Status hierarchies reduce conflict by limiting meaningful comparisons between groups

Evidence

As noted above, some writers (Festinger, 1954; Kidder & Stewart, 1975) imply that strategy 2(c) is a dominant response to status differences between groups. The assumption is that intergroup comparability decreases as a direct function of perceived dissimilarity. If this were the whole story, then, somewhat paradoxically, the creation of a consensual status system would protect social identity from invidious comparisons. The causal sequence would be as follows: similar groups compare with each other; the outcome determines their relative prestige; the perceived status difference reduces their similarity and hence comparability; intergroup comparisons cease to be made; subjective superiority and inferiority decrease in salience; correspondingly, the groups’ respective self-esteems return to their original point. There may be occasions when this socialpsychological recipe for the maintenance of the status quo can be observed in something like its pure form. However, we shall argue presently that there are many status differences that do not reduce comparability. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2749

It could be argued that only conflicts of interest perceived as such create hostility. This requires that groups must compare their respective situations. And, according to some views, it is only relatively similar groups that engage in mutual comparisons; therefore, many forms of status differences will reduce perceived similarity (see Festinger, 1954; Kidder & Stewart, 1975). It follows that status systems may reduce social conflict by restricting the range of meaningful comparisons available to any given group. This hypothesis may be a useful tool to account for some of the determinants of social stability; but if it is taken to its logical conclusion, it can account for no more than that. It fails to account for social change (in the sense of changes in the mutual relations, behavior, and attitudes of large-scale human groups that have been distinctly different in status in the past), particularly when the processes of change become very rapid. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2695

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The full circular causal loop — similarity drives comparison, comparison reveals status, status dissolves similarity — is a dense, closed feedback mechanism that undermines the comforting idea that inequality inevitably breeds resentment.
• SEED: An essay angle: the social-psychological machinery that makes inequality feel natural and non-resentful — why the perceived ‘naturalness’ of a hierarchy is itself a load-bearing fixture of stable inequality.
• XREF: This explains one structural mechanism keeping subordinate groups from developing an oppositional/strategic identity — they don’t compare themselves to the dominant group, so no counter-identity crystallizes. Relevant to why strategic essentialism requires prior conditions enabling the comparison to happen. — connects to: Understanding status mechanisms is a precondition for reducing inequality; Flattening the gap between standard and premium reduces status hierarchies — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 819; Status only operates within groups that share the same values — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 171 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2749; John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2695