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

The nature of status: Navigating the varied approaches to conceptualizing and measuring status

Members of small groups fundamentally desire status as status underpins members' self-concept and dictates behavior in groups. Moreover, group members readily orient and update status perceptions that index the social standing of themselves and other members. Yet, our understanding is obscured by variability in how researchers study status. In the current review, we crystallize knowledge regarding the nature of status by characterizing variability in definitions, measures, and analytic frameworks. We advocate a definition of status that draws together attributes of respect, admiration, and voluntary deference. We also distinguish reputational and relational status operationalizations and address implications pertaining to measurement along with downstream decisions involving data management and analysis. We encourage a deliberate approach to ensure congruency in how status is defined, measured, and analyzed within a research program. This review also guides theory and hypothesis generation regarding how status-related processes may vary based on different forms of status or differing contexts.

Manifestations, social impact, and decay of conceptual beliefs: A cultural perspective

INTRODUCTION

Believing comprises multifaceted processes that integrate information from the outside world through meaning-making processes with personal relevance.

METHODS

Qualitative Review of the current literature in social cognitive neuroscience.

RESULTS

Although believing develops rapidly outside an individual's conscious awareness, it results in the formation of beliefs that are stored in memory and play an important role in determining an individual's behavior. Primal beliefs reflect an individual's experience of objects and events, whereas conceptual beliefs are based on narratives that are held in social groups. Conceptual beliefs can be about autobiographical, political, religious, and other aspects of life and may be encouraged by participation in group rituals. We hypothesize that assertions of future gains and rewards that transcend but are inherent in these codices provide incentives to follow the norms and rules of social groups.

CONCLUSION

The power of conceptual beliefs to provide cultural orientation is likely to fade when circumstances and evidence make it clear that what was asserted no longer applies.

Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization

Social groups in various social species are organized with hierarchical structures that shape group dynamics and the nature of within-group interactions. In-group social bonding, exemplified by grooming behaviors among animals and collective rituals and team-building activities in human societies, is recognized as a practical adaptive strategy to foster group harmony and stabilize hierarchical structures in both human and nonhuman animal groups. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of social bonding on hierarchical groups remain largely unexplored. Here, we conducted simultaneous neural recordings on human participants engaged in-group communications within small hierarchical groups (n = 528, organized into 176 three-person groups) to investigate how social bonding influenced hierarchical interactions and neural synchronizations. We differentiated interpersonal interactions between individuals of different (inter-status) or same (intra-status) social status and observed distinct effects of social bonding on inter-status and intra-status interactions. Specifically, social bonding selectively increased frequent and rapid information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization for inter-status dyads but not intra-status dyads. Furthermore, social bonding facilitated unidirectional neural alignment from group leader to followers, enabling group leaders to predictively align their prefrontal activity with that of followers. These findings provide insights into how social bonding influences hierarchical dynamics and neural synchronization while highlighting the role of social status in shaping the strength and nature of social bonding experiences in human groups.

The impact of social hierarchies on neural response to feedback evaluations after advice giving

Advisors generally evaluate advisee-relevant feedback after advice giving. The response to these feedback-(1) whether the advice is accepted and (2) whether the advice is optimal-usually involves prestige. Prior literature has found that prestige is the basis by which individuals attain a superior status in the social hierarchy. However, whether advisors are motivated to attain a superior status when engaging in advice giving remains uncharacterized. Using event-related potentials, this study investigates how advisors evaluate feedback after giving advice to superior (vs. inferior) status advisees. A social hierarchy was first established based on two advisees (one was ranked as superior status and another as inferior status) as well as participants' performance in a dot-estimation task in which all participants were ranked as medium status. Participants then engaged in a game in which they were assigned roles as advisors to a superior or inferior status advisee. Afterward, the participants received feedback in two phases. In Phase 1, participants were told whether the advisees accepted the advice provided. In Phase 2, the participants were informed whether the advice they provided was correct. In these two phases, when the advisee was of superior status, participants exhibited stronger feedback-related negativity and P300 difference in response to (1) whether their advice was accepted, and (2) whether their advice was correct. Moreover, the P300 was notably larger when the participants' correct advice led to a gain for a superior-status advisee. In the context of advice giving, advisors are particularly motivated to attain a superior status when the feedback involving social hierarchies, which is reflected in higher sensitivity to feedback associated with superior status advisees at earlier and later stages during feedback evaluations in brains.

