The Psychology of Social Status

The Psychology of Social Status

Joey T. Cheng • Jessica L. Tracy

Cameron Anderson

Editors

The Psychology of Social

Status

1 3

ISBN 978-1-4939-0866-0 ISBN 978-1-4939-0867-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0867-7

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Editors

Joey T. Cheng

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley

USA

Jessica L. Tracy

University of British Columbia

Vancouver

Canada

Cameron Anderson

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley

USA

v

Preface and Acknowledgments

There has never been a more exciting time to study social status and hierarchy.

Over the past several decades, researchers from across the social sciences have

come to recognize the importance, complexity, and ubiquity of individual differ￾ences in social rank. These scholars have made great strides in shedding light on

such fascinating yet long perplexing questions as: Why are societies everywhere

structured hierarchically? What function might hierarchy serve, for individuals and

for groups? How do rank differences emerge, and what determines who rises to the

top? What are the psychological, neural, and hormonal mechanisms that underlie

status attainment? What are the consequences of high and low rank on relationships,

mating, and reproductive success? Psychologists, neuroscientists, health research￾ers, sociologists, anthropologists, and management scientists are working together

to seek answers to these questions, and to build a comprehensive and interdisciplin￾ary science of the psychological underpinnings of social status.

This volume was conceived several years ago when we were attending the an￾nual Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference, the single

largest annual meeting place for social and personality psychologists. As research￾ers broadly interested in the psychology of social status and rank dynamics, we were

naturally attracted to many symposia sessions and presentations themed around the

topic of power and status. One thing we noticed, however, was that the research

agenda seemed to be dominated, to a certain extent, by power—or institutionally

driven rank differentials (exemplified by a boss/employee relationship)—to the ne￾glect of research on social status and dominance—or naturally emerging hierarchi￾cal differences that arise in everyday interpersonal relationships. Further reflecting

this state of affairs, an excellent volume reviewing the extant literature on power

was published several years ago (Guinote and Vescio 2010), but the present volume

marks the first comprehensive review of research on the psychology of status and

broader rank-attainment processes.

Although there are important similarities between power and status, the two

concepts are quite notably distinct. Whereas status refers to a form of influence

and control that arises spontaneously in everyday social situations, power involves

formally endowed control over valued resources, often resulting from institution￾ally legitimized positions in the workplace, politics, or broader society. As a result,

vi Preface and Acknowledgments

while many of the consequences may be similar, the psychological underpinnings

of status and related processes are unique from those that lead to power. Given this

distinction, we believed that the field was in need of a book dedicated to the large

bodies of research that have emerged on status and naturally occurring social rank.

With this volume, our goal was to showcase the major foundational insights that

have emerged to date on the psychology of social status. The scientific study of

status—which began over 40 years ago with classic studies in sociology by Berger,

Ridgeway, Driskell, and others—has grown tremendously in recent years. Many

of the most influential psychology papers on the topic—such as those by Tiedens,

Anderson, and Willer, to name a few—were published within the last 15 years.

Moreover, the study of status has become an interdisciplinary enterprise, crossing

the boundaries of sociology, psychology, organizational science, anthropology, and

other fields. Essential to this volume is the inclusion and synthesis of these inter￾disciplinary approaches. Among the 16 chapters included are the latest perspectives

and cutting-edge empirical findings from across these disciplines; contributors in￾clude social, personality and evolutionary psychologists, organizational scientists,

sociologists, and anthropologists. Furthermore, all of these contributors are leading

experts in the field, whose work has broken theoretical and empirical ground. It

is our hope that this collection will provide a one-stop shop for those who wish to

learn about the latest and most important developments in this flourishing area of

research.

This volume is divided into five sections. The first section provides an over￾view of prominent overarching theoretical perspectives that have shaped much of

the current research agenda on social status. These chapters lay out the theoretical

foundations for much of the rest of the work presented in the volume, and address

core questions about the nature of social status and hierarchy. In Chap. 1, Cheng

and Tracy explore the evolutionary origins of human status hierarchies, and review

a large body of evidence supporting the Dominance-Prestige theoretical account.

