The Effects of Status and Performance Output Visibility on Participation in Groups

I develop and test an argument that explains how status organizing processes and visibility of performance outputs affect participation rates in collective problem-solving groups. Drawing on status characteristics theory and reward expectations theory, I argue that actors expect rewards that are commensurate with the performance outputs that they make toward the group task. When group members’ performance outputs are anonymous, this disconnects performance output from reward by removing a basis on which rewards are allocated. Accordingly, failure to receive expected rewards reduces performance outputs. Findings from a laboratory experiment show that higher status actors participate more when their performance outputs are known to others. When performance outputs are invisible, higher status actors’ performance outputs are not statistically different from lower status actors in either condition. Status-based participation inequality suggests differences in motives for higher and lower status actors in task groups and supports prior findings that task success is but one motivation for which actors engage in status organizing processes.