Linguistic identity as a modulator of gaze cueing of attention

Eye-gaze stimuli can elicit orienting of attention in an observer, a phenomenon known as gaze cueing of attention. Here, we explored whether gaze cueing can be shaped by the linguistic identity of the cueing face. In two experiments, participants were first familiarized with different faces together with auditory sentences. Half of the sentences were associated with the native language of the participants (Italian) and the other half with an unknown language (Albanian and Basque, in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively). In a second phase, participants performed a gaze-cueing task. In a third recognition phase, the auditory sentences were presented again, and participants were required to decide which face uttered each sentence. Results indicated that participants were more likely to confuse faces from the same language category than from the other language category. Results of the gaze-cueing task revealed a greater gaze-cueing effect for faces associated with the native vs. unknown language. Critically, this difference emerged only in Experiment 1, which may reflect differences in social status between the two language groups. Our findings revealed the impact of language as a social cue on the gaze-cueing effect, suggesting that social attention is sensitive to the language of our interlocutors.

Distrust as a form of inequality

Navigating social hierarchies is a ubiquitous aspect of human life. Social status shapes our thoughts, feelings, and actions toward others in various ways. However, it remains unclear how trust is conferred within hierarchies and how status-related cues are used when resources are on the line. This research fills this knowledge gap by examining how ascribed, consensus-based status appearance, and perceived status appearance impact investment decisions for high- and low-status partners during a Trust Game. In a series of pre-registered experiments, we examined the degree to which participants trusted unfamiliar others with financial investments when the only available information about that person was their socioeconomic status (SES). In Study 1, SES was ascribed. Studies 2 and 3 conveyed SES with visual antecedents (clothing). Across all three experiments, participants trusted high SES partners more than low SES partners. In addition, subjective perceptions of status based on visual cues were a stronger predictor of trust than consensus-based status judgments. This work highlights a high status-trust bias for decisions where an individual's money is on the line. In addition, high-status trust bias may occur simply because of an individual's subjective assumptions about another's rank.

ERPs responses to dominance features from human faces

Social dominance is an important feature of social life. Dominance has been proposed to be one of two trait dimensions underpinning social judgments of human faces. Yet, the neural bases of the ability to identify different dominance levels in others based on intrinsically facial cues remains poorly understood. Here, we used event-related potentials to determine the temporal dynamics of facial dominance evaluation based on facial features signaling physical strength/weakness in humans. Twenty-seven participants performed a dominance perception task where they passively viewed faces with different dominance levels. Dominance levels did not modulate an early component of face processing, known as the N170 component, but did modulate the late positive potential (LPP) component. These findings indicate that participants inferred dominance levels at a late stage of face evaluation. Furthermore, the highest level of dominant faces and the lowest level of submissive faces both elicited higher LPP amplitudes than faces with a neutral dominance level. Taken together, the present study provides new insights regarding the dynamics of the neurocognitive processes underlying facial dominance evaluation.

