Perceptions of Society's View of the Power and Status of Population Subgroups: A Quantitative Application of Schneider and Ingram's Social Construction Theory

Schneider and Ingram (1993) posited that society’s view of certain groups plays a powerful role in institutionalizing the level of power and status of those groups. While the theory was well developed by Schneider and Ingram, little is known empirically about how the public’s perceptions of the power and status of certain groups align with policies and elite messaging. We examine that link using a large sample from the Understanding America Study. We use this data to create “meta-constructions”, which are measures of how individuals perceive societal views of status and power of populations grouped by gender, race, and urbanicity. We first compare our findings with Schneider and Ingram’s quadrants of idealized population categorization. We then consider how views of gender, race, and urbanicity differ across individuals with different social characteristics, finding that more powerful groups are more likely to view society as being more equal than less powerful groups.