Creating and spreading status beliefs

In this article, two experiments support status construction theory's claim that interaction spreads status beliefs through behavior, creating a diffu sion process that makes widely shared beliefs possible. The first demonstra tes that people who hold a status belief can "teach" it by treating the oth er in accord with the belief. The second shows that third-party participant s who witness such behavioral treatments also acquire the status belief. Th e first experiment also verifies a general mechanism by which interaction c reates status beliefs: nominally different participants developed shared st atus beliefs about the difference from the repeated enactment of influence hierarchies corresponding to the difference. This general mechanism suggest s that any structural condition that gives one group a systematic advantage in gaining influence over another group in intergroup encounters will fost er the development of widely shared status beliefs favoring the advantaged group.