Neural responses to social partners' facial expressions are modulated by their social status in an interactive situation

Recently, several studies have found a recognition advantage for facial expressions, particularly angry expressions, when they appear on high-status faces rather than low-status faces. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the influence of social status on the neural responses to others' facial expressions in a context of performance monitoring. Specifically, we used an interactive rank-inducing task (i.e., time estimation task) to manipulate social partners' status (high versus low) and then told participants that they would receive social feedback (i.e., happy, neutral, or angry) from social partners with high or low status after completing the task. ERP results revealed the preferential processing of high-status targets at both early (P1/N170/FRN) and late (P3) temporal stages of facial expression processing. Notably, larger FRN amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were observed in happy, neutral, and angry expression contexts, whereas larger P3 amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were only evident in both neutral and angry expression contexts but not in happy expression context. Together, the present study extended previous studies by showing that the perception of facial expressions could be modulated by target status at multiple stages.

Magnetoencephalography Hyperscanning Evidence of Differing Cognitive Strategies Due to Social Role During Auditory Communication

Auditory communication is an essential form of human social interaction. However, the intra-brain cortical-oscillatory drivers of auditory communication exchange remain relatively unexplored. We used improvisational music performance to simulate and capture the creativity and turn-taking dynamics of natural auditory communication. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) hyperscanning in musicians, we targeted brain activity during periods of music communication imagery, and separately analyzed theta (5–7 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz), and beta (15–29 Hz) source-level activity using a within-subjects, two-factor approach which considered the assigned social role of the subject (leader or follower) and whether communication responses were improvisational (yes or no). Theta activity related to improvisational communication and social role significantly interacted in the left isthmus cingulate cortex. Social role was furthermore differentiated by pronounced occipital alpha and beta amplitude increases suggestive of working memory retention engagement in Followers but not Leaders. The results offer compelling evidence for both musical and social neuroscience that the cognitive strategies, and correspondingly the memory and attention-associated oscillatory brain activities of interlocutors during communication differs according to their social role/hierarchy, thereby indicating that social role/hierarchy needs to be controlled for in social neuroscience research.

Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation

From social media to courts of law, recordings of interracial police officer-civilian interactions are now widespread and publicly available. People may be motivated to preferentially understand the dynamics of these interactions when they perceive injustice towards those whose communities experience disproportionate policing relative to others (e.g., non-White racial/ethnic groups). To explore these questions, two studies were conducted (study 1 neuroimaging n = 69 and study 2 behavioral n = 58). The fMRI study examined White participants' neural activity when viewing real-world videos with varying degrees of aggression or conflict of White officers arresting a Black or White civilian. Activity in brain regions supporting social cognition was greater when viewing Black (vs. White) civilians involved in more aggressive police encounters. Additionally, although an independent sample of perceivers rated videos featuring Black and White civilians as similar in overall levels of aggression when civilian race was obscured, participants in the fMRI study (where race was not obscured) rated officers as more aggressive and their use of force as less legitimate when the civilian was Black. In study 2, participants who had not viewed the videos also reported that they believe police are generally more unjustly aggressive towards Black compared with White civilians. These findings inform our understanding of how perceptions of conflict with the potential for injustice shape social cognitive engagement when viewing arrests of Black and White individuals by White police officers.

Children use race to infer who is "in charge"

Children must navigate multifaceted social hierarchies to make sense of the social world. Whereas race and social status covary in many societies, minimal research has examined whether children use race as a status marker. Across three studies, we asked 3- to 11-year-old American children (N = 646) to determine which of two models was "in charge" while varying the models' race and posture cues. When the cue of race was presented individually (Study 1), children used it to derive their status inferences. That is, they expected a White model to more likely be "in charge" than a Black model. However, when the cue of race was presented in conjunction with conflicting posture cues (Study 3), children relied more heavily on posture to determine who was in "in charge." Thus, whereas children have learned the association between White and higher status from their community, they understand that other cues may be more indicative of social status.

