Status Characteristics Among Older Individuals: The Diminished Significance of Gender

Abstract

Previous theory and experimental research suggest that gender operates as a status characteristic in social interaction. Here I test an alternative hypothesis based on evolutionary psychology that gender may not work as a status characteristic when individuals are older (aged over 50). In an experimental study, pairs of subjects (young men with young women, older men with older women) were asked to make a series of decisions about a gender-neutral, perceptual task with input from their partners. I find that while gender operated as a status characteristic for younger individuals, it did not operate as a status characteristic for older individuals. In addition, older individuals were more resistant to influence on average than younger individuals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this research was previously presented at the Group Processes Conference, August 15, 2002, and the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 16–19, 2002. The author would like to thank Murray Webster for the use of the Group Processes Lab and equipment, including videos and software for this study, and for his assistance with experimental design and recruiting. Of course, any problems are my own doing. I would also like to thank Joe Whitmeyer for comments and assistance; Charles Brody, Samuel Clark, Christine Horne, Alan Miller, Pierre van den Berghe, Henry Walker, and Murray Webster for comments; and Rebecca Jing Tang and Stephanie Southworth-Brown for research assistance. This work was funded in part by a University of North Carolina Faculty Research grant.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Other studies demonstrate gender operating as a status characteristic (e.g., Wagner, Ford, and Ford 1986; Foschi 1996; Foddy and Smithson 1999); although in all these studies the effect may appear stronger because subjects were given information that past research had shown that males performed better at the experimental task than females.

² The decision was made to use real partners rather than a single videotaped partner to minimize the possibility that any particular traits in the videotaped partner would bias the experimental results. That is, assuming a particular videotaped partner has identical effects on both male and female participants, one can control for videotaped partner effects by comparing male and female average P(s) when paired with the same male videotaped partner, and by comparing male and female average P(s) when paired with the same female videotaped partner. This gives us male–male compared to female–male comparison, and the female–female compared to male–female comparison. The problem remains however, if we attempt to compare female–male average P(s) with male–female average P(s), as is the case here. In this case, any difference in average P(s) between female–male and male–female pairs may be because of some unknown quality (unrelated to gender) of either or both of the videotaped opposite sex partners. Using multiple partners reduces the potential for such bias, as partner traits may be assumed to be randomized, but probably at the expense of greater variance. Using a real partner also enhanced the believability of the experimental scenario for the participants.

³ For example, one older woman said that she knew from experience with scores from a common IQ test (the WISC test) that men typically performed better on spatial tasks. She said that given that she saw the contrast sensitivity task as a spatial task, she thought her male partner would be better at it, and acted accordingly. Her convictions meant that she ignored important instructions, that is, that contrast sensitivity abilities are unrelated to other abilities (such as spatial abilities).