The dynamics of dominance: open questions, challenges and solutions

Although social hierarchies are recognized as dynamic systems, they are typically treated as static entities for practical reasons. Here, we ask what we can learn from a dynamical view of dominance, and provide a research agenda for the next decades. We identify five broad questions at the individual, dyadic and group levels, exploring the causes and consequences of individual changes in rank, the dynamics underlying dyadic dominance relationships, and the origins and impacts of social instability. Although challenges remain, we propose avenues for overcoming them. We suggest distinguishing between different types of social mobility to provide conceptual clarity about hierarchy dynamics at the individual level, and emphasize the need to explore how these dynamic processes produce dominance trajectories over individual lifespans and impact selection on status-seeking behaviour. At the dyadic level, there is scope for deeper exploration of decision-making processes leading to observed interactions, and how stable but malleable relationships emerge from these interactions. Across scales, model systems where rank is manipulable will be extremely useful for testing hypotheses about dominance dynamics. Long-term individual-based studies will also be critical for understanding the impact of rare events, and for interrogating dynamics that unfold over lifetimes and generations. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

Economic Inequality Increases the Preference for Status Consumption

Prior research has shown the relationship between objective economic inequality and searching for positional goods. It also investigated the relationship between social class and low income with conspicuous consumption. However, the causal relationship between economic inequality (the difference in wealth between individuals and groups living in a shared context and consumer behavior) has been less explored. Furthermore, there are also few studies looking for the psychological mechanisms that underlie these effects. The current research’s main goal is to analyze the consequences of perceived economic inequality (PEI) on conspicuous and status consumption and the possible psychological mechanisms that could explain its effects. Furthermore, the current research aims to examine whether there is a causal relationship between PEI and materialism preferences and attitudes toward indebtedness. This work includes two preregister experimental studies. In the Study 1 (n = 252), we manipulated PEI and its legitimacy through a 2 (high vs. low inequality) × 2 (Illegitimate vs. legitimate) between-participants experiment. Results showed a main effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, status anxiety, materialism, and attitude toward indebtedness. No interaction effect between legitimacy and inequality was found. In the Study 2 (n = 301), we manipulated the PEI through the Bimboola Paradigm. We replicated the effect of PEI on status consumption, status seeking, and materialism and found that status seeking mediated the relationship between PEI and status and conspicuous consumption. Economic inequality affects consumer behavior and favors consumption preferences for products that provide desirable symbolic values associated with status. These results could have important implications in the interpersonal and intergroup processes, including those related to consumption and purchase.

Actors and dynamics of a policy transfer network

Based on the discussions of Role Theory and policy transfer, this paper analyzes how the transfer of food and nutritional security policies to the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries relates to Brazil´s performance as a “developer”. We demonstrate how a transnational policy transfer network congregating several cooperation modalities was constructed as a status-seeking strategy grounded on projecting domestic policies. Therefore, the policy transfer case study, was carried out, through interviews and document analysis, in order to observing the cooperative dynamic by mapping the effects that the contacts established between several actors had in the long term. The temporal scope of the analysis begins with the arrival of Lula da Silva to the Presidency in 2003, and extends until the II Extraordinary Meeting of the CPLP Council of Food and Nutritional Security, in June 2017. For conducting an operational analysis, social participation and inter-sectorial work were selected as representatives of the conceptual framework related to the Human Right to Adequate Food, since they are two central ideas for the policies that are the object of experience-sharing in South-South cooperation on food and nutritional security.

Evolved Features of Artistic Motivation: Analyzing a Brazilian Database Spanning Three Decades

Darwin explored the evolutionary processes underlying artistic propensities in humans. He stressed the universality of the human mind by pointing to the shared pleasure which all populations take in dancing, engaging in music, acting, painting, tattooing, and self-decorating. Artistic motivation drives/reinforces individuals to engage in aesthetically oriented activities. As curiosity/play, artistic behavior is hypothesized as a functionally autonomous activity motivated intrinsically through an evolved, specific, and stable aesthetic motivational system. The author tested whether artistic motivation is rather intrinsically sourced, domain-specific, and temporally stable using a large decades-long real-life public Brazilian database of university applications. In Study I, the author analyzed reasons for career-choice responded to by 403,832 late-adolescent applicants (48.84% women), between 1987 and 1998. In Study II, the author analyzed another career-choice reason question responded to by 1,703,916 late-adolescent applicants (51.02% women), between 1987 and 2020. Music, Dance, Scenic Arts, Visual Arts, and Literary Studies, in combination, presented a higher percentage of individuals reporting intrinsic factors (e.g., personal taste/aptitude/fulfillment) and the lower proportion reporting extrinsic motives (e.g., the influence of media/teacher/family, salary, social contribution/prestige) than other career groups. If artistic motivation were a recent by-product of general curiosity or status-seeking, artistic and non-artistic careers would not differ. Overall, intrinsic motives were 2.60–6.35 times higher than extrinsic factors; among artistic applicants’ were 10.81–28.38 times higher, suggesting domain-specificity. Intrinsic motivation did not differ among artistic careers and remained stable throughout the periods. Converging results corroborated a specific, stable, and intrinsically sourced artistic motivation consistent with its possible evolutionary origins.

