ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the factors that encourage the individual to make status evaluations. It discusses the function of the status system and the circumstances favoring its emergence. Status evaluations will be most likely when members of a face-to-face group interact frequently, with few opportunities for privacy, when they obviously have pretty much the same realms of power, and when their outcomes cover a not-too-wide range. A status system exists when there is general agreement, or consensus, as to the status of each group member. Status consensus has one further consequence which may also furnish part of the low-status person's motivation to accept it. Adams describes an investigation of status congruency. By status congruency he means the degree to which the various members of a group have the same rank order on a variety of dimensions related to status. One might expect immobilized low-status persons to avoid, if possible, instigations from the higher status outcomes.
