I don’t know whether that suffices to clear things up. In case it doesn’t, some more words about the “Bob and Carol in a fight” scenario: Suppose you see two acquaintances having an argument. Usually this indicates that at least one of them has been unreasonable somehow. Your initial assumption on seeing them cross at one another might be that Bob has been unreasonable to Carol, or that Carol has been unreasonable to Bob. (If you have a sufficiently well trained mind, you may be able to avoid such assumptions. I think many people can’t.) In the—admittedly unlikely—event that there are no other factors at all to favour one of those assumptions over the other, I am guessing (and it is only a guess) that on balance the higher-status person would tend to get the benefit of the doubt, and more people would jump to “Low-Status-Guy has done something stupid / creepy / offensive” than to the equivalent guess about High-Status-Guy.
Hmm. I understand your point now, yes. However, I have two objections.
First: supposing that Bob and Carol are both members of your informal social group, what you say (“on balance the higher-status person would tend to get the benefit of the doubt”) seems true. However, it seems to me that in such a case, the status model that would best predict who would get the benefit of the doubt, and how much, and when, would not be the “purely relative” model. I can easily think of many cases, from my actual experience, where two people disagree/argue, and neither or both of them get the benefit of the doubt, because they have equivalent/comparable social status (in a situation where, if one of them were arguing with someone of lower social status, they would have gotten the benefit of the doubt).
Second: supposing that Bob and Carol are, instead, members of a formal hierarchy (like at a workplace), then, it seems to me, many people will often give the lower-status (and lower-ranking) person the benefit of the doubt, and assume the higher-status (and higher-ranking) person is abusing power, being foolish, etc.[1]
Now, let me not accuse you of dogmatism, since you did add this caveat:
In the—admittedly unlikely—event that there are no other factors at all to favour one of those assumptions over the other …
I guess what I would say is, “no other factors at all” is something that happens so rarely that it’s hard to even discuss the scenario coherently. Maybe it never happens! What if other factors are always present? What if that’s necessarily true? I don’t claim this, but it’s not obvious to me how we’d establish otherwise…
[1] This is basically the entire premise of Dilbert, which is not exactly an obscure comic strip; and lest you think I am generalizing from fictional evidence, recall that Scott Adams famously gets regular letters from readers expressing shock at how accurately the strip portrays their actual, everyday office existence (despite that the strip includes trolls, talking animals, etc.). In any case, this is hardly an unfamiliar phenomenon to anyone who’s had to work in a good-sized organization.
I don’t think I understand your first objection. It seems to say that when there’s a dispute between A and B, and neither A nor B has higher status than the other, onlookers don’t give the benefit of the doubt to either … which is precisely what the relative-status model we’re talking about predicts should happen. How is this an objection?
On the second objection: I agree that many may assume that higher formal-hierarchy position makes a person more likely to be in the wrong. But status is not quite the same thing as position in a formal hierarchy, and I think it’s possible to have both “assume lower-status people have wronged higher-status people rather than the other way around” and “assume formal superiors have wronged formal inferiors rather than the other way around” as heuristics. Also … consider why people might have that latter heuristic. Presumably it’s because higher-ups not infrequently do abuse their authority. Which is to say, they wrong people lower down in the hierarchy and get away with it because of their position.
Of course “no other factors at all” is a vanishingly rare situation. My expectation is that status effects are frequently present but often not alone, and I focused on the situation where there are no other effects for the sake of clarity. When (as usual) there are other effects, the final outcome will result from combining all the effects; the specific effects of status will be hard to disentangle but I see no reason to expect them to vanish just because other things are also present.
I don’t think I understand your first objection. It seems to say that when there’s a dispute between A and B, and neither A nor B has higher status than the other, onlookers don’t give the benefit of the doubt to either … which is precisely what the relative-status model we’re talking about predicts should happen. How is this an objection?
