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Social Categories Create and Reflect Inequality: Psychological and Sociological Insights

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The Psychology of Social Status

Abstract

Social categories both create and reflect inequality. Macro, overarching forces, and individual, perceiver biases each contribute. First, we review perspectives deriving from classic sociological and prevailing psychological social psychology, including both interpersonal fluidity and cognitive economy. Social psychologists have implicated several specific categories in social inequality. We then discuss the two that have garnered the most focus (race and gender), and next the less-studied ones (age disability, sexuality, social class, and weight). Afterward, we focus on a theory that ties together all these categories, the stereotype content model. Other structural, group-based hierarchy perspectives compliment these perspectives. Broader perspectives from social cognition highlight how categories are often automatic, at times ambiguous and ambivalent, often complex, and ultimately driven by stereotype content and sociostructural forces. Clearly much remains for social psychologists interested in hierarchy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Michael S. North

  2. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, USA

    Susan T. Fiske

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  1. Michael S. North
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  2. Susan T. Fiske
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Correspondence to Michael S. North .

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  1. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

    Joey T. Cheng

  2. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Jessica L. Tracy

  3. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

    Cameron Anderson

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North, M., Fiske, S. (2014). Social Categories Create and Reflect Inequality: Psychological and Sociological Insights. In: Cheng, J., Tracy, J., Anderson, C. (eds) The Psychology of Social Status. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0867-7_12

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