The Psychology of Status Competitions within Organizations

Status hierarchies, which represent how individuals stack up based on the amount of influence and respect they have relative to others, develop quickly as group members make judgments and inferences about others’ competencies or expected contributions to the group. While quick to emerge, one’s place in the hierarchy is not entirely fixed. Because occupying higher status offers a number of rewards and benefits, people vie with others to achieve the higher status positions, and seek to maintain them by engaging in behaviors that have downstream effects on group and individual outcomes. Scholars have directed increasing attention to the unique psychology associated with status seeking to understand the consequences of hierarchical competitions. This emerging body of work highlights the dual concerns (i.e., self-oriented and other-oriented concerns) inherent in the pursuit of status and offers new insights to aid our understanding of status competitions. In this chapter, the authors first review the literature that explores the mixed-motive psychology of status striving, noting the potentially beneficial and destructive behavioral outcomes that status competitions can elicit within workgroups. Next, the authors detail some of the structural, temporal, relational, and individual properties that may exacerbate people’s self-interested status concerns. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the organizational implications of this body of work and reviewing potentially rich opportunities for future research on status competitions.

Driving liberal change? Global performance indices as a system of normative stratification in liberal international order

The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the relevant IR literatures on international hierarchies and status-seeking, we identify the structural attributes of the GPI-based system of stratification, how these structural attributes shape the distribution of normative status positions among states, and how this distribution is likely to condition the pursuit of status by states. In particular, we argue that the disaggregated structure and relative ranking of states, respectively, generate status ambiguity and immobility, which both dissuade states from seeking higher moral status through improving their scores in the existing indices. We illustrate the patterns of status ambiguity and immobility present in the GPI-based system of stratification through an empirical analysis of the scores and rank positions of the United States, European Union (EU) members, and “rising powers” in five different indices in the past decade.

Motivated to blend in: Social anxiety and information sharing

Sharing information is ubiquitous in human societies and has a major impact on individual and group decision-making. The content of the information people share and the style in which they do so are shaped by their social goals, such as seek to gain influence or to signal group affiliation. Here we suggest that the balance between information-sharing goals shifts along a social anxiety dimension. We begin by demonstrating that similarity to others drive activity in the brain’s valuation system even in a competitive advice-taking task. Then, in three behavioral experiments, we show that social anxiety levels are related to the tendency to give advice resembling that given by rival advisers and to refrain from status-seeking behavior. Social anxiety was also associated with negative social comparisons with rival advisers. Our findings highlight the role of competing social goals in shaping information sharing and t the spread of extreme views.

EXPRESS: Attribute Sentiment Scoring with Online Text Reviews: Accounting for Language Structure and Missing Attributes

The authors address two significant challenges in using online text reviews to obtain finegrained attribute level sentiment ratings. First, in contrast to methods that rely on word frequency, they develop a deep learning convolutional-LSTM hybrid model to account for language structure. The convolutional layer accounts for spatial structure (adjacent word groups or phrases) and LSTM accounts for sequential structure of language (sentiment distributed and modified across non-adjacent phrases). Second, they address the problem of missing attributes in text in constructing attribute sentiment scores—as reviewers write only about a subset of attributes and remain silent on others. They develop a model-based imputation strategy using a structural model of heterogeneous rating behavior. Using Yelp restaurant review data, they show superior attribute sentiment scoring accuracy with their model. They find three reviewer segments with different motivations: status seeking, altruism/want voice, and need to vent/praise. Reviewers write to inform and vent/praise, but not based on attribute importance. The heterogeneous model-based imputation performs better than other common imputations; and importantly leads to managerially significant corrections in restaurant attribute ratings. More broadly, our results suggest that social science research should pay more attention to reduce measurement error in variables constructed from text.