According to this model, there are two fundamental pathways to social rank attain￾ment in human societies: dominance (inducing fear in others) and prestige (gain￾ing others’ respect). In Chap. 2, Barkow explores the evolutionary emergence of

prestige, and discusses the pivotal role of culture and cultural transmission in the

rise of complex, socially stratified groups and societies, from an anthropological

perspective. Complementing these chapters on the distal forces that favor the emer￾gence of hierarchical relationships, in Chap. 3 Anderson and Willer offer a broad

account of the proximal drivers of status allocation. They argue that, although hu￾mans are motivated to develop hierarchies based on prestige—by allocating social

rank only to the most skilled and committed group members—their ability to do so

is constrained by a number of interesting psychological biases and traps. Finally,

in Chap. 4 Blader and Chen synthesize across these distinct theoretical perspec￾tives to explore the multidimensional nature of hierarchical relationships, with a

close review of the conceptual overlap and distinctions among these diverse forms

of hierarchy. This chapter helps to explain the different ways in which researchers

have conceptualized each of the key constructs relevant to the central topic of this

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

volume: status, power, influence, socioeconomic status, leadership, dominance, and

prestige.

The second section of the volume examines the personality, demographic, situ￾ational, psychological, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of status attainment.

This section, in essence, addresses questions about who attains status, and why.

In Chap. 5, Anderson and Cowan survey the extant empirical research on the per￾sonality determinants of status attainment. They find that high status individuals

consistently exhibit lower neuroticism but greater extraversion, dominance, and

self-monitoring, and, in some group contexts, greater conscientiousness, narcis￾sism, and openness to experience. Moving beyond personality, in Chap. 6 Blaker

and van Vugt examine the link between physical stature and social status. Their re￾view indicates that physical attributes such as height and muscularity promote rank,

but through different mechanisms. Whereas tall individuals acquire status via both

dominance and prestige, the high rank of muscular individuals results from domi￾nance. In Chap. 7, Kafashan, Sparks, Griskevicius, and Barclay explore the com￾plex bidirectional associations between prosocial behavior and status attainment.

Certain forms of prosocial behavior, they suggest, both influence and is affected by

status gains to a greater extent than others.

In Chap. 8, Leary, Jongman-Sereno, and Diebels offer insights into the psycho￾logical processes that underpin individuals’ pursuit of status, and focus specifically

on the role of impression management—the attempt to shape and influence one’s

reputation and public perception. Their theoretical analysis shows that acts of self￾presentation are not only pervasive in status pursuits, but also entail a delicate and

difficult balance between the often conflicting goals of getting ahead and getting

along. In Chap. 9 von Rueden addresses the universality of social hierarchy from a

cultural anthropological perspective. As his review of ethnographies and recent em￾pirical work in small-scale societies reveals, hierarchy is a human universal, found

even in highly egalitarian foraging and horticultural societies. Interestingly, status

in these populations is largely determined by a similar suite of factors observed in

industrial societies—such as skill and generosity, or prestige more broadly, as well

as physical stature. He shows that men’s status bears important consequences for his

reproductive success. Finally, in Chap. 10 Steckler and Tracy provide an in-depth

overview of the distinct emotional underpinnings of status hierarchy. They highlight

the critical functions that basic emotions—such as happiness, sadness, anger, dis￾gust, and fear—and more complex social emotions—pride, shame, envy, contempt,

and admiration—serve in facilitating hierarchy navigation.

The volume’s third section focuses on the intra- and inter-personal benefits and

costs of possessing and lacking status, examining the downstream consequences of

high and low status on cognition, self-perception, and interpersonal and inter-group

relations. In Chap. 11 Fast and Joshi explore two fundamental cognitive forces—

subjective sense of control and role expectations—that are triggered by high rank,

and examine the benefits and barriers that these forces present in organizational

settings. They argue that these rank-related cognitions are not always advantageous,

and in fact often create surprising barriers for those atop the social hierarchy in

domains such as decision-making, task performance, social relationships, and well-

viii Preface and Acknowledgments

being. Broadening the scope to status hierarchies that exist at a societal level, in

Chap. 12 North and Fiske discuss prevailing sociological and psychological in￾sights into social inequality. Their review highlights the socio-structural forces, cul￾tural stereotypes, and other psychological biases that jointly create and sustain so￾cial inequality and prejudice among groups who differ in race, gender, age, weight,

sexuality, and social class.

