The Role of Work Group Status as a Contextual Variable in RelationalDemography Research

In relational demography research, hypotheses predicting unfavorable effects for demographic dissimilarity have not always been supported. A need exists for the identification of contextual variables that further specify the conditions under which such effects would occur. Work group status is introduced here as an important moderator variable. Three theoretical premises support its use: Social identity and self-categorization theories; Common Ingroup Identity Model; and, downward comparison theory. The general proposition is that as work group status increases, the effects of dissimilarity will be mitigated because status itself (as opposed to demographics) is likely to become the primary delimiter of ingroupoutgroup classifications.