Status, conformity, and obedience

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Status, conformity, and obedience

• Session 4, SP603/844

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Questions

• Why do most groups have status hierarchies?
• What is the link between self-esteem and social
  status?
• Why do groups have social norms in place and why
  do most people conform to them?
• What happens to people who do not comply to
  norms?

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• Acknowledged expertise attracts, though perhaps
  only temporarily, what we may term a following of
  dependent persons. These persons will be welcomed
  as a principal source of prestige as a capital
  benefit of the hunters expertise. Nor is this
  expertise necessarily reduced or dissipated
  through having to share it with other persons
  attached to him (Paine, 1973)

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Definitions

• Status ones standing in a group
• Dominance status achieved through an ability to
  threat and punish
• Prestige status achieved through an ability to
  help (in valued domains) Henrich Gil-White
  (2001)
• Power controlling someones outcomes

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Evolution of status psychology

• Status is a primary and universal human motive
  (Hogan Hogan, 1991)
• In any group, individuals compete for status,
  because
• Status is associated with reproductive resources
• particularly for males high status males make
  more attractive mates and coalition partners
  women prefer high status men (Buss, 1999)
• Everyone aspires to high status and wants to
  avoid low status (see DeBottons book in which he
  describes a phenomenon called status anxiety
  (keeping up with the Jones)
• In humans, status is granted largely to
  individuals who benefit others/the group through
  their actions prestige
• Prestige is based on ability to help and it
  differs from dominance (ability to hurt) see
  Henrich Gil-White, 2001 Pinker, 1994
• See Heinrich Gil-Whites paper on how prestige
  is awarded to individuals (infocopying as
  mechanism)
• Status is a costly signal some handicaps may
  give you status and a good reputation (Van Vugt,
  Roberts, Hardy, 2006 Zahavi Zahavi, 1977)
  cf. competitive altruism

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Evolution of prestige

• Prestige processes emerge from social learning
• Social learning (cultural transmission) saves
  costs of individual learning
• Natural selection favours learning and
  identifying from models that possess
  better-than-average information
• Selection favours strategies to provide benefits
  to models (via deference) to induce preferred
  models to gain greater access and cooperation

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Exercise

• Use this prestige model to explain why the
  folllowing people are prestigious, and how we
  defer to them
• Scientists
• Musicians
• Supermodels
• Sports stars
• Aristocrats

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The Chicken dilemma A model of status?
The lower left and upper right cells are
equilibria
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The lower left and upper right cells are
equilibria
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Social Psychology of Status

• Hogan Hogan (1991) Although status
  considerations are ubiquitous and consequential,
  psychologists have tended to avoid this topic
• Yet, in any group, there are differences in
  status and influence between members noticeable
  over time
• Expectation states theory (Berger, 1972) assumes
  that status depends upon ones specific (e.g.,
  athletic ability), and diffuse task
  characteristics (e.g., sex, age) i.e.,
  abilities that could help group
• Social exchange theory (Homans, 1961) assumes
  that status results from a reciprocal
  relationship between individual and group
  individual gives something to group, and, in
  return, gets status
• Quite consistent with evolutionary prestige model

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Correlations with status (Anderson et al., 2001)

• zero-order
• Extraversion .47
• Agreeableness .12
• Neuroticism -.31
• Conscientiousness .23
• Openness -.05
• Physical attractiveness .39

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• What do you think are the professions with the
  highest status in British society today?
• Could you give an evolutionary account of this?

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A Theory of Dominance (Cummins, 1996)

• Natural selection favours strategies that cause
  one to rise in dominance, and strategies to
  subvert the access of dominant individuals to
  resources (via deception, coalition formation)
• Humans have evolved strategies for reasoning
  about social norms involving dominance
  hierarchies (obligations, prohibitions,
  permissions) cf. obedience norms
• How did humans move away from dominance to status
  hierarchies this is a VERY important issue????
  Look at young children and one can see the change
  from dominance to status
• There is not a clear theory as yet to explain
  this transition (Buss, 1999)

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Ultimate Bargaining game

• You have 10 (allocator)
• Any amount of this 10 you can share with another
  person (recipient)
• The recipient can either accept or reject this
  offer
• If s/he rejects the offer, nobody gets anything!
• Lets play!

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Social Psychology of Norms

• Consensual standards that regulate group members
  behaviours
• Why do we need social norms?
• Increases conformity
• Reduces uncertainty
• Why do groups need conformist and loyal people?
• What is in it for the conforming individuals?
  They are good social learners (Simon, 1990)
  altruism as byproduct of docility
• Types of social norms?
• Descriptive norms (what most do) is this a norm?
• Prescriptive norms (what people ought to do)
• Cialdinis litter research
• Think of norms in traffic situations distinguish
  between descriptive and prescriptive norms

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The effect of prescriptive and descriptive norms
on littering (Reno, Cialdini, Kallgren, 1993)
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Evolution of social norms

• Norms as individual and/or group-level
  adaptations
• Individuals in groups with norms have better
  survival and reproductive chances than in groups
  without norms is that so, please give example
• Norms for fairness exist (who gets what?) but are
  they functional? see research on the Ultimate
  Bargaining Game (Fehr Fischbacher, 2003)
  offers range between 40/60 and 50/50
• Why do people reject low offers???
• Norms of reciprocity (Ill scratch your back,
  youll ride mine)
• Norms of morality (what one ought do) see Krebs
  Janicki, 2002
• Decency norms
• Obedience norms
• Solidarity norms
• Find an example of each of these norms and
  explain why we have them

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Evolution of social norms

• Research presented by Dr. Rick OGorman