Power, distinctiveness, and meritocratic threats may share status loss as a common cause.

Evidence

Although we found that each of these threats explained unique variance in White identity, this pattern is also consistent with a view that each manipulation tapped into status threat, more generally. — Efrén Pérez, Jessica HyunJeong Lee, Ana Oaxaca, Tania Solano Cervantes, Jasmine García Rodríguez, Kimberly Lam, and David McFall, Manifold Threats to White Identity and…, 88

Categorization

• QUESTION: Suggests a potential unified explanation collapse: three supposedly distinct threats might reduce to one underlying status-threat construct — worth investigating whether prior studies measuring them separately were confounded.
• XREF: Connects to Craig & Richeson’s group-status threat literature and to social identity theory’s distinctiveness motive.