DUGUID AND GONCALO bout the psycho ical and behavioral tatus tha ared with participants in the middle-statu he eis to broad esults o make trated it cleanl suggest that the threat of stat loss may tie together and U-shan Irelationship bet and confe (Ba Middle Status and the Threat of Status Los 958:Blat 955:Dite Kelley Kelley 1954 s of iduals are mor aintain their stat when face e it i in fa and to idlosing fee that they ha cry lit othing left to los ns of an nt of the 105 ern psychological res arch.Indeed,the idea of mid Kelley,1956). ition with onfidence.High n the ical sc g (Ad (En 001).that rk has not yet addre al intera nd feedback,high-s s with mi the The carly yTescarchonstatusandconformiyyieldtedinconsisten why.For exa ple.Kelle and Shapiro atus indiv luals feel thr wh lly r asked to rate,b phery of the high tatu en led to be by the ays th vhich they d just efly feel y iewed them a ork were also th e least likel ing beh d with being female group' do not want to as a mem a group tha ved as highly accepab .200 sum,middle-sta ay be a follo p experiment.Dittes and Kelley (1956)replic solving and task performance ined man ion of status that led some】 Creativity and Status they were highly acceptabl ateeory was missine from the previou deed,one of the attractive features of a status hierarchy is that i erves to reduce destructive forms of conflict and prom ote volu ured their pror ty to conform to the gre Chou Galinskv 2011).n0 mid estatus may be called upon to implement decisions made by lying psychological mechanism associated with middle status pro￾vides a starting point for investigating interesting new questions about the psychological and behavioral consequences of status that were not proposed in the early research, which was focused nar￾rowly on conformity to a group majority. Hence, our second objective is to broaden the focus of existing research to investigate the consequences of middle status for problem solving and task performance. We suggest that the threat of status loss may make those with middle status more wary of advancing creative solu￾tions out of fear that they will be evaluated negatively. Middle Status and the Threat of Status Loss A growing stream of research investigates the consequences of status, but existing research has almost exclusively compared the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of those with high and low status. There are in fact many situations in which individuals may find themselves in a middle-status position— knowing that they are not the most respected, influential, and prestigious person in a group, but also that they are more respected, influential, and prestigious than others (Homans, 1961). Those with middle status may be an important but overlooked segment of the social hierar￾chy in modern psychological research. Indeed, the idea of middle￾status conformity was intriguing but largely forgotten in social psychology by the early 1970s (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). And though the concept of middle-status conformity has attracted some attention in the sociological literature (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001), that work has not yet addressed or identified the underlying psychological process that causes individuals with middle status to more readily conform to a group majority. The early research on status and conformity yielded inconsistent results, and when middle-status conformity did emerge, it was not clear why. For example, Kelley and Shapiro (1954) conducted a seminal experiment in which participants were shown to a room in small groups and asked to introduce themselves to each other. They were asked to rate, based on this brief initial interaction, how acceptable they found each of the other participants as a potential coworker. Each participant was then led to believe that they were viewed by the others as either not at all acceptable (low status) or highly acceptable (high status). Finally, the participants were asked to complete a task that measured their willingness to con￾form to the group with which they had just briefly interacted. The results showed that the participants who thought their group viewed them as unacceptable coworkers were also the least likely to conform to the group’s opinion. There was much more unex￾plained variance, however, among participants who believed that they were viewed as highly acceptable coworkers—some readily conformed, whereas others were more likely to resist majority pressure. In a follow-up experiment, Dittes and Kelley (1956) replicated the procedure of the previous experiment but introduced a more fine-grained manipulation of status that led some participants to believe they were highly acceptable to the group, not at all accept￾able to the group, or about average. This latter middle-status category was missing from the previous experiment. After each participant clearly understood their relative standing in the group, they were then asked to complete a decision-making task that measured their propensity to conform to the group’s decision—a decision that was clearly incorrect given the available evidence. The results showed that the participants with the highest status were less likely to conform and more likely to dissent from the group judgment compared with participants in the middle-status condition. Unlike the previous experiment, however, conformity in the low-status condition was not as low as conformity in the high-status condition. In other words, taken together, the results of the two studies pointed toward middle-status conformity, though neither study demonstrated it cleanly. We suggest that the threat of status loss may tie together and explain these inconsistent early results pointing to an inverted U-shaped relationship between status and conformity (Bartos, 1958; Blau, 1955; Dittes & Kelley, 1956; Kelley & Shapiro, 1954). The threat of status loss is a particularly potent threat because individuals are more motivated to maintain their status when faced with the prospect of losing it than to gain status in situations in which there is an opportunity to acquire it. Indeed, individuals are willing to pay more money and to exert more effort to avoid losing status than to gain it (Pettit, Yong, & Spataro, 2010). Individuals at the very bottom of the status hierarchy may feel that they have very little or nothing left to lose in terms of esteem that had not already been taken from them. Thus, they are less likely to be threatened by further status loss (Blau, 1955; Dittes & Kelley, 1956). Conversely, being at the top of the social hierarchy may mitigate the threat of status loss by infusing individuals in this position with confidence. High-status actors enjoy greater psycho￾logical well-being (Adler et al., 2000), ego satisfaction (Barkow, 1989), and self-esteem (Emerson, 1962). Given this stream of positive social interaction and feedback, high-status individuals are also more likely to trust others (Lount & Pettit, 2012). In contrast to both the low- and high-status individuals, the threat of status loss may be most salient in the middle of the status hierarchy. Research on social mobility lends support to the notion that middle-status individuals feel threatened in situations in which status loss is possible. Socially mobile individuals are those who manage to gain more status than their lower status counterparts but still remain on the periphery of the high-status group (Chattopad￾hyay, Tluchowska, & George, 2004). These individuals strive to maintain their middle-status position or increase their status, and are very cautious not to act in ways that might interfere with this goal (Davis & Watson, 1982; Duguid, 2011; Ibarra, 1995; Phin￾ney, 1990). For example, there is evidence that women who make it into the top tiers of their organizations but still feel like they are perceived as peripheral or marginal group members make a point of emphasizing behaviors not associated with being female, be￾cause they do not want to be classified as a member of a group that generally has lower status in most organizational contexts (Elle￾mers, 2001; Ely, 1994). In sum, middle-status individuals may be particularly threatened by the prospect of losing status. This con￾cern with status loss may have significant implications for problem solving and task performance. Creativity and Status Middle-status conformity is not necessarily dysfunctional—in￾deed, one of the attractive features of a status hierarchy is that it serves to reduce destructive forms of conflict and promote volun￾tary cooperation and coordination between group members (Ha￾levy, Chou & Galinsky, 2011). In organizations, individuals with middle status may be called upon to implement decisions made by This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 2 DUGUID AND GONCALO