How Social Status Shapes Person Perception and Evaluation: A Social Neuroscience Perspective

Abstract

Inferring the relative rank (i.e., status) of others is essential to navigating social hierarchies. A survey of the expanding social psychological and neuroscience literatures on status reveals a diversity of focuses (e.g., perceiver vs. agent), operationalizations (e.g., status as dominance vs. wealth), and methodologies (e.g., behavioral, neuroscientific). Accommodating this burgeoning literature on status in person perception, the present review offers a novel social neuroscientific framework that integrates existing work with theoretical clarity. This framework distinguishes between five key concepts: (1) strategic pathways to status acquisition for agents, (2) status antecedents (i.e., perceptual and knowledge-based cues that confer status rank), (3) status dimensions (i.e., domains in which an individual may be ranked, such as wealth), (4) status level (i.e., one's rank along a given dimension), and (5) the relative importance of a given status dimension, dependent on perceiver and context characteristics. Against the backdrop of this framework, we review multiple dimensions of status in the nonhuman and human primate literatures. We then review the behavioral and neuroscientific literatures on the consequences of perceived status for attention and evaluation. Finally, after proposing a social neuroscience framework, we highlight innovative directions for future social status research in social psychology and neuroscience.

How attention gates social interactions

“…Social status refers to the perceived position of an individual within an explicit or implicit social hierarchy . Perception of social status has a profound impact on social attention.…”

An intersectional approach to understanding how race and social class affect intergroup processes

“…Interest in research investigating the complexity of race by social class stereotypes is emerging as an important future direction of social psychological research (e.g., Brannon et al, 2017;Brannon & Markus, 2013;Kraus, Rucker, et al, 2017;Mattan et al, 2017;Mattan et al, 2018;Richeson & Sommers, 2016). Continued investigation of the effects of race and social class on intergroup processes will supplement the current literature by elaborating on many effects previously attributed to only race or only social class.…”

“…In this review, we advocate for an intersectional approach (i.e., considering how multiple social categories interact simultaneously) to race and social class by examining how race and social class intersect to influence a variety of intergroup processes including stereotypes, attitudes, cognition, and behaviors. We build this review upon recent calls for and renewed interest in understanding the intersection between race and social class for intergroup processes (e.g., Brannon, Higginbotham, & Henderson, 2017;Brannon & Markus, 2013;Kraus, Rucker, et al, 2017;Mattan, Kubota, & Cloutier, 2017;Mattan, Kubota, Dang, & Cloutier, 2018;Richeson & Sommers, 2016).…”

Rising above It: Status Ambivalence in Older Adults

“…Importantly, age-related social status is a complex and multidimensional concept [32] and unlike health status, social status is not independently determined but rather is bestowed upon an individual by socially shared representations in society. Individuals are highly accurate at assessing their own social status within a group and the social status of others [33].…”