It’s an objection because what you said was that people’s behavior in such a case is predicted by a status model in which it cannot be true that “neither A nor B has higher status than the other”. But I am saying that, empirically, this does happen in such cases, therefore the status model in question (what we’ve been calling the “purely relative” model) is inapplicable / not predictive.
Also … consider why people might have that latter heuristic. Presumably it’s because higher-ups not infrequently do abuse their authority. Which is to say, they wrong people lower down in the hierarchy and get away with it because of their position.
Indeed, but this is very different from third parties concluding that said higher-ups must be ethically / procedurally / etc. “in the right”! Anyway, I think we’ve gotten somewhat far afield in this branch of the conversation, and I am happy to let it drop (unless you think there’s more that’s worth saying, here).
On the second objection: […]
Most of what you say here is reasonable, but simply goes to the point that—as you say later—‘“no other factors at all” is a vanishingly rare situation’. I am not convinced that it’s possible to (a) assume a “purely relative” status model, (b) properly integrate other factors, (c) cleanly separate out the one from the other. It seems to me that a less rigid status model would generally be more predictive. (After all, it is not like we are measuring some objectively real thing, some quantity which corresponds to some clearly separable physical phenomenon! There is no “status” primitive, out in the world…) But I am open to seeing it done the former way.
I still don’t understand what you’re saying about that first objection. What’s this model in which it “cannot be true” that neither A nor B has higher status than the other?
If you’re saying that that can never happen in a “purely relative” system, then what I don’t understand is why you think that. If you’re saying something else, then what I don’t understand is what other thing you’re saying.
It seems to me that there’s no inconsistency at all between a “purely relative” system and equal or incomparable statuses. Equal status for A and B means that all status effects work the same way for A as for B (and in particular that if there’s some straightforward status-driven competition between A and B then, at least as far as status goes, they come out equal). Incomparable status would probably mean that there are different sorts of status effect, and some of them favour A and some favour B, such that in some situations A wins and in some B wins.
I don’t dispute (indeed, I insist on) the point that it’s vanishingly rare to have no other factors. And I bet you’re right that cleanly separating status effects from other effects is very difficult. It’s not clear to me that this is much of an objection to “purely relative” models of status in contrast to other models. I guess the way in which it might be is: what distinguishes a “purely relative” model is that all you are entitled to say about status is what you can determine from examining who wins in various “status contests”, and since pure status contests are very rare and disentangling the effects in impure status contests is hard you may not be able to tell much about who wins. That’s all true, but I think there are parallel objections to models of “non-relative” type: if it’s hard to tell whether A outranks B because status effects are inseparable from other confounding effects, I think that makes it just as hard to tell (e.g.) what numerical level of status should be assigned to A or to B.
Hmm. I understand your point now, yes. However, I have two objections.
First: supposing that Bob and Carol are both members of your informal social group, what you say (“on balance the higher-status person would tend to get the benefit of the doubt”) seems true. However, it seems to me that in such a case, the status model that would best predict who would get the benefit of the doubt, and how much, and when, would not be the “purely relative” model. I can easily think of many cases, from my actual experience, where two people disagree/argue, and neither or both of them get the benefit of the doubt, because they have equivalent/comparable social status (in a situation where, if one of them were arguing with someone of lower social status, they would have gotten the benefit of the doubt).
Second: supposing that Bob and Carol are, instead, members of a formal hierarchy (like at a workplace), then, it seems to me, many people will often give the lower-status (and lower-ranking) person the benefit of the doubt, and assume the higher-status (and higher-ranking) person is abusing power, being foolish, etc.[1]
Now, let me not accuse you of dogmatism, since you did add this caveat:
I guess what I would say is, “no other factors at all” is something that happens so rarely that it’s hard to even discuss the scenario coherently. Maybe it never happens! What if other factors are always present? What if that’s necessarily true? I don’t claim this, but it’s not obvious to me how we’d establish otherwise…
[1] This is basically the entire premise of Dilbert, which is not exactly an obscure comic strip; and lest you think I am generalizing from fictional evidence, recall that Scott Adams famously gets regular letters from readers expressing shock at how accurately the strip portrays their actual, everyday office existence (despite that the strip includes trolls, talking animals, etc.). In any case, this is hardly an unfamiliar phenomenon to anyone who’s had to work in a good-sized organization.
