In the realm of sociology and social theory, achieved status stands as a critical concept that helps us understand how individuals attain recognition and social standing within a given society. It is a fundamental component of the stratification and classification of individuals based on their accomplishments, roles, and positions.
Achieved status is a sociological term that refers to a person’s position or standing in society that is acquired based on their individual accomplishments, actions, and choices. Unlike ascribed status, which is determined by factors such as race, gender, or family background and is beyond an individual’s control, achieved status is earned and developed over time through one’s efforts and achievements.
Individual Agency
The concept of achieved status underscores the importance of individual agency and the role of personal actions and decisions in shaping one’s social standing. It reflects the idea that individuals can influence their position in society through their accomplishments and contributions.
Dynamic Nature
Achieved status is dynamic and can change throughout an individual’s life. It is not fixed, and people can acquire new achieved statuses or lose existing ones as they progress through different life stages and engage in various endeavors.
Characteristics of Achieved Status
Meritorious Achievement
Achieved status is typically associated with meritorious achievements, qualifications, or skills. It often signifies that an individual has met certain criteria or standards that are recognized and valued by society.
Variety of Domains
Achieved status can manifest in various domains of life, including education, career, sports, arts, and community involvement. It encompasses a wide range of accomplishments and roles that individuals take on.
Social Recognition
One of the key characteristics of achieved status is social recognition. Society acknowledges and validates an individual’s achieved status, granting them a certain level of recognition and respect for their accomplishments.
Social Mobility
Achieved status is closely linked to the concept of social mobility. It allows individuals to move up or down the social hierarchy based on their efforts and achievements. Social mobility is an essential feature of modern societies that value individual merit.
Examples of Achieved Status
Educational Attainment
One of the most common examples of achieved status is educational attainment. Individuals who earn degrees, diplomas, or certifications receive recognition for their educational achievements. For example, someone who obtains a medical degree becomes a “doctor” and gains the associated social status.
Occupational Status
Occupational status is a significant form of achieved status. It is based on an individual’s career accomplishments, qualifications, and position within a specific profession or field. A person who becomes a successful lawyer, engineer, or artist achieves status through their career achievements.
Athletic Achievements
Achieved status can also be attained through athletic accomplishments. Professional athletes, for instance, acquire status and recognition based on their performance and achievements in sports.
Artistic and Creative Achievements
Artists, musicians, writers, and other creative individuals achieve status through their artistic and creative achievements. The recognition and acclaim they receive for their work contribute to their achieved status.
Leadership and Community Involvement
Engaging in leadership roles and community involvement can lead to achieved status. Individuals who take on leadership positions in organizations or contribute significantly to their communities earn recognition and respect for their efforts.
Achieved Status and Identity Formation
Role Identity
Achieved status plays a pivotal role in shaping an individual’s role identity. It defines the roles and responsibilities an individual assumes in society based on their accomplishments and positions. For example, a person with an achieved status as a teacher will identify with the role and responsibilities associated with teaching.
Self-Concept
Achieved status contributes to an individual’s self-concept and self-esteem. It influences how individuals perceive themselves and how they believe others see them. Positive achieved statuses can enhance self-esteem, while negative ones can lead to self-doubt.
Social Identity
Social identity is closely linked to achieved status. It forms part of an individual’s social identity, which includes aspects such as race, gender, and nationality. Achieved status adds depth to one’s social identity by highlighting their accomplishments and contributions.
Identity Formation
The process of identity formation involves integrating achieved status with other aspects of one’s identity. This process is influenced by societal expectations, cultural norms, and personal values. Identity formation is an ongoing process that evolves as individuals acquire new achieved statuses and experiences.
Achieved Status in Social Interactions
Interpersonal Dynamics
Achieved status plays a significant role in interpersonal dynamics. It affects how individuals interact with others and how they are perceived in social settings. People often evaluate others based on their achieved statuses, which can influence social interactions and relationships.
Status Hierarchies
Society often organizes individuals into status hierarchies based on their achieved statuses. These hierarchies define the relative positions and social importance of individuals within a particular context. Status hierarchies exist in various domains, including education, employment, and social organizations.
Impression Management
Achieved status can be a tool for impression management, where individuals strategically present themselves to others to create specific impressions. People may emphasize their achieved statuses to convey competence, success, or expertise in certain situations.
Social Expectations
Achieved status brings with it social expectations and responsibilities. Individuals with certain achieved statuses may be expected to fulfill specific roles or contribute to society in particular ways. For example, doctors are expected to provide medical care, and teachers are expected to educate.
Achieved Status and Social Inequality
Meritocracy
Achieved status is often associated with the concept of meritocracy, where individuals are rewarded based on their merit, effort, and accomplishments. Meritocratic ideals suggest that those who work hard and achieve success will be rewarded with higher social status.
Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of individuals in society based on various factors, including achieved status. A stratified society may have distinct social classes or layers, with individuals occupying different positions and having varying levels of access to resources and opportunities.
Inequality and Opportunity
While achieved status can promote social mobility and reduce inequalities, it is essential to recognize that not all individuals have equal access to opportunities for achieving status. Factors such as socioeconomic background, discrimination, and systemic barriers can affect an individual’s ability to attain certain achieved statuses.
Intersectionality
The concept of intersectionality acknowledges that individuals hold multiple social identities simultaneously, including both ascribed and achieved statuses. Understanding how these identities intersect can provide insights into the complexities of social inequality and privilege.
Conclusion
Achieved status is a central concept in sociology that sheds light on how individuals attain recognition and social standing based on their accomplishments and actions. It underscores the role of personal agency, effort, and merit in shaping one’s position in society. Achieved status influences identity formation, social interactions, and societal structures, contributing to the complex dynamics of social life. While it offers opportunities for social mobility and meritocracy, it is essential to consider the role of inequality and systemic barriers that can impact individuals’ ability to attain certain achieved statuses. In examining achieved status, we gain valuable insights into the multifaceted nature of human society and the diverse pathways individuals take in their pursuit of recognition and success.
Key Highlights:
Definition and Distinction: Achieved status refers to a person’s social position attained through individual efforts, contrasting with ascribed status determined by inherent attributes.
Individual Agency: It emphasizes personal actions and accomplishments as significant factors in determining social standing, highlighting individual agency in societal positioning.
Dynamic Nature: Achieved status is fluid, subject to change over time, reflecting life stages, achievements, and experiences, offering opportunities for social mobility.
Meritorious Achievements: Recognition stems from meritorious accomplishments across various domains, including education, career, sports, arts, and community involvement.
Identity Formation: It shapes role identity, self-concept, social identity, and ongoing identity formation, integrating with other aspects of one’s identity.
Interpersonal Dynamics: Influences social interactions, status hierarchies, impression management, and societal expectations, affecting relationships and behavior.
Social Inequality: While promoting meritocracy and social mobility, it intersects with social stratification, highlighting disparities in opportunity and systemic barriers.
Conclusion: Understanding achieved status elucidates the complexities of social recognition, individual agency, and societal structures, underscoring the multifaceted nature of human society and pathways to success.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
