Status Spillovers: How Status in One Group Influences Perceptions and Behavior in Other Groups

How do individuals experience gains or losses in relative status as they move from one group to another? This project contributes to the emerging body of work on the dynamic nature of status by exploring how moving between groups where individuals hold different status levels influences status self- perceptions, behavior and influence. I advance two pairs of competing hypotheses, suggesting that gaining and losing status may lead to either anchoring on their previous status level, or overshooting the extent to which their status actually changed. I find evidence that indeed individuals holding the same objective level of status experience it differently depending on whether they come from groups where they held higher or lower status (Study 1). In particular, status losers anchor on their prior higher level and underestimate how much status they actually lost, and status gainers overshoot their interpretation of the change in status and overestimate how much status they actually gained. I also find evidence for the mediating role of self-esteem in status losers’ overestimated self-perceptions of status, but not for the role of optimism in status gainers’ status perceptions (Study 2). Gaining and losing status seems to have consequences beyond self-perceptions, with evidence that status gainers perform worse than status losers (Study 3). I discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.