How Do the Powerful Attain Status? The Roots of Legitimate Power Inequalities Robb Willer a, *, Reef Youngreen b , Lisa Troyer c and Michael J. Lovaglia d a University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA b University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA c University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA d University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Power inequalities are coercive, based on relative control over resources, whereas status hierar- chies are based on collectively endorsed conceptions of merit. How then do the powerful achieve status? We argue that using power for personal gain can lead to perceptions of the powerful as competent—enhancing status—but also selfish—diminishing status. Consequently, power users will be most likely to attain status when they successfully avoid perceptions of selfishness. Two experiments support this view, finding that power users achieve greater status when moderating their power use, forgoing maximal profits in exchange, or using philanthropic gestures to counteract perceptions of greed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Power and status inequalities are both fundamental, in that they are critical to the architecture of groups and societies, and ubiquitous, as their effects are felt con- tinually in the course of everyday life (Blau, 1964; Homans, 1974). As a result, explaining the relation- ship between power and status hierarchies is critical to understanding the dynamics of organizations as well as the larger society (Bendix and Lipset, 1966). Where individuals stand with regard to each form of hierarchy shapes their material, social, psychological, and even physical well-being (Pfeffer, 1981; Frank, 2004; Marmot, 2004), and workplace outcomes are heavily impacted by the structure and perception of organizational hierarchies based on power and status (Barnard, 1938; Halevy et al., 2011). But a full understanding of the functioning of power and status hierarchies in the workplace and beyond requires conceptually distinguishing these two bases of inequality as they function in critically different ways. To that end, recent research has sought to clarify causal linkages between power and status (Willer et al., 1997; Thye, 2000; Willer et al., 2005; Magee and Galinsky, 2008; Fast et al., 2011). Here we extend this line of inquiry, drawing upon recent work on from sociology, psychology, and organiza- tional behavior in developing a theoretical explanation of when and how power leads to status. Status refers to an individual’s relative standing in a group hierarchy based on prestige and respect (Berger et al., 1977; Ridgeway and Walker, 1995). Because relative status standing is based on legitimate, widely agreed upon characteristics that are believed to reflect competence and ability, status hierarchies typically are privately endorsed and viewed as legitimate by group members. Power inequalities, on the other hand, derive from control over valued resources and lead more powerful individuals to be able to exercise their will over others even in the face of resistance (Blau, 1964; Magee and Galinsky, 2008). As such, power inequalities do not require private endorsement as the *Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. E–mail: Willer@Berkeley.edu Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS Manage. Decis. Econ. (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/mde.2554