Socially valued traits generate expectations of competence that determine who speaks, who is heeded and who defers, even where the trait is irrelevant to the task.
The theory's experimental programme put strangers to work on tasks with no relation to age, sex, education or occupation, and found that participation and influence still sorted by those characteristics. The mechanism is expectation rather than prejudice: everyone, including the disadvantaged member, anticipates who will be competent, and the anticipation produces the behaviour that confirms it.
In practice
- A working group's quietest member is the one whose job title carries least weight, and her suggestions are adopted when repeated by someone else.
- A panel that never discusses status arrives at a speaking order that predicts status precisely.