Status inconsistency

Status inconsistency, Statusinkongruenz or Statusdiskrepanz ( opposite: Status consistency or Statuskongruenz ) is when a person takes in terms of their social status on various dimensions of a different rank high rank space.

Gerhard Lenski chose to measure four different rank dimensions (vertical hierarchies) of, on the one hand because of the importance for the national stratification system, on the other hand, because of the accessibility of data: income, occupation, education level, ethnicity.

It is assumed that the thesis that man strives to satisfy his needs by one, even if this comes at the expense of his fellow man. A person with inconsistent state rank places it will therefore prefer in a relevant action for this situation to occur in doubt, according to his higher status. His interaction partners, however, will prefer to treat him his lower rank order according. It is then easy to foresee that such a situation of mutual frustration and stress will result.

The attempt of the replicability of the results of Lenski has led to numerous studies with conflicting results. 1990, a study was conducted by Pamela Kerscheke - Risch, in which they tried to explain the contradictory results of the Statusinkonsistenztheorie with numbers of ALLBUS of 1980 and 1986. In this respect, it differed descriptive, not evaluative between positive and negative status inconsistency in the direction of the deviation. With their study, they showed that only negative status inconsistency leads to liberal / progressive voting behavior and the blanket judgment that status inconsistency generally about to progressive / leads to stress and liberal voting behavior is incorrect. But even among those with negative status inconsistency were found two opposing behavioral tendencies. On one hand, the tendency to political protest, on the other hand, the tendency to disinterest and apathy. The effects mentioned showed up regardless of whether the persons perceived or not her objective status inconsistency subjective.

Andrzej Malevsky 's main focus is the detection of " Statuskongruenz " on the discrepancy between the presented by a person status factors and the normative expectations that cherishes its social environment in this respect.

In a society that makes it the norm that you always have to be ahead of the other, a nose, status inconsistency will spoil those affected by the interaction outside their primary groups. One hypothesis is that they tend increasingly, the stratification system in question and to make this legitimating political order in question.

If the number of persons affected by status inconsistency may represent only a minority of the community, this can lead to yet be sought to explain why individuals who might actually be counted due to certain status characteristics to the social elite, under certain circumstances politically rather low status layers solidarity.