The volume’s fourth section reviews emerging research on the biological and

bodily manifestation of status attainment, identifying specific endocrinologies, neu￾ral systems, and nonverbal behaviors that create and reflect status differences. In

Chap. 13, Knight and Mehta review the mounting empirical findings on the neuroen￾docrinologies that underpin hierarchical differences. This body of research provides

compelling evidence for complex reciprocal relations between status attainment and

a number of hormones—namely testosterone, cortisol, estradiol, and oxytocin—in

both humans and nonhuman animals. In Chap. 14 Pornpattananangkul, Zink, and

Chiao provide an overview of research on the neural networks and patterns that

encode status-related information in the human brain. Their review indicates that

the serotonergic and dopaminergic neurotransmitter systems—which are regulated

by intricate gene-by-environment interactions—play pivotal roles in facilitating the

perception, recognition, and expression of dominance and submission patterns in

humans and other species. In Chap. 15, Hall, Latu, Carney, and Schmid Mast sum￾marize the large bodies of research on the nonverbal expression of status. As they

show, high and low relative rank are each associated with distinct nonverbal cues

emitted from the face, eyes, body, and voice. By signaling one’s rank position to

others and activating rank-related cognitions and behavioral patterns, these cues

both shape and reflect individuals’ rank in complex yet predictable ways.

Finally, the fifth section of the volume is comprised of a single stand-alone chap￾ter by Cheng, Weidman, and Tracy, which provides a broad review of available

research methods for measuring and experimentally manipulating social status. The

goal of this review is to provide researchers with an easy-to-access means of de￾termining how best to measure or manipulate the status-related constructs in which

they are interested. Together, these 16 chapters collectively form what we hope to

be a useful resource for researchers, students, policy-makers, and others interested

in learning about the remarkable proliferation of knowledge that has accumulated

across many decades of research, along with the latest and most exciting theoretical

and empirical insights into human social status dynamics.

A volume of this scope would not have been possible without the help of many

individuals. First and foremost, we are extremely grateful to each and every one of

the volume’s contributors, who generously devoted their time and energy to this

project. Our heartfelt appreciation also goes to the editors at Springer, in particular

Morgan Ryan and Anna Tobias, for their encouragement and support throughout

this project. Finally, we thank our publisher, Springer, without whom this effort

would not be possible.

February 2014 Joey T. Cheng

Jessica L. Tracy

Cameron Anderson

ix

Contents

Part I Theoretical Perspectives: The Nature of Social Status

and Hierarchy

1 Toward a Unified Science of Hierarchy: Dominance and

Prestige are Two Fundamental Pathways to Human Social Rank ..... 3

Joey T. Cheng and Jessica L. Tracy

2 Prestige and the Ongoing Process of Culture Revision ....................... 29

Jerome H. Barkow

3 Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups? A Bounded

Functionalist Account of Status ............................................................. 47

Cameron Anderson and Robb Willer

4 What’s in a Name? Status, Power, and Other Forms

of Social Hierarchy .................................................................................. 71

Steven L. Blader and Ya-Ru Chen

Part II Who Leads? Psychological Underpinnings of Status

Attainment

5 Personality and Status Attainment: A Micropolitics Perspective ....... 99

Cameron Anderson and Jon Cowan

6 The Status-Size Hypothesis: How Cues of Physical Size

and Social Status Influence Each Other ............................................... 119

Nancy M. Blaker and Mark van Vugt

7 Prosocial Behavior and Social Status .................................................... 139

Sara Kafashan, Adam Sparks, Vladas Griskevicius and Pat Barclay

x Contents

8 The Pursuit of Status: A Self-presentational Perspective

on the Quest for Social Value ................................................................. 159

Mark R. Leary, Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno and Kate J. Diebels

9 The Roots and Fruits of Social Status in Small-Scale Human

Societies .................................................................................................... 179

Christopher von Rueden

10 The Emotional Underpinnings of Social Status ................................... 201

Conor M. Steckler and Jessica L. Tracy

Part III Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Consequences of Status

11 Decision Making at the Top: Benefits and Barriers ............................. 227

Nathanael J. Fast and Priyanka D. Joshi

12 Social Categories Create and Reflect Inequality:

Psychological and Sociological Insights ................................................ 243

Michael S. North and Susan T. Fiske

Part IV How Is Status Manifested in the Body?

