Pierre Bourdieu distinguished three ranks of cultural taste (life style): legitimate taste, “middle class” taste, and popular taste in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. He then highlighted the importance of cultural taste in identifying and maintaining identity hierarchies and their social reproduction by associating “taste” (lifestyle) with “habitus”. But some American scholars' research inspired by Bourdieu's works questioned this importance. Europeans are more inclined to judge different cultural tastes and life styles from the perspective of ranks, while Americans tend to place more emphasis on differences in type. This difference in perspectives is rooted in the social structural differences between Europe and America originated from their different histories. The Different perspectives on cultural tastes and life styles are associated with different forms of social deference: the more inclined to look at it from the perspective of ranks, the more likely they are to form the deference of “unequal society” style, and the more inclined to look at it from the perspective of diversity and typology, the more likely they are to form the deference of “egalitarian” style.