Status, Prestige and Social Dominance

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Status, Prestige and Social Dominance

• Nicole Thurston

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Objectives

• Learn about status, prestige, and social
  dominance
• Learn how these relate today and how they applied
  to our ancestors
• Learn about non-human behaviors
• Think critically about questions involving our
  social interactions and how/if our interactions
  apply to the evolutionary perspective
• To have fun! ?

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Humans are Social Beings

• Social interactions
• Large potential fitness
• Large potential fitness costs
• Limits on the size of an individuals social
  network means some social interactions preclude
  others
• Costs may be enacted when benefits of sociality
  are threatened

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Development of Hierarchies

• All-out fighting
• Foolish strategy for humans
• Costs for victor
• Costs for loser
• Do you think there are any positive outcomes to
  fighting?
• Selection favors the assessment of abilities
• Complex process which involves socialization,
  allies, etc.
• Dominance hierarchies
• Secure access to resources
• Production hierarchies
• People working together to achieve a group goal

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Status and Dominance Hierarchies

• Fisek and Ofshe, 1970
• Groups of people previously unknown to each other
• 50 developed clear hierarchy w/in 1 minute
• Other 50 in 5 minutes
• Members of groups can assess future status w/in a
  new group just by looking at other members
  (Kalma, 1991)
• Study of tennis players

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Non-human Hierarchies

• Pecking Order
• Hens
• Crayfish
• Size up their rivals
• Change in nervous system
• Reluctance to go from dominance to
• subordinance
• Chimpanzees
• Submissive acts grunts, kissing, bring gifts
• Dominant male makes himself appear larger
• Dominant male also has increased sexual access
• Important to note Hierarchies are not static,
  nor are they based on size of primate.
• http//www.wildchimps.org/wcf/suedgruppe/videoclip
  .htm
• http//www.youtube.com/results?search_querychimpa
  nzeesocializing

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Status Hierarchies in Adolescence

• Priority of access to resources in competitive
  situations
• School shootings
• The jocks rule the school
• Are they going to accept me?
• Its a rat race inside the school to see whos
  going to be more popular.
• Columbine Clip
• Why did they do it?
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vGFdqXxv4vsM

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Status Hierarchies in Adolescence

• Hormonal change
• Triggers aggression and risky behaviors in
  adolescent boys
• Physical maturity / Economic immaturity
• Teenage male frustrations are a new concept
• Aggressive energy is needed to meet challenges of
  entering adult life
• Do you think recent adolescent crimes are due to
  a lack of economic maturity and a desire to gain
  status in the world?

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Status Seeking

• Willingness to take risks
• Necessary in status competition
• A race car driver at the 24-hour LeMans race,
  when asked why he always drove his car right at
  the edge of a curve, inches from death, replied
  that if you dont drive that way, you lose the
  race. (Bridgeman, p. 190)

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• Do all high status individuals take some sort of
  risk to get where they are todayor are there
  other factors that may contribute to status?

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How did you develop your status?

• Born into classes?
• Caste System Hindus
• Do you actively seek
• your status?
• A Place in the Sun
• Clip The New Guy
• Is it that easy to gain status?
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v5KQQvz3MP64

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Specific Physiological Mechanisms

• Neuroendocrine responses to challenge
• Autonomic Nervous System releases Cortisol
  Adrenaline
• Competitive games (player or observer)
• SES and neuroendocrine activity
• Perceived social status compared to others
• Higher baseline cortisol levels, more sensitive
  stress response during conflict

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Therefore

• Neuroendocrine responses are bidirectional
• Perceived social status influences hormone levels
• Hormone levels change an individuals perceived
  social status and their interaction with the world

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• AIDS

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• Schizophrenia

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Status and Health (Buss, 2005)

• Infectious disease and disability
• Results in disgust and avoidance of unhealthy
  individuals
• Costs of failing to ID health threats
• Leads to human bias in the direction of
  overperception of threat
• Mechanism designed to protect people from
  contagion.
• From an EP this makes sense. However, what about
  individuals who choose to work with the disabled
  and chronically ill? (Rehabilitators, Doctors)

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Sex Differences in Status Striving

• MUCH more prevalent among men than women
• Stronger selection pressure to succeed in
  reproduction
• Direct relationship between status and
  reproductive success
• Ceiling for male reproduction is much higher than
  for women
• Investment in pregnancy and lactation
• Female reproduction is limited by access to
  resources
• Male reproduction is limited by access to mates

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Sex Differences in Status Striving

• Buss suggests that high status women may also
  maintain higher reproductive advantages.
• Do you agree?
• Would lower status
• men find higher status
• women more
• intimidating?
• A Polygamy reversal

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Status Access to Mates

• Nobles, Princes, etc.
• Harems of Women
• Middle Class men
• 3-4 women
• In Western cultures where monogamy higher
  status women are present, high-status men are
  still preferred as mates and partners in affairs.
  (Baker Bellis, 1995 Perusse, 1993)
• Any thoughts as to why this might be?