Responses to social inequality across the life span: The role of social status and upward mobility beliefs

Economic inequality has been consistently rising in recent decades in many Western countries including Germany. This is a pressing issue as greater economic inequality within a society has detrimental consequences for well-being, social stability, productivity, and even life expectancy. However, little is known about how individuals of different ages experience and respond to social inequality across adulthood. Because status differences are perceived as more malleable in young adulthood (i.e., young adults can expect to move up the social ladder) and only manifest across adulthood, we predicted that negative emotional reactions to the perceived standing in the social hierarchy should become increasingly pronounced with age. Consistently, a first study based on a national representative sample in Germany ( N = 2,542; 18–91 years) confirmed that subjective social status had a much stronger effect on the acceptance of social inequality among middle-aged and older, as compared with younger, adults. In a second experimental study ( N = 387; 18–89 years), participants of any age responded with negative emotional reactions when rising inequality was made salient. However, subjective social status moderated this effect only in middle-aged and older, but not younger, adults. Finally, a third experimental study ( N = 605; 18–82 years) showed that, compared with middle-aged and older adults, younger adults maintained stronger upward mobility beliefs that accounted for the age-differential effects of subjective social status on negative emotional reactivity to rising inequality. We discuss the central role of upward mobility beliefs for individuals’ responses to social inequality across the adult life span.

Cues of Social Status: Associations Between Attractiveness, Dominance, and Status

Hierarchies naturally emerge in social species, and judgments of status in these hierarchies have consequences for social relationships and health. Although judgments of social status are shaped by appearance, the physical cues that inform judgments of status remain unclear. The transition to college presents an opportunity to examine judgments of social status in a newly developing social hierarchy. We examined whether appearances—as measured by raters’ judgments of photographs and videos—provide information about undergraduate students’ social status at their university and in society in Study 1. Exploratory analyses investigated whether associations differed by participants’ sex. Eighty-one first-year undergraduate students (M_age = 18.20, SD = 0.50; 64.2% female) provided photographs and videos and reported their social status relative to university peers and relative to other people in society. As hypothesized, when participants were judged to be more attractive and dominant they were also judged to have higher status. These associations were replicated in two additional samples of raters who evaluated smiling and neutral photographs from the Chicago Faces Database in Study 2. Multilevel models also revealed that college students with higher self-reported university social status were judged to have higher status, attractiveness, and dominance, although judgments were not related to self-reported society social status. Findings highlight that there is agreement between self-reports of university status and observer-perceptions of status based solely on photographs and videos, and suggest that appearance may shape newly developing social hierarchies, such as those that emerge during the transition to college.

The neural signatures of social hierarchy-related learning and interaction: A coordinate- and connectivity-based meta-analysis

Numerous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of two mutually independent yet closely related cognitive processes aiding humans to navigate complex societies: social hierarchy-related learning (SH-RL) and social hierarchy-related interaction (SH-RI). To integrate these heterogeneous results into a more fine-grained and reliable characterization of the neural basis of social hierarchy, we combined coordinate-based meta-analyses with connectivity and functional decoding analyses to understand the underlying neuropsychological mechanism of SH-RL and SH-RI. We identified the anterior insula and temporoparietal junction (dominance detection), medial prefrontal cortex (information updating and computation), and intraparietal sulcus region, amygdala, and hippocampus (social hierarchy representation) as consistent activated brain regions for SH-RL, but the striatum, amygdala, and hippocampus associated with reward processing for SH-RI. Our results provide an overview of the neural architecture of the neuropsychological processes underlying how we understand, and interact within, social hierarchy.

Cross-cultural asymmetries in oculomotor interference elicited by gaze distractors belonging to Asian and White faces

The averted gaze of others triggers reflexive attentional orienting in the corresponding direction. This phenomenon can be modulated by many social factors. Here, we used an eye-tracking technique to investigate the role of ethnic membership in a cross-cultural oculomotor interference study. Chinese and Italian participants were required to perform a saccade whose direction might be either congruent or incongruent with the averted-gaze of task-irrelevant faces belonging to Asian and White individuals. The results showed that, for Chinese participants, White faces elicited a larger oculomotor interference than Asian faces. By contrast, Italian participants exhibited a similar oculomotor interference effect for both Asian and White faces. Hence, Chinese participants found it more difficult to suppress eye-gaze processing of White rather than Asian faces. The findings provide converging evidence that social attention can be modulated by social factors characterizing both the face stimulus and the participants. The data are discussed with reference to possible cross-cultural differences in perceived social status.

