Social status is very important. Most people will make considerable efforts to improve their status. But what exactly is status? How does it relate to roles? We’ll see that role and status are two sides of the same coin.
Social position, status, and role
We live in society, we participate in different groups, and our identity is very much about which groups we belong to — and about what our position is in those groups. Social position determines our social life.
Our social position can be described in terms of our role and our status. These two terms are often confused, and, frankly, the psychological literature on the subject can be confusing. Here I offer two clear and operational definitions. I will then explain how they are related and how you can achieve better status. But first, let us look at the operational definitions, coined by Stoetzel (1961).
Your role is the set of behaviours that others can legitimately expect from you.
Your status is the set of behaviours you can legitimately expect from others.
For example: In my role as a professor, I am expected to teach my students, answer their questions, mark their work, and give them constructive feedback. In my role as a customer in a shop, I am expected to pay for what I buy, etc. These are all behaviours: they are observable.
In my status as a professor, I can legitimately expect my students to listen to me, to read what I tell them to read, and to hand in their work on time. In my status as a customer, I can expect the shop assistant to help me find what I want, and to give me some of the goods on sale in exchange for money. Again, these are all observable behaviours: that is why these definitions are operational.
We see that status and role are related. A role comes with a status and vice versa. These pairs allow us to predict how typical people (e.g. the professor, the customer, the policeman, the nurse, etc.) will behave according to their role; and how we should behave towards them according to their status.
The social contract: ‘you do this, you get that’
Society works efficiently because we all play our part. This is called the social division of labour. The way this division works is by enforcing ‘social contracts’ that define what people are supposed to do (and to get) according to their position in the grand scheme of the social system. In practice, this social contract links a role to a status: ‘you do this, you get that’ (Lahlou, 2024).
If someone does not respect their social contract, problems arise because expectations are not met: the division of labour cannot take place properly. For example, if a nurse does not take care of the patient, if a professor does not deliver the lecture, and so on. In such cases, society usually brings the person back on track by making them behave properly. This may or may not be done gently.
You can expect others to behave according to your status. Because you can expect; you can demand. And your demand is legitimate, which means it is supported by society. This is also a definition of authority. Someone with “high” status can demand that others behave in a certain way and expect to be obeyed. So, they become a “manager” of the social system.
If you have high status, you can expect “more”, or better, behaviour from others.
How can one get high status?
As role and status are two sides of the same coin — social position — you can improve your status by improving your position. This can be done by playing your role well.
Playing your role well proves that you know the rules and follow them. This shows that you are a reliable contributor to society, a good member of the group. Therefore, the group can count on you to behave properly, to be a guardian of the rules: you can be trusted to become one of the regulators and managers of the group. This will probably lead you to social promotion: getting a new, enhanced social contract. And as you are given the privileges that come with your new status, you are encouraged to play your new role as enforcer and leader. This is why job promotions tend to go to those who play their role well.
In short, if you want to achieve higher status, play your role well. Society tends to reward those who contribute well to the grand game of the social division of labour, because doing so is essential to society.
The expectations are not always explicit. The notion of ‘psychological contract’ addresses this difference between what is formally expected in the employment contract and what is legitimately expected of the employee. For example, while the formal employment contract may state that you work from nine to five, the psychological contract often assumes that you are expected to stay later if there is an important work emergency, but that you can informally leave earlier if you have a doctor’s appointment.
Life is not so simple!
The notion of “social contract” is more general than the employment psychological contract. It encompasses what is legitimately expected, formally or otherwise, of the parties involved in the social division of labour anywhere in society: at work, at home, in public, etc. Indeed, in each context, your social position and status depend on how well you fulfill your social contract: if you want to get others to do what you expect, you have to act as they expect (‘you do this, you get that’!).
There is more than the social contract in the participation in a group and in society. Perhaps economists overemphasise its transactional aspect. But its functional aspect remains necessary for the smooth societal division of labour, so it does account for a substantial part of our behaviour.
The principle behind roles and statuses is simple and will facilitate your understanding of relationships, behind the discourse that dresses them.
Nevertheless, in practice, things can be complex because roles and statuses are local to each context (a shop, a hospital, at home). Each of us has many statuses, because we play many roles. In a given situation, we usually have to consider several of these roles, play accordingly, and avoid contradictions and faux pas.
The social game is a subtle game!