I don’t think I understand your first objection. It seems to say that when there’s a dispute between A and B, and neither A nor B has higher status than the other, onlookers don’t give the benefit of the doubt to either … which is precisely what the relative-status model we’re talking about predicts should happen. How is this an objection?
On the second objection: I agree that many may assume that higher formal-hierarchy position makes a person more likely to be in the wrong. But status is not quite the same thing as position in a formal hierarchy, and I think it’s possible to have both “assume lower-status people have wronged higher-status people rather than the other way around” and “assume formal superiors have wronged formal inferiors rather than the other way around” as heuristics. Also … consider why people might have that latter heuristic. Presumably it’s because higher-ups not infrequently do abuse their authority. Which is to say, they wrong people lower down in the hierarchy and get away with it because of their position.
Of course “no other factors at all” is a vanishingly rare situation. My expectation is that status effects are frequently present but often not alone, and I focused on the situation where there are no other effects for the sake of clarity. When (as usual) there are other effects, the final outcome will result from combining all the effects; the specific effects of status will be hard to disentangle but I see no reason to expect them to vanish just because other things are also present.
It’s an objection because what you said was that people’s behavior in such a case is predicted by a status model in which it cannot be true that “neither A nor B has higher status than the other”. But I am saying that, empirically, this does happen in such cases, therefore the status model in question (what we’ve been calling the “purely relative” model) is inapplicable / not predictive.
Indeed, but this is very different from third parties concluding that said higher-ups must be ethically / procedurally / etc. “in the right”! Anyway, I think we’ve gotten somewhat far afield in this branch of the conversation, and I am happy to let it drop (unless you think there’s more that’s worth saying, here).
Most of what you say here is reasonable, but simply goes to the point that—as you say later—‘“no other factors at all” is a vanishingly rare situation’. I am not convinced that it’s possible to (a) assume a “purely relative” status model, (b) properly integrate other factors, (c) cleanly separate out the one from the other. It seems to me that a less rigid status model would generally be more predictive. (After all, it is not like we are measuring some objectively real thing, some quantity which corresponds to some clearly separable physical phenomenon! There is no “status” primitive, out in the world…) But I am open to seeing it done the former way.
I still don’t understand what you’re saying about that first objection. What’s this model in which it “cannot be true” that neither A nor B has higher status than the other?
If you’re saying that that can never happen in a “purely relative” system, then what I don’t understand is why you think that. If you’re saying something else, then what I don’t understand is what other thing you’re saying.
It seems to me that there’s no inconsistency at all between a “purely relative” system and equal or incomparable statuses. Equal status for A and B means that all status effects work the same way for A as for B (and in particular that if there’s some straightforward status-driven competition between A and B then, at least as far as status goes, they come out equal). Incomparable status would probably mean that there are different sorts of status effect, and some of them favour A and some favour B, such that in some situations A wins and in some B wins.
I don’t dispute (indeed, I insist on) the point that it’s vanishingly rare to have no other factors. And I bet you’re right that cleanly separating status effects from other effects is very difficult. It’s not clear to me that this is much of an objection to “purely relative” models of status in contrast to other models. I guess the way in which it might be is: what distinguishes a “purely relative” model is that all you are entitled to say about status is what you can determine from examining who wins in various “status contests”, and since pure status contests are very rare and disentangling the effects in impure status contests is hard you may not be able to tell much about who wins. That’s all true, but I think there are parallel objections to models of “non-relative” type: if it’s hard to tell whether A outranks B because status effects are inseparable from other confounding effects, I think that makes it just as hard to tell (e.g.) what numerical level of status should be assigned to A or to B.