Hope for the future, ingroup threat and perceived legitimacy in three healthcare professional groups

Background and aims of the work: All societies are organised as hierarchies based on prestige or status. Similarly, healthcare organizations (as well as many other types of organization) are composed by professional hierarchies in which some professional groups are powerful and higher in status  and other groups are powerless and lower in status. This research investigated the effects of social status and hope for future group advancement on perceptions of social identity threat and legitimacy of social stratification. Physicians (the dominant professional group), nurses and healthcare operators (the dominated professional groups) were led to believe that professional stratification would change in the future, but that the nature of the change was unforeseeable.