PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lauren Valentino
TI  - Status Lenses: Mapping Hierarchy and Consensus in Status Beliefs
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.7.05
DP  - 2022 Nov 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 89--110
VI  - 8
IP  - 7
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/7/89.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/7/89.full
AB  - Research on status beliefs demonstrates that judgments of status are not always universally shared and are shaped by social structural factors. Building on this literature, I introduce the concept of status lenses, reflecting a hierarchical-nonhierarchical dimension and a consensus-dissensus dimension of how social groups view the status order. Using data from the 2012 General Social Survey module on occupational prestige, the most common measure of status in sociology, I find that groups use different status lenses depending on their proximity to the traditional centers of power in the United States. Men, Whites, college-educated, and higher-earning groups have a diffuse consensus status lens; women have a discriminating consensus status lens; and Black, noncollege degree, and lower-earning groups have a discriminating dissensus status lens.