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

Subjective social status and neural processing of race in Mexican American adolescents

Adolescence is a sensitive period for sociocultural development in which facets of social identity, including social status and race, become especially salient. Despite the heightened importance of both social status and race during this developmental period, no known work has examined how individual differences in social status influence perceptions of race in adolescents. Thus, in the present study, we investigated how both subjective social status and objective socioeconomic status (SES) influence neural responses to race. Twenty-three Mexican American adolescents (15 females; mean age = 17.22 years) were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed Black and White faces in a standard labeling task. Adolescents rated their subjective social status in US society, while their parents responded to questions about their educational background, occupation, and economic strain (objective SES). Results demonstrated a negative association between subjective social status and neural responses in the amygdala, fusiform face area, and medial prefrontal cortex when adolescents viewed Black (relative to White) faces. In other words, adolescents with lower subjective social status showed greater activity in neural regions involved in processing salience, perceptual expertise, and thinking about the minds of others when they viewed images of Black faces, suggesting enhanced salience of race for these youth. There was no relationship between objective SES and neural responses to the faces. Moreover, instructing participants to focus on the gender or emotion expression on the face attenuated the relationship between subjective social status and neural processing of race. Together, these results demonstrate that subjective social status shapes the way the brain responds to race, which may have implications for psychopathology.

Motivation Modulates Brain Networks in Response to Faces Varying in Race and Status: A Multivariate Approach

Previous behavioral and neuroimaging work indicates that individuals who are externally motivated to respond without racial prejudice tend not to spontaneously regulate their prejudice and prefer to focus on nonracial attributes when evaluating others. This fMRI multivariate analysis used partial least squares analysis to examine the distributed neural processing of race and a relevant but ostensibly nonracial attribute (i.e., socioeconomic status) as a function of the perceiver's external motivation. Sixty-one white male participants (Homo sapiens) privately formed impressions of black and white male faces ascribed with high or low status. Across all conditions, greater external motivation was associated with reduced coactivation of brain regions believed to support emotion regulation (rostral anterior cingulate cortex), introspection (middle cingulate), and social cognition (temporal pole, medial prefrontal cortex). The reduced involvement of this network irrespective of target race and status suggests that external motivation is related to the participant's overall approach to impression formation in an interracial context. The findings highlight the importance of examining network coactivation in understanding the role of external motivation in impression formation, among other interracial social processes.

How attention gates social interactions

Social interactions are at the core of social life. However, humans selectively choose their exchange partners and do not engage in all available opportunities for social encounters. In this review, we argue that attentional systems play an important role in guiding the selection of social interactions. Supported by both classic and emerging literature, we identify and characterize the three core processes-perception, interpretation, and evaluation-that interact with attentional systems to modulate selective responses to social environments. Perceptual processes facilitate attentional prioritization of social cues. Interpretative processes link attention with understanding of cues' social meanings and agents' mental states. Evaluative processes determine the perceived value of the source of social information. The interplay between attention and these three routes of processing places attention in a powerful role to manage the selection of the vast amount of social information that individuals encounter on a daily basis and, in turn, gate the selection of social interactions.

The neural representation of social networks

The computational demands associated with navigating large, complexly bonded social groups are thought to have significantly shaped human brain evolution. Yet, research on social network representation and cognitive neuroscience have progressed largely independently. Thus, little is known about how the human brain encodes the structure of the social networks in which it is embedded. This review highlights recent work seeking to bridge this gap in understanding. While the majority of research linking social network analysis and neuroimaging has focused on relating neuroanatomy to social network size, researchers have begun to define the neural architecture that encodes social network structure, cognitive and behavioral consequences of encoding this information, and individual differences in how people represent the structure of their social world.

Rising above It: Status Ambivalence in Older Adults

BACKGROUND

Social status is the standing of a person or group in the social hierarchy, and is perceived to change across the life span from low social status in early life, to peak in midlife, and to a decline thereafter. As threats to subjective social status are known to be detrimental to individuals' health, it is important to better understand how older adults perceive themselves and others in terms of age-related social status.

OBJECTIVE

We examined status ambivalence - the potential discrepancy between how older adults' perceive social status for themselves compared to older adults in general.

METHOD

Study 1 used qualitative data from 37 semi-structured interviews with older adults to assess perceptions of social status. Study 2 used quantitative survey data from 114 older adults who completed explicit and implicit measures of social status.

RESULTS

Study 1 (n = 37, meanage = 71.72, SDage = 5.69; 81.1% women) provided preliminary evidence for status ambivalence such that older adults reported unequivocal low social status for other older adults but a more ambivalent perception of their own social status. Study 2 (n = 114, meanage = 64.32, SDage = 8.98, 57.9% women) compared implicit and explicit measures of social status revealing that older adults consistently perceive older adults to have low social status but again show a more ambivalent perception of their own social status.

CONCLUSION

We discuss status ambivalence as a potential protective mechanism in the context of negative societal perceptions of age-related social status that may be important for well-being in later life.

The relationship between social status and the components of agency

Building on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment distinguishing communion from agency, the purpose of the present work was to show that the strength of the relationship between social status and agency depends on specific components at issue: assertiveness, competence, and effort. Four experimental studies were conducted using two complementary paradigms. In Studies 1 and 2, we manipulated social status, and participants had to rate the target on competence, assertiveness, and effort. In Studies 3 and 4, we reversed the design. Results consistently showed that social status was primarily related to assertiveness, somewhat related to competence, and only slightly related to effort. The present research provides a better understanding of how the dimensions of social judgment are used to explain differences in social status.

Why Interventions to Influence Adolescent Behavior Often Fail but Could Succeed

We provide a developmental perspective on two related issues: (a) why traditional preventative school-based interventions work reasonably well for children but less so for middle adolescents and (b) why some alternative approaches to interventions show promise for middle adolescents. We propose the hypothesis that traditional interventions fail when they do not align with adolescents' enhanced desire to feel respected and be accorded status; however, interventions that do align with this desire can motivate internalized, positive behavior change. We review examples of promising interventions that (a) directly harness the desire for status and respect, (b) provide adolescents with more respectful treatment from adults, or (c) lessen the negative influence of threats to status and respect. These examples are in the domains of unhealthy snacking, middle school discipline, and high school aggression. Discussion centers on implications for basic developmental science and for improvements to youth policy and practice.

External motivation to avoid prejudice alters neural responses to targets varying in race and status

Those who are high in external motivation to respond without prejudice (EMS) tend to focus on non-racial attributes when describing others. This fMRI study examined the neural processing of race and an alternative yet stereotypically relevant attribute (viz., socioeconomic status: SES) as a function of the perceiver's EMS. Sixty-one White participants privately formed impressions of Black and White faces ascribed with high or low SES. Analyses focused on regions supporting race- and status-based reward/salience (NAcc), evaluation (VMPFC) and threat/relevance (amygdala). Consistent with previous findings from the literature on status-based evaluation, we observed greater neural responses to high-status (vs low-status) targets in all regions of interest when participants were relatively low in EMS. In contrast, we observed the opposite pattern when participants were relatively high in EMS. Notably, all effects were independent of target race. In summary, White perceivers' race-related motivations similarly altered their neural responses to the SES of Black and White targets. Specifically, the findings suggest that EMS may attenuate the positive value and/or salience of high status in a mixed-race context. Findings are discussed in the context of the stereotypic relationship between race and SES.