Diffuse Status Characteristics

Status characteristics have been a part of societies throughout the world tracing back hundreds of years, thus the reason the status characteristics theory was developed. The purpose of the status characteristics theory is to rank individuals within society based on a number of factors. Within the theory there are specific and diffuse status characteristics that decide the ranking of the individual. Diffuse status characteristics are general characteristics that evaluate multiple states at a time. Within the United States we have five main diffuse status characteristics: race, gender, age, education, and attractiveness. Using these five characteristics, you were able to eliminate eleven of the twelve jurors and ultimately select a Foreperson. Within this jury you could not use the characteristics of race and attractiveness. All twelve of the jurors were Caucasian, the advantaged race, and you were not able to decipher attractiveness based on the low quality of the photographs. This left me with three diffuse status characteristics to eliminate as many of the jurors as possible. Starting with gender, easiest characteristic to distinguish, we eliminated the four females (G.L.E., A.B.S., L.M., M.M.), since being male is the advantageous state. Next, age was brought into context. Being middle aged is the advantaged state. With that being …show more content…
Using the diffuse and specific characteristics, along with scope conditions this task was accomplished. The top three jurors in order, M.E.C., J.E.C., and J.W.R., were seen to have a higher ranking than the rest of the jury. Ultimately juror M.E.C. was selected to be the Foreperson for the jury, based on his higher education and current job, thus meaning he had the highest ranking of the twelve jurors based on the status characteristics