Letter Writing Differences: Relative Status Effects

This paper is concerned with the relationship between the contents of written messages and the relative status of the letter writer and the addressee. University students, under the guise of assisting in a survey, individually composed two letters of request, one supposedly to a high school student and the other presumably to an individual with a master's degree. The letters were coded as to their degree of formality, the strength of the request, and the extent to which the writers identified with the survey project. The results clearly indicated that the writers adjusted their letters as a function of the supposed relative status of the addressees. Moreover, by considering only two variables, Formality and Identification, it was possible to correctly classify 76% of the letters as to the status of the intended recipient. These findings are discussed in terms of communicative devices that reflect asymmetrical status relationships.