PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETINSekaquaptewa, Thompson / SOLO STATUSThe Differential Effects of Solo Status onMembers of High- and Low-Status GroupsDenise SekaquaptewaMischa ThompsonUniversity of MichiganIndividuals experience solo status when they are the only mem- Solo status is defined as being the only member ofbers of their social category (e.g., gender or race) present in a one’s social category in an otherwise homogenous groupgroup.Fieldresearchindicatesthatwomenandracialminorities (Lord & Saenz, 1985; Saenz & Lord, 1989). One of thearemoredebilitatedbysolostatusthanWhitemen.However,lab - key elements in defining solo status is context. For exam-oratory research indicates that men and women are equally debil- ple, a woman would not be a solo in the context of aitatedassolos.Wenotedthatlaboratorystudiesintroducedsolo mixed-gender workplace but would be in the ofstatus during learning, whereas field research examined solo sta- an all-male engineering class. Solo status arises from thetus at performance.Therefore, we predicted that high and low context and not group status per se and should thus besocial status group members would be differentially influenced understood as a situational condition, not necessarily aby solo status experienced during testing.In two laboratory chronic state or stigma (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998;experiments, men and women and African Americans and Frable, Blackstone, & Scherbaum, 1990; Goffman ...
Voir