Status inconsistency

Status inconsistency is a situation where an individual's social positions have both positive and negative influences on his or her social status. For example, a teacher may have a positive societal image (respect, prestige) which increases their status but may earn little money, which simultaneously decreases their status.

Advocates of the concept propose that status inconsistency has consequences for social action that cannot be predicted from the so-called "vertical" dimensions of status alone. (In statistical terms, it is an interaction effect). Introduced by Gerhard Lenski in the 1950s, the concept has remained controversial with limited empirical verification. One unresolved question is whether people who are judged by sociologists to be status inconsistent actually feel they are somehow under-rewarded or over-rewarded. Blocker and Riedesel (1978) employed more than the usual statistical controls and found evidence of neither a correlation between "objective" and "subjective" status inconsistency, nor of effects of either on hypothesized behavior that was independent of the vertical dimensions of status.

All societies have some basis for social stratification, and industrial societies are characterized by multiple dimensions to which some vertical hierarchy may be imputed. The notion of status inconsistency is simple: it is defined as occupying different vertical positions in two or more hierarchies. The complexity and dynamism of modern societies results in both social mobility, and the presence of people and social roles in these inconsistent or mixed status positions. Sociologists investigate issues of status inconsistency in order to better understand status systems and stratification, and because some sociologists believe that positions of status inconsistency might have strong effects on peoples behavior. In this line of reasoning people may react to an inconsistent status position as problematic, and thus may change their behavior, their patterns of sociation, or otherwise act to resolve the inconsistent position. During the last fifty years social researchers have investigated and debated evidence about how, where, why, and to what extent status inconsistency affects social action.

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