Envy Up, Scorn Down How Status Divides Us by Susan T. Fiske

Author:Susan T. Fiske
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781610447096
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Published: 2011-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Challenging the System

Besides attempting group mobility through collective action or individual mobility through defection, low-status groups sometimes contest the legitimacy of the entire status system. Groups may choose which dimensions make relevant comparisons in order to come out on top. For example, although high-status groups favor themselves in status-relevant domains (such as competence), low-status groups often switch to status-irrelevant domains, a creative maneuver to achieve self-respect.56 Both the Dutch and the Turkish-Dutch see status-irrelevant dimensions (hospitable, tradition-minded, family-oriented, faithful, respectful toward the elderly) as more characteristic of the Turkish, but only those of Dutch origin think that status-relevant dimensions (efficient, achievement-oriented, disciplined, successful, persevering) are more characteristic of the Dutch.57

In a parallel case, competing schools carve up the achievement landscape in similar ways, according to status, and they salvage the group-esteem of the lower-status school by handing over some status-irrelevant crumbs. The more selective school is admitted by both schools to be the more academically elite—this being the status-relevant characteristic—but the lower-status school is allowed to be nicer.58 In research conducted with Julian Oldmeadow, students from two local colleges rated themselves and each other on traits related to competence (smart, capable, intelligent, efficient) and warmth (sincere, friendly, trustworthy, likable). Then they allocated points to anonymous in-group and out-group members, separating academic and sports abilities, these representing domains of intellectual competence and interpersonal teamwork, respectively.

All participants recognized the status differences and the rivalry, both academic and athletic. The lower-status students identified more strongly with their school, as in other research showing ironically that higher-status groups do not bother as much with their identity group (because they do not need it). But both groups implicitly agreed to trade identity domains. Both ceded more competence than warmth to the high-status school, but more warmth than competence to the low-status school. What is more, the high-status students emphasized the competence differences and rewarded themselves accordingly for academics, while the low-status students emphasized the warmth differences and rewarded themselves for sports teamwork ability.59

Each group sought to define a positive distinction for itself. One view is that competence is more verifiable than warmth.60 The more subjective warmth dimension is therefore more serviceable to a low-status group as a flexible option for challenging the hierarchy. For example, stereotypes often paint women and minorities as warm but not so smart, and these societal subordinate groups may even endorse these stereotypes of themselves.61 Another view is that appeasing low-status groups with a low-cost giveaway—warmth—pacifies them and stabilizes the status quo.62 The patterns go even further: warmth and competence do more than justify or challenge the system, as the next section indicates.

Mapping Society

No society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to ridicule, to scorn, to protect.

—Honoré de Balzac (1855/1975, 324, translated by the author)

Four Kinds of People: Friends and Foes, Able and Unable

Balzac was describing society's combined reactions to one type of person, but he was uncannily right about how society distinguishes four kinds of people—the pitied, the ridiculed, the scorned, and the protected—and he could not

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