Understanding social hierarchies: The neural and psychological foundations of status perception

Abstract

Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance. In this review we explore the nature of social hierarchies and the traits associated with status in both humans and nonhuman primates, and how status varies across development in humans. Our review finds that we can rapidly identify social status based on a wide range of cues. Like monkeys, we tend to use certain cues, like physical strength, to make status judgments, although layered on top of these more primitive perceptual cues are socio-cultural status cues like job titles and educational attainment. One's relative status has profound effects on attention, memory, and social interactions, as well as health and wellness. These effects can be particularly pernicious in children and adolescents. Developmental research on peer groups and social exclusion suggests teenagers may be particularly sensitive to social status information, but research focused specifically on status processing and associated brain areas is very limited. Recent evidence from neuroscience suggests there may be an underlying neural network, including regions involved in executive, emotional, and reward processing, that is sensitive to status information. We conclude with questions for future research as well as stressing the need to expand social neuroscience research on status processing to adolescents.

Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval

“…Searchlight analyses further identified significant clusters in IPL for status classification and PCC for trait classification (Table S2). These consistent results are in line with previous neuroimaging studies suggesting a critical role of the IPL in representing social status (48,49) and of the PCC in representing personality traits (50)(51)(52). For identity knowledge, we observed that the ATL was the only region that could accurately distinguish the eight learned people in ROI-based analyses [t (25) = 3.166, P = 0.012], combinatorial analyses [UCP = 1.811, t (4) = 5.232, P = 0.003], and searchlight analyses ( Fig.…”

‘Every day I worry about something’: A qualitative exploration of children’s experiences of stress and coping

“…This finding is supported in evolutionary psychology, with the power dynamics and social dominance created by social hierarchies regarded as a major source of psychosocial stress with health implications for childhood (Hawley, 2015) and adolescence (Koski, Xie, & Olson, 2015). This finding is supported in evolutionary psychology, with the power dynamics and social dominance created by social hierarchies regarded as a major source of psychosocial stress with health implications for childhood (Hawley, 2015) and adolescence (Koski, Xie, & Olson, 2015).…”

Interindividual differences in neonatal sociality and emotionality predict juvenile social status in rhesus monkeys

“…However, it is also possible that the specific social status we measured in monkeys (i.e., the social hierarchy of same‐aged peers) may be more equivalent to social hierarchies in human gangs of teenagers. In fact, overt aggression is an important predictor of status and popularity in humans during the late elementary and teen years (see Koski, Xie, & Olson, for a review). Our findings indicate that emotional reactivity therefore may have important implications for social status specifically in teenage groups with social hierarchies.…”

“…However, it is also possible that the specific social status we measured in monkeys (i.e., the social hierarchy of same-aged peers) may be more equivalent to social hierarchies in human gangs of teenagers. In fact, overt aggression is an important predictor of status and popularity in humans during the late elementary and teen years (see Koski, Xie, & Olson, 2015 (Chiao, 2010).…”