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Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph Linton for a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit and is earned or chosen through one's own effort. It is the opposite of ascribed status and reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts.
Ascribed statuses are fixed for an individual at birth, while achieved status is determined by social rewards an individual acquires during his or her lifetime as a result of the exercise of ability and/or perseverance. [17] Examples of ascribed status include castes, race, and beauty among others. Meanwhile, achieved statuses are akin to one's ...
Achieved characteristics are things like the education level, occupation, or income. Studies have indicated a significant relevance of these characteristics to an individual's subjective social position. On the other hand, some theories expect that objective characteristics do not have influence on subjective social position.
Achieved characteristics are those which a person earns or chooses; examples include level of education, marital status, leadership status and other measures of merit. In most societies, an individual's social status is a combination of ascribed and achieved factors.
Additional variables include those that describe other ascribed and achieved characteristics such as occupation and skill levels, age, education level, education level of parents, and geographic area. Some of these variables may have both causal and intervening effects on social status and stratification.
Peter M. Blau (1918–2002) and Otis Duncan (1921–2004) were the first sociologists to isolate the concept of status attainment. Their initial thesis stated that the lower the level from which a person starts, the greater is the probability that he will be upwardly mobile, simply because many more occupational destinations entail upward mobility for men with low origins than for those with ...
When one of these statuses overpowers the others it can be determined as one's master status. An achieved status that becomes a master status is accompanied by a rite of passage, important life events where a person is changed from one type of person into another. Marriage is one example, where a person transforms from single to spouse.
It is commonly perceived that ascribed statuses are irreversible while achieved statuses are reversible. Linton uses Leo Schnore's research to illustrate how ascribed statuses can be both irreversible and reversible. An example of an ascribed reversible status is the status of citizenship. An example of ascribed irreversible status is age.