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Preference for Dominant Males

• Research by Bereczkei et al., 1997
• Women prefer altruistic males for long-
• term mates
• Women prefer brave, non-altruistic, risk-prone
  males for short-term mates
• Females found dominant males to be very sexually
  attractive, but men did not find dominance in
  females to be sexually attractive
• In a way this seems to perpetuate a gender role
• society.

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Dominance Motivation

• Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)
• (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, 1993)
• A scale which described preference for social
  hierarchies
• Those who score high on scale endorse group
  dominance over other groups
• SDO should be higher in men
• Access to Women
• Women select for men with high SDO

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Social Dominance Orientation

• From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense
  that ancestral women would prefer a mate with a
  higher SDO. Why do these results reign true
  today, even in egalitarian cultures?

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• How do you exert your authority?

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Gender Differences in Expression of Dominance

• Prosocial Dominant Acts versus Egoist Dominant
  Acts
• Women think Prosocial Dominant Acts are more
  socially desirable
• And actually performed more of these tasks
• Whereas
• Men think Egoist Dominant Acts are more socially
  desirable
• And actually performed more of these tasks

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Continuation of this study by Megargee (1969)

• Paired high-dominant man/low-dominant man
• Paired high-dominant woman/low-dominant woman
• Paired high-dominant man/low-dominant woman
• Paired high-dominant man/low-dominant man
• Participants of groups were told they had to work
  together to repair a box given to them as quickly
  as possible

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Results Who became the leader?

• 75 high-dom. men and 70 women emerged as
  leaders with their same sex
• 20 high-dom. men when paired with low-dom. women
  emerged as leaders
• Only 20 high-dom. women when paired with
  low-dom. men emerged as leaders
• WHY?
• Appointing of position group oriented goals

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• How do these gender differences in leadership and
  dominance play a role in todays society?
• How about from an evolutionary perspective?

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Relational Aggression

• Women may express social dominance in a less
  overt, less physical, and more emotional way
• Men express social dominance
• in more physical and overt
• ways
• Laguna Beach clip
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vL8Ksl79V5posearch
  Laguna20Beach

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Dominance Theory

• Selection favors dominance, but also favors
  subordinate strategies to displace the dominant
  person
• Dominance Theory has two main propositions
• 1. There are social norms regarding permissions,
  obligations, and prohibitions
• 2. These emerge before reasoning strategies
• Deontic versus indicative reasoning

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Dominance Theory

• Allows children to organize transitive dominance
  hierarchies
• A gt B gt C A is greater than C
• Social reasoning is strongly influenced by rank
• Evolved selective attention and memorial storage
  mechanisms
• Cheater Study
• What are the benefits of these mechanisms?

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Dominance Theory

• Other studies
• Anger or frustration increases blood pressure
• Aggression towards person who caused anger leads
  to decrease in BP if the person is low status
• If the person who caused your anger is higher in
  status, you BP will remain high
• Any thoughts as to why, physiologically, this
  happens?

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Social Attention-Holding Theory

• An emotional component of dominance
• Resource-holding potential
• Evaluation of yourself
• Results in attacking, submitting, or fleeing
• In this sense, dominance is a relationship not
  something possessed by one individual.
• Social attention-holding potential
• Competition for quality and quantity of attention
  from others

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Emotions

• Going up in rank
• Elation
• Increase in helping behavior
• Loss of status
• Shame bodily movements coincide with feelings
• Rage justifies retaliation
• Envy emulate someone (positive manifestation)
  or belittle your idol (negative manifestation
• Depression may result in submissiveness

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Indicators of Dominance

• Dominant individuals-
• Stand at full height, dont smile often, speak in
  a loud voice
• For men, a faster walking pace means higher
  status
• Evolutionary perspective
• Are usually tall or are perceived as being tall
• Higher salary

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Other correlates of dominance

• Athleticism
• Intelligence
• Physical attractiveness
• Humorousness
• Good grooming
• A broad theory of the determinants of dominance
  is needed to better understand why some people
  are valued more than others.

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Self-Esteem

• Sociometer Theory
• Serves as a gauge for others evaluations
• From an evolutionary perspective, since humans
  evolved in groups, self-esteem provided a way to
  track the degree one was accepted by others
• Motivational mechanism
• Provides accurate self-assessments

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Submissiveness

• The idea of deceiving down
• Actual reduction in self-esteem to help
  facilitate acting in a subordinate manner
• Adaptive mechanism to avoid threats from the
  dominant
• Allows one to bide their time until a more
  opportune moment to seek a higher status arises
• The Downfall of Tall Poppies
• Experiencing pleasure in anothers misfortune
• Pleasure is felt when the status of a poppy is
  made salient, especially if the low-status
  individual has low self-esteem