achieved status

Definition of Achieved Status

(noun) A status that is acquired or earned as the result of personal accomplishment and merit, that serves as a reflection of ability, choice, or personal effort.

Examples of Achieved Status

• education: associate degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, or doctoral degree
• marital status: divorced, married, or single
• occupation: licensed dentist, master mechanic, professional athlete, university professor, or working actor

Etymology of Achieved Status

• Coined along with ascribed status by Ralph Linton (1893–1953) in The Study of Man: An Introduction (1936).

Achieved Status Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification: a·chieved stat·us

Audio Pronunciation

International Phonetic Alphabet

• American English – /əˈʧivd ˈstætəs/
• British English – /əˈʧiːvd ˈsteɪtəs/

Usage Notes

• Plural: achieved statuses
• Achieved statuses can be positive (e.g., university educated) or negative (e.g., criminal).
• The difference of achievement in education among classes, ethnicities or races, and sex is called the achievement gap.
• An achievement-based stratified society or system allocates status based on achievements and is meritocratic.
• Achieved status is the opposite of ascribed status.
• Also called acquired status.

Related Quotations

• “About 5000 years ago, people developed plow agriculture. By attaching oxen and other large animals to plows, farmers could increase the amount they produced. Again thanks to technological innovation, surpluses grew. With more wealth came still sharper social stratification. Agrarian societies developed religious beliefs justifying steeper inequality. People came to believe that kings and queens ruled by ‘divine right.’ They viewed large landowners as ‘lords.’ Moreover, if you were born a peasant, you and your children were likely to remain peasants. If you were born a lord, you and your children were likely to remain lords. In the vocabulary of modern sociology, we say that stratification in agrarian societies was based more on ascription than achievement” (Brym and Lie 2007:225).
• “By depriving people of access to opportunities, for instance, discrimination often leads to lack of qualification for them. The involuntary ascribed and negatively evaluated categorical status that emerges from discrimination not only takes precedence over any achieved status but reduces the probability of such achievement, thereby lowering all life chances. Put simply, discrimination makes it more difficult for the objects of discrimination to develop merit and reduces the likelihood that their merit will be recognized and rewarded” (McNamee and Miller 2013:180).
• “Caste and class systems of stratification are opposite, extreme points on a continuum. The two systems differ in the ease of social mobility, the relative importance of achieved and ascribed statuses, and the extent to which each restricts interaction among people considered unequal” (Ferrante 2011:204).

Related Video

Additional Information

• Word origin of “achieve” and “status” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com

Related Terms

• achievement
• achievement motivation
• credentialism
• discrimination
• meritocracy
• mobility
• role
• status
• status declassing
• status quo
• status symbol

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References

Brym, Robert J., and John Lie. 2007. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Ferrante, Joan. 2011. Sociology: A Global Perspective. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

McNamee, Stephen J., and Robert K. Miller, Jr. 2013. The Meritocracy Myth. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Cite the Definition of Achieved Status

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “achieved status.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved October 15, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/achieved-status/).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

achieved status. (2013). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/achieved-status/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “achieved status.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/achieved-status/.

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“achieved status.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/achieved-status/>.