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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 13, 2026

The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

Published on: July 4, 2013

Status and the evaluation of workplace deviance.

Hannah Riley Bowles¹, Michele Gelfand

¹Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. hannah_bowles@harvard.edu

Psychological Science

|April 29, 2010

Summary

Workplace status significantly impacts how misbehavior is judged. Higher-status individuals are more lenient towards rule-breaking by those of similar status, revealing a bias in workplace evaluations.

Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Organizational Behavior
Sociology

Background:

Workplace misbehavior evaluations are debated but lack empirical study.
Sociological theories suggest lower-status deviance is judged more harshly.
Psychological theories propose status moderates discrimination in misbehavior evaluations.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how evaluator status influences the judgment of workplace misbehavior.
To test if higher-status evaluators are more lenient towards higher-status deviants.
To examine the interactive effect of evaluator and target status on deviance evaluations.

Main Methods:

Study 1: Manipulated psychological experience of higher status to assess rule observance and hierarchy preference.
Studies 2a, 2b, and 3: Experimental designs manipulating achieved and ascribed status characteristics (race, gender) of evaluators and targets.

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Evaluations of workplace misbehavior were recorded under different status conditions.

Main Results:

Higher status psychologically led to decreased rule observance and increased hierarchy preference (Study 1).
Higher-status evaluators showed leniency towards higher-status deviants compared to lower-status deviants.
A significant interactive effect of evaluator and target status on workplace deviance evaluations was confirmed across studies.

Conclusions:

Evaluator status significantly moderates the judgment of workplace misbehavior.
Discrimination in evaluating workplace deviance is influenced by the relative status of both the evaluator and the individual exhibiting misbehavior.
Findings highlight the role of status in perpetuating workplace inequalities and biases.