Seven computations of the social brain

The social environment presents the human brain with the most complex information processing demands. The computations that the brain must perform occur in parallel, combine social and nonsocial cues, produce verbal and nonverbal signals and involve multiple cognitive systems, including memory, attention, emotion and learning. This occurs dynamically and at timescales ranging from milliseconds to years. Here, we propose that during social interactions, seven core operations interact to underwrite coherent social functioning; these operations accumulate evidence efficiently-from multiple modalities-when inferring what to do next. We deconstruct the social brain and outline the key components entailed for successful human-social interaction. These include (i) social perception; (ii) social inferences, such as mentalizing; (iii) social learning; (iv) social signaling through verbal and nonverbal cues; (v) social drives (e.g. how to increase one's status); (vi) determining the social identity of agents, including oneself and (vii) minimizing uncertainty within the current social context by integrating sensory signals and inferences. We argue that while it is important to examine these distinct aspects of social inference, to understand the true nature of the human social brain, we must also explain how the brain integrates information from the social world.

Social and ecological dominance orientations: Two sides of the same coin? Social and ecological dominance orientations predict decreased support for climate change mitigation policies

In this article, we examine the roles of social dominance orientation (SDO) and ecological dominance orientation (EDO) as predictors of climate change risk and threat perceptions and associated pro-environmental policy support. EDO is a novel measure that we devised based on social dominance theory to assess general preferences for an anthropocentric, hierarchical arrangement between humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. Across two pre-registered studies ( N = 715; USA and Germany) our results indicate that SDO and EDO are uniquely associated with decreased support for climate change mitigation policies benefitting humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. These relationships in turn are partially mediated by decreased climate change risk and threat perceptions. We successfully replicate our findings using a more behavioral measure as dependent variable. Notably, using a more behavioral measure (Study 2), EDO was significantly associated with pro-environmental behavior but not SDO, when threats are accounted for as mediators.

Race and Social Class as Intersecting Social Categories

Abstract. Race and social class are inherently confounded; however, much of the literature focuses on only one of these categories at a time during attitude assessment. Across three studies, we examined the influence of race and social class on implicit and explicit attitudes. Results indicated that participants had more positive attitudes toward high social class White and high social class Black people than low social class White and low social class Black people. Attitudes for high social class White versus high social class Black people and low social class White versus low social class Black people were more nuanced and attitude/measure dependent. Thus, this research highlights the intricacy of attitudes when considering intersectional categories.

Using social rank as the lens to focus on the neural circuitry driving stress coping styles

Social hierarchy position in humans is negatively correlated with stress-related psychiatric disease risk. Animal models have largely corroborated human studies, showing that social rank can impact stress susceptibility and is considered to be a major risk factor in the development of psychiatric illness. Differences in stress coping style is one of several factors that mediate this relationship between social rank and stress susceptibility. Coping styles encompass correlated groupings of behaviors associated with differential physiological stress responses. Here, we discuss recent insights from animal models that highlight several neural circuits that can contribute to social rank-associated differences in coping style.

