Social status

Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. On the other hand, while people with higher status experience a litany of benefits--such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom--those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics. Importantly, status is based in widely shared beliefs about who members of a society judge as more competent or moral. While such beliefs can stem from an impressive performance or success, they can also arise from possessing characteristics a society has deemed meaningful like a person's race or occupation. In this way, status reflects how a society judges a person's relative social worth and merit--however accurate or inaccurate that judgement may be. Because societies use status to allocate resources, leadership positions, and other forms of power, status can make unequal distributions of resources and power appear natural and fair, supporting systems of social stratification. The sociologist Max Weber outlined three central aspects of stratification in a society: class, status, and power. In his scheme, which remains influential today, people possess status in the sense of honor because they belong to specific groups with unique lifestyles and privileges. Modern sociologists and social psychologists broadened this understanding of status to refer to one's relative level of respectability and honor more generally. Some writers have also referred to a socially valued role or category a person occupies as a "status" (e.g., gender, social class, ethnicity, having a criminal conviction, having a mental illness, etc.). As social network analysts, Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust Stanley cautioned "there is considerable disagreement among social scientists about the definitions of the related concepts of social position, social status, and social role.