The Network Dynamics of Status Construction: An Agent-Oriented Modeling Approach

Social Status is broadly understood as the position in a social hierarchy that results from accumulated acts of deference. In this paper we conceive the construction process of status as based on individual acts of deference driven by dynamic network dependencies. We suggest that status hierarchies are produced – and reinforced – by the accumulation of acts of deference all happening at the dyadic level. We adopt Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM) to examine the micro-foundation of status ordering by looking at dyadic relations of deference and by linking mechanisms of status emergence and reinforcement to testable dynamic network patterns. To this purpose we develop and test a model of status allocation that accounts for the unfolding of dyadic acts of deference as well as the resulting status dynamics in a group of individuals. We provide empirical estimates for our model using a longitudinal dataset that we have collected on a cohort of students enrolled in a professional management degree. We report empirical evidence that status hierarchies can be conceived as partially ordered sets structured by a tendency toward asymmetry and transitivity as well as perpetuated by status competition among the higher-ranking actors. We also confirm the results of previous work showing that both a socially endogenous inference mechanism (underlying the effect of an actors’ previous deference position on their future deference rewards) and a socially endogenous investment mechanism (underlying the feedback loop between status and performance), contribute to the self-reproducing and self-reinforcing character of status hierarchies.