How does the brain navigate knowledge of social relations? Testing for shared neural mechanisms for shifting attention in space and social knowledge

How does the human brain support reasoning about social relations (e.g., social status, friendships)? Converging theories suggest that navigating knowledge of social relations may co-opt neural circuitry with evolutionarily older functions (e.g., shifting attention in space). Here, we analyzed multivoxel response patterns of fMRI data to examine the neural mechanisms for shifting attention in knowledge of a social hierarchy. The "directions" in which participants mentally navigated social knowledge were encoded in multivoxel patterns in superior parietal cortex, which also encoded directions of attentional shifts in space. Exploratory analyses implicated additional regions of posterior parietal and occipital cortex in encoding analogous mental operations in space and social knowledge. However, cross-domain analyses suggested that attentional shifts in space and social knowledge are likely encoded in functionally independent response patterns. Additionally, cross-participant multivoxel pattern similarity analyses indicated that "directions'' of mental navigation in social knowledge are signaled consistently across participants and across different social hierarchies in a set of brain regions, including the right superior parietal lobule. Taken together, these results elucidate the neural basis of navigating abstract knowledge of social relations, and its connection to more basic mental operations.

Competence-based social status and implicit preference modulate the ability to coordinate during a joint grasping task

Studies indicate that social status influences people's social perceptions. Less information is available about whether induced social status influences dyadic coordination during motor interactions. To explore this issue, we designed a study in which two confederates obtained high or low competence-based status by playing a game together with the participant, while the participant always occupied the middle position of the hierarchy. Following this status-inducing phase, participants were engaged in a joint grasping task with the high- and low-status confederates in different sessions while behavioural (i.e., interpersonal asynchrony and movement start time) indexes were measured. Participants' performance in the task (i.e., level of interpersonal asynchrony) when interacting with the low-status partner was modulated by their preference for him. The lower participants' preference for a low- relative to a high-status confederate, the worse participants' performance when interacting with the low-status confederate. Our results show that participants' performance during motor interactions changes according to the social status of the interaction partner.

How society modulates our behavior: Effects on error processing of masked emotional cues contextualized in social status

In the present study, we investigate whether subliminal complex social cues have an impact on error-monitoring processes. For this purpose, we presented two social status ranks (high and low) with three possible emotional expressions (happy, neutral, angry), using a backward masking paradigm. Participants were instructed to perform a flanker task while recording Event-Related brain Potentials. Results showed larger amplitudes for the Error-Related Negativity index after the presentation of high relative to low social ranks, only for neutral expressions. Neither the angry nor the happy faces induced significant differences in social rank processing. This indicates that subliminal high social ranks, specifically with neutral expressions, increase error processing by boosting attentional control to perform the ongoing task. Our findings extend current knowledge on the automaticity of social and emotional processing and its influence on performance monitoring mechanisms.

Regional and network neural activity reflect men's preference for greater socioeconomic status during impression formation

Evidence from social psychology suggests that men compared to women more readily display and pursue control over human resources or capital. However, studying how status and gender shape deliberate impression formation is difficult due to social desirability concerns. Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses (n = 65), we examined how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) may influence brain responses during deliberate but private impression formation. Men more than women showed greater activity in the VMPFC and NAcc when forming impressions of high-SES (vs. low-SES) targets. Seed partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that this SES-based increase in VMPFC activity was associated with greater co-activation across an evaluative network for the high-SES versus low-SES univariate comparison. A data-driven task PLS analysis also showed greater co-activation in an extended network consisting of regions involved in salience detection, attention, and task engagement as a function of increasing target SES. This co-activating network was most pronounced for men. These findings provide evidence that high-SES targets elicit neural responses indicative of positivity, reward, and salience during impression formation among men. Contributions to a network neuroscience understanding of status perception and implications for gender- and status-based impression formation are discussed.

Asymmetries in Mutual Understanding: People With Low Status, Power, and Self-Esteem Understand Better Than They Are Understood

All too often, people who develop exceptionally astute insights into others remain mysterious to these others. Evidence for such asymmetric understanding comes from several independent domains. Striking asymmetries occur among those who differ in status and power, such that individuals with low status and power understand more than they are understood. We show that this effect extends to people who merely perceive that they have low status: individuals with low self-esteem. Whereas people with low self-esteem display insight into people with high self-esteem, people with high self-esteem fail to reciprocate. Conceptual analysis suggests that asymmetries in mutual understanding may be reