors” (Podolny, 2005, p. 37). Separate from elites’ need (by definition) to
ensure the presence of lower-ranked others, fear of guilt by association places
a limit on cumulative advantage. Although an “empire-builder” may wish
to take over the activities performed by other group members, he or she
also keenly wishes to avoid the stain of performing tasks tied to low status, and so the existing division of labor often persists. Second, to stay with
the empire-builder metaphor, an elite actor might grow distracted and complacent as a result of having achieved high status. Her inattention to the
core activities necessary for status-maintenance may trigger a fall from grace
(Bothner, Kim, & Smith, 2012).
A third check can surface from the bottom of the hierarchy. Imagine a group
leader desires to widen her influence by collaborating with those at the
group’s periphery. These peripheral members may eye the leader’s gesture
with suspicion, concerned that she lacks commitment and is reaching out
merely for show (Zuckerman & Kim, 2003, p. 30). The attempted land grab
and desired consequential status boost are thwarted. Lower-status members’
suspicion will be especially acute if the leader has historically been unable
(or unwilling) to send recognition back down the status hierarchy (Gould,
2002; Podolny, 2005, pp. 36–37).
A fourth restraint follows from the principle that high status individuals
must nonetheless endorse at least some members of the group. Expressing
the “dilemma of leadership,” Blau (1964, p. 203) noted that while elites must
keep some distance from their subordinates, full independence is untenable;
“earning [their] social approval” is also imperative. Without sending at least
some recognition down the hierarchy, influence (and thus status) would
cease. Yet, endorsing an underling can at times prove risky, leading to
positional churn and diminished stratification. This risk is the result of two
key features of status itself: its zero-sum nature and its tendency to diffuse or
be conducted through endorsements. When a leader endorses a lieutenant,
the status of the leader can so significantly “rub off” that the latter ends

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

7

up catching, and even surpassing, the former in relative standing.5 In this
sense, elites may unwittingly sabotage their chances of benefiting from the
Matthew Effect.
What counteracts these counteracting factors are the “endogenous investments” (Sauder, Lynn, & Podolny, 2012; Simcoe & Waguespack, 2011)
of high-status actors. Individuals and organizations at the top of status
hierarchies are not only deeply interested in remaining at the top; given
the cost advantages associated with status, they are also uniquely poised
to shield their positions from others’ encroachments. High status organizations can more easily buy up talent (Podolny, 1993), and thus make hard
investments in the quality on which their status (at least partially) rests.
They can also send softer signals more readily than less prestigious rivals by
consuming conspicuously (Veblen, [1899] 1994): just as a top art critic might
host a Gatsby-like dinner party as a “feather display,” an elite winery can
ostentatiously use a helicopter to dry its vineyards to reiterate and reinforce
its top standing (Askin & Bothner, 2014; Mahenc & Meunier, 2006).
Other forms of endogenous investment include calculated gift-giving (e.g.,
Mauss, 1954)—designed to elicit future streams of deference—as well as
strategic role-reversals. High-status individuals often enjoy a remarkable
level of security (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001), and so can ephemerally allow,
or even encourage, their subordinates to “roast” them. In these orchestrated
role-reversals (cf. Wunderli, 1992), the “tough chin” and good humor of the
status-holder further lock in the existing status order.
Thus far, our discussion of emergent drivers of stratification in small
groups has revolved around a divide between high-status and lower-ranked
group members: often as a function of a salient characteristic, those with
a status advantage pull ahead, their lead is exaggerated by the Matthew
Effect, and what ultimately follows is a question of which social force wins
out: checks on cumulative advantage or elites’ endogenous investments.
While the Matthew Effect has been examined thoroughly in the literature,
it remains a topic of close scrutiny (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006). One interesting
path for taking this research further involves better understanding the
relative strengths of checks on cumulative advantage versus elites’ investments in status preservation. More specifically, under what conditions, and
through which specific strategies, are elites most likely to hold their ground?
5. As an example, Bothner et al. (2010, p. 85) describe a struggle for power between Steve Jobs and
John Sculley at Apple Computer: “Jobs, with charisma to spare but searching for a corporate mentor,
had successfully persuaded Sculley to leave a promising track at Pepsi and join him at Apple to “change
the world.” Jobs’ extraordinary status rapidly magnified Sculley in the Apple fold. Yet, after endorsing
Sculley, Jobs eventually found himself overtaken in stature by the former, as Sculley convinced Apple’s
board of directors in a moment of crisis to strip Jobs of his power. Thus, Jobs was (at least for several years)
surpassed in status by the one he had anointed to assist him.”

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Conversely, what sorts of interventions and emergent reactions are most
pernicious for those at the top?
Peer Effects. We turn now to a different emergent process—the impact of
proximate peers. Our interest—and we believe a fruitful area for future
research on small group stratification—is in the competitive pressures peers
apply, and the implications of those pressures. While peers do sometimes
cooperate with one another, in-group interaction is much more often
characterized by competition (e.g., Zuckerman & Sgourev, 2006).
Consider first two individuals, J and K, who regard each other as close peers
because their standing within a small group is similar (Burt, 1987; White,
2002). Imagine further that K “pulls ahead” of J on some valued dimension
that is a basis for status in the group. As long as J, K, and other group members
significantly value their status, we envision five kinds of peer effects that we
expect to influence the degree and stability of group-level inequality (Askin
& Bothner, 2012, pp. 1–7):
1. An Ecological Peer Effect. When K advances past J, J fails to respond, causing the two to swap locations in the status hierarchy.
2. Status Diffusion. K moves past J, but K’s “halo” (passively) gets transferred to J, so K and J jointly surpass L and M.
3. BIRGing. As K advances past J, J’s affiliation with K allows him to
(actively) “bask in the reflected glory” of K (Cialdini et al., 1976),
allowing both of them to again rise in status together.
4. A Cosmetic Contagion Effect. As K ascends in status, J responds with predominantly political actions, characterized by lobbying and other “influence activities” (Milgrom & Roberts, 1988) designed to curry favor
with other endorsers.
5. A Material Contagion Effect. As K rises in status, J again responds, but in
this situation, J’s response is mainly productive—marked by actions that
raise J’s quality or the welfare of the group collectively.
In this set, (1) is a baseline case: J and K simply trade places. Cases (2) and
(3) are similar, but differ in that (3) involves J’s active pursuit of K’s halo,
while in (2) the halo passes “automatically” via reciprocated ties between J
and K or via third-party gossip. Put differently, in (2), the knight rises quietly
with the king’s fame, while in (3) the knight maneuvers to gain credit for
the king’s ascent. Cases (4) and (5) involve more agency by J than in (3), yet
differ from each other in the value of the reaction to status-anxiety. J’s rise
is more attributable to active improvements in quality in (5), as opposed to
mere “window dressing” in (4).

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

High

9

Status stability

(5) Material contagion effects

(4) Cosmetic contagion effects
(3) BIRGing
(2) Status diffusion

(1) Ecological peer effects
Low
High

Low
Status inequality

Figure 1 Expected links between peer mechanisms and group-level stratification
outcomes.

We suggest that the dominant ways in which peers respond to each other’s
status-movements will discernibly affect the structure and stability of status
distributions in small groups. Consider Figure 1, which is a two-dimensional
space with the degree of status dispersion (i.e., inequality) running from low
to high along the horizontal axis, and the temporal stability of status positions
extending from low to high on the vertical axis.
Unsurprisingly, we expect small groups dominated by ecological (case (1))
peer effects to occupy the southwest corner, marked by minimal inequality
and considerable churn. Conversely, our main prediction is that small groups
dominated by material contagion (case (5)) generally inhabit the northeast
corner, marked by substantial inequality and little churn. In our view, the
core issue is that the “pack-like” nature of status mobility is especially likely
under case (5). We speculate that the nature of J’s response in case (5) will
draw others in, putting pressure on a select few capable of keeping up. This
able subset can join J and K, spiraling upward together and leaving others
behind.
In contrast, our hypothesis is that small groups characterized by cases (2),
(3), and (4) typically reside closer to the midpoint of this space. Going back
to our sketch of checks on the Matthew Effect, status diffusion necessarily
limits inequality: those with high status end up (perhaps unwittingly)
sharing status with the people they endorse, necessarily descending (relatively) in status as a result. Cases (3) and (4) are intellectually interesting
mechanisms because they point directly to the fact that status ascent is

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

frequently self-presentational and unearned. At the same time, these are also
fragile strategies for status ascent (Bothner, Smith, & White, 2010), and are
likely to invite considerable backlash from those peers who were passed.6
Our falsifiable prediction is that, under such conditions, a tighter and more
fluid hierarchy will emerge.
Beyond-Group Factors. Peer effects are wholly contained within the group in
question—only physically or cognitively proximate peers bring such effects
about—but there also exist forces outside of groups that shape stratification
within groups. Consideration of these external forces by definition introduces
a wider perspective on within-group dynamics, permitting an analysis of the
focal group as itself a member of a larger “group of groups.” While this represents a higher level of abstraction, it also provides a measure of context often
neglected in prior research (cf. Askin & Bothner, 2012, pp. 25–26).
We are persuaded that three beyond-group factors merit close attention in
new research on small groups. The first of these factors is the global status
of the group under scrutiny. Consider, as a brief thought experiment, how
a large shift in global status might have affected the Nortons street gang of
Whyte’s (1993, pp. 3–51) classic ethnography of Boston’s North End.7 While
the Nortons were marked by established internal pecking order, Whyte is
also clear that the Nortons collectively resided near the bottom of the broader
societal status hierarchy: groups of college-bound peers, politically involved
locals and even community club members all enjoyed higher group-status
than the handful of young men known for hanging out on Norton Street.
Our primary question is the following: What would happen if the Nortons,
under the direction of “Doc,” the gang’s leader, were to ascend as a group relative to other small groups in Boston’s North End? Would intragroup status
dispersion (i.e., the Nortons’ internal hierarchy) dilate or contract? One can
plausibly imagine that those gang members largely responsible for lifting the
global status of the Nortons would, in accordance with the Matthew Effect,
receive a disproportionate amount of credit, distancing themselves from others in the group. Conversely, members of a low-status group may have extra
incentive to avoid being “the lowest of the low,” a pressure that may diminish with elevated group status. Weaker incentives to press upwards within a
6. In fact, if this backlash is extreme, which could be the case should the focal actor’s behavior be
discovered as disturbingly hollow, cases (3) and (4) will move south and east in our two-dimensional
space: the punishment of self-presentational behavior destabilizes the status order and also may push an
elite actor further ahead of the rest of the field.
7. Some readers may be unfamiliar with this group and, more broadly, with Whyte’s ethnographic
classic Street Corner Society ([1943] 1993). While we recommend Whyte’s work to anyone interested in
Sociology, status, or small groups, for the purposes of our discussion, the Nortons are a group of young
men from blue collar, Italian families living in Boston. As a group, they reside at or near the bottom of
the local status hierarchy, yet the within-group struggle for status is very real, and elegantly described
throughout the first half of the book.

Emergence of Stratification in Small Groups

11

group could lead to a more condensed status hierarchy—all of the Nortons
are happy just to be in a group of elevated status—or a more dispersed one
where the lower status individuals in the group do not mind being significantly outpaced by others. Examining the impact of global status dynamics
on within-group stratification is thus a complex task, and one that offers a
potentially high-payoff avenue for future research.
A second promising area for future work concerns the permeability of the
local status hierarchy boundary. That is, how likely are members of a group
able to transition out of one group into an adjacent, higher-status group? A
“thin wall” around a group could foster one of two within-group structures.
On the one hand, permeability may create an internal status distribution
that is increasingly skewed: sensing the opportunity to “break out,” strivers
redouble their efforts to distinguish themselves from their peers. On the other
hand, the local status hierarchy might be temporarily compressed as aspiring individuals see themselves in an “end game.” Focused on breaking into
a more elite group, endogenous investments in their current status cease,
and their local standing (at least ephemerally) falls. Such a strategy would
then be seen—should these individuals ultimately make an upward leap in
groups—as a “trampoline effect”: the contraction of the initial group’s hierarchy was a transitory descent before a global ascension by one or more social
climbers.
Third, there exists the opportunity for an external third party to exert influence over a local status hierarchy. In prior research, third parties are often portrayed as role-stabilizers, confirming and solidifying an already-congealing
structure [see Sauder (2006) on third-party arbiters and Burt (2005) on echo
effects]. However, third parties also represent an opportunity to disrupt a
local hierarchy when they appear during or after its formation. Returning
to the Nortons, a relevant example is their introduction to the “Aphrodite
girls.” This was a group of young women that served as potential romantic targets for the Nortons and with whom the Nortons engaged socially.
With the introduction to an external group, there is the opportunity for a
shift in the way that the Norton members are “valued.” In particular, one
can imagine a potential shift that is perhaps best seen in a distinction drawn
by Podolny and Hill-Popper (2004). In their framework, a third party’s move
from a “hedonic” to a “transcendent” conception of value involves construing an object (e.g., a painting, a college education, or even a person) very
differently: instead of rooting an object’s value in the satisfaction it offers
relative to comparable items (hedonic), its value is now inherent and grows
with the third party’s idiosyncratic and personal relationship with that object
(transcendent).
When a shift like this occurs, status itself becomes less significant: although
it ultimately turned out to be otherwise in Whyte’s (1993) account, imagine

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

that each woman in the Aphrodite group in fact found attractive the traits,
personality and quirks of each of the Nortons (and did so while uninfluenced
by status levels, their own or the Nortons). Suppose further that each Norton
was similarly attracted to a single member of the Aphrodite group, yielding a set of optimal matches. In our counter-factual scenario, each Norton
is “decoupled” from his status position in the street gang and “embedded”
in a new romantic relationship (White, 2002, pp. 200–220) within which he
is valued transcendently. Such a process could have rendered the Nortons’
internal hierarchy virtually moot even if the Aphrodite women had their own
highly stratified internal hierarchy. In our hypothetical, what matters is that
they each selected one of the Nortons in a manner that did not align with
that hierarchy. Extreme evidence of a shift to a transcendent conception of
value could have come in the form of the highest ranked Aphrodite woman
selecting one of the lowest-status Nortons for reasons having nothing to do
with his status, or lack thereof.
More generally, even though such situations are likely to be rare, it
behooves those at the floor of the internal status hierarchy to shift the rules
of interaction to the “transcendent plane” (White & White, 1993) in order
to render stratification less relevant. Such shifts cannot completely nullify
the preexisting (i.e., hedonic) status hierarchy, but instead draw attention
away from it. If a group, or a subset of that group’s members, finds new
social footing in relations with outsiders, the original hierarchy necessarily
becomes much less meaningful. Together with questions about group-level
status and the permeability of status boundaries, these potentially disruptive
third party effects represent additional ex-group processes worthy of deeper
exploration.
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NOAH ASKIN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Noah Askin is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at
INSEAD in Fontainebleau. Noah received a joint PhD from the University
of Chicago’s Sociology Department and Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
He has an MA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and an MBA
from Booth, as well. Noah’s research interests include social and cultural
networks, status, the production and consumption of music, authenticity,
organizations, and higher education in the United States. His current
research focuses on two distinct areas. The first is the role and impact of
status among colleges and universities in the United States. The second is
on music: chart and industry dynamics, perceptions of authenticity, and
cultural innovation.
Personal webpage & CV: www.noahaskin.com
MATTHEW S. BOTHNER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Matthew S. Bothner is a Professor and Deutsche Telekom Chair in Leadership and HR Development at the European School of Management and Technology. His research examines the effects of individual and organizational
status on various outcomes in markets, including rates of tuition growth
among US colleges and universities and the life chances of venture capital
firms. He is also developing formal models to better understand the evolution and consequences of contests for status among individuals.
Personal webpage & CV: www.mattbothner.com
WONJAE LEE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Wonjae Lee is an Invited Professor at Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He received a PhD
in sociology from the University of Chicago. Before joining GSCT, he was a

16

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

senior researcher at ISDPR, Seoul National University, and a research associate at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. His research
interests include information diffusion, complex and social network analysis,
and economic sociology.
Email: wnjlee@kaist.ac.kr
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