Summary: Research has well established that those with more advantaged characteristics enjoy a number of social benefits within task groups, such as being treated with more deference and being more influential in group decisions. However, theories explaining these behavioral patterns have not been successfully applied to predict interactional inequality in informal groups. In this study, I show how status characteristics theory can predict interactional inequality in “task-suspended groups,” which are informal groups whose members anticipate working together on a task in the future. I present results from an on-going laboratory experiment that show preliminary support for status-based interactional inequality between participants who expect to work on a task together. These findings suggest that effects of status inequality extend beyond task groups, which implies that those with advantaged status characteristics benefit from their status position in more interactional settings than previously theorized.