13 Hormones and Hierarchies .................................................................... 269

Erik L. Knight and Pranjal H. Mehta

14 Neural Basis of Social Status Hierarchy ............................................... 303

Narun Pornpattananangkul, Caroline F. Zink and Joan Y. Chiao

15 Nonverbal Communication and the Vertical Dimension

of Social Relations ................................................................................... 325

Judith A. Hall, Ioana Maria Latu, Dana R. Carney

and Marianne Schmid Mast

Part V Methodology

16 The Assessment of Social Status: A Review of Measures

and Experimental Manipulations .......................................................... 347

Joey T. Cheng, Aaron C. Weidman and Jessica L. Tracy

Index ............................................................................................................... 363

xi

Contributors

Cameron Anderson Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, USA

Pat Barclay Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

Jerome H. Barkow Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie

University, Halifax, Canada

Steven L. Blader Stern School of Business, New York University, New York,

USA

Nancy M. Blaker Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, VU

University, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Dana R. Carney Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, USA

Ya-Ru Chen Johnson School of Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

Joey T. Cheng Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, USA

Joan Y. Chiao Department of Psychology and Interdepartmental Neuroscience

Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

Jon Cowan Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, USA

Kate J. Diebels Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University,

Durham, USA

Nathanael J. Fast Marshall School of Business, University of Southern

California, Los Angeles, USA

Susan T. Fiske Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, USA

Vladas Griskevicius Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota,

Minneapolis, USA

xii Contributors

Judith A. Hall Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston,

USA

Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno Department of Psychology and Neuroscience,

Duke University, Durham, USA

Priyanka D. Joshi Marshall School of Business, University of Southern

California, Los Angeles, USA

Sara Kafashan Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph,

Canada

Erik L. Knight Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA

Ioana Maria Latu Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Camden, USA

Mark R. Leary Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University,

Durham, USA

Marianne Schmid Mast Department of Organizational Behavior, University of

Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Pranjal H. Mehta Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene,

USA

Michael S. North Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York,

USA

Narun Pornpattananangkul Department of Psychology and Interdepartmental

Neuroscience Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

Christopher von Rueden Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of

Richmond, Richmond, USA

Adam Sparks Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

Conor M. Steckler Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, Canada

Jessica L. Tracy Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, Canada

Mark van Vugt Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, VU

University, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Aaron C. Weidman Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, Canada

Robb Willer Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

Caroline F. Zink Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, Lieber Institute for Brain

Development, Baltimore, USA

Part I

Theoretical Perspectives: The Nature of

Social Status and Hierarchy

3

Chapter 1

Toward a Unified Science of Hierarchy:

Dominance and Prestige are Two Fundamental

Pathways to Human Social Rank

Joey T. Cheng and Jessica L. Tracy

J. T. Cheng et al. (eds.), The Psychology of Social Status,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0867-7_1, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

J. T. Cheng ()

Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

J. L. Tracy

Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Although affiliative and cooperative interactions form the primary fabric of human

social relationships, group living necessarily entails conflict over divergent goals and

competition over scarce resources. The formation of social hierarchies, an organiza￾tional structure observed across many species in the animal kingdom and ubiquitous

to human groups, presents a solution to these conflicts. Although the bases on which

humans form hierarchies and allocate rank are diverse, hierarchies are fundamentally

social structures in which high-ranking individuals reliably receive greater influence,

deference, attention, and valued resources than low-ranking others (Homans 1950,

1961; Magee and Galinsky 2008; Mazur 1973, 1985; Strodtbeck 1951; Zitek and

Tiedens 2012). By affording high-ranking individuals privileged influence and access

to valued resources such as mates and food, mutually accepted hierarchical relation￾ships minimize costly agonistic conflicts, establish order, and facilitate coordination

and cooperation among individuals in groups (Báles 1950; Berger et al. 1980). In￾deed, a substantial body of evidence indicates that stable social hierarchies, in which

subordinates defer to rather than dispute or contest their high-ranking counterparts,

generally result in better group coordination and performance and more satisfying

relationships (e.g., Halevy et al. 2011; Kwaadsteniet and van Dijk 2010; Ronay et al.

2012; Tiedens and Fragale 2003; Tiedens et al. 2007; see also Anderson and Willer,

Chap. 3, this volume).

Despite the fundamental importance of social hierarchies to human relation￾ships, however, questions remain about the processes that allow individuals to attain

rank and the factors that determine rank allocation. Although an extensive literature

has documented a wide range of micro-level attributes and behaviors that influence

rank attainment, these findings lack a coherent, unifying framework integrating the

various data points into a comprehensive and theoretically supported understanding

of rank differentiation. To address this disparity, we have adopted a parsimonious

4 J. T. Cheng and J. L. Tracy

and empirically supported evolutionary model, the Dominance-Prestige Account

(Cheng et al. 2010, 2013a; Henrich and Gil-White 2001), which we believe can

unify the diverse extant findings. This account proposes that differences in hierar￾chical rank within human social groups are the result of both: (a) coerced deference

to dominant others who induce fear by virtue of their ability to inflict physical or

psychological harm (i.e., Dominance) and (b) freely conferred deference to presti￾gious others who possess valued skills and abilities (i.e., Prestige).

This chapter provides a broad review of the extant research regarding rank allo￾cation processes, by surveying findings from the major disciplines that have studied

human rank dynamics empirically, including psychology, sociology, management

science, and anthropology. We argue that the Dominance-Prestige Account can be

fruitfully applied to organize these diverse empirical findings—including those that

appear, at first glance, to be conflicting. The Dominance-Prestige Account not only

allows for and predicts the diversity of results that have emerged in the prior lit￾erature, but also goes beyond many prior descriptive accounts to provide a deep

theoretical explanation for the extant body of work.

It is important to note that, in contrast to many other chapters in this volume that

focus more specifically on one particular dimension of social rank involving respect

and admiration (often referred to as status; e.g., Anderson and Kilduff 2009a), our

focus is on the determinants of social rank broadly construed, a concept that reflects

the degree of influence one possesses over resource allocation, conflict resolution,

and group decisions (Berger et al. 1980; for further discussion of hierarchy-related

conceptual terms, see Blader and Chen, Chap. 4, this volume; Cheng et al. 2013e).

The present review is organized into three sections. First, we discuss the key te￾nets of the Dominance-Prestige Account, outlining the selection pressures theorized

to favor the evolution of these two distinct forms of social rank inequalities in hu￾mans, and the psychological processes that underpin them. Second, we discuss find￾ings from our own recent work that directly support this account, by demonstrating

(a) the co-existing effectiveness of Dominance and Prestige in promoting social

rank and (b) the distinction between Dominance and Prestige as separate rank-at￾tainment processes, wherein each is underpinned by a distinct suite of personality

profiles, emotional mechanisms, behavioral patterns, cognitions, neuroendocrine

profiles, and fitness outcomes. Third, we summarize a number of predictions that

the Dominance-Prestige Account entails regarding the relevance of a wide range of

narrow, lower-order traits, and attributes to rank attainment, and examine the fit of

these predictions to the prior empirical literature. Taken together, this substantial

body of research converges to suggest that intimidation and respect co-exist as two

fundamental yet distinct bases of rank differentiation in human societies.

The Dominance-Prestige Account of Social Rank

Differentiation

The Dominance-Prestige Account (Henrich and Gil-White 2001) holds that social

hierarchies are multidimensional, arising from two systems of rank allocation. In

contrast to prior accounts of hierarchy differentiation (e.g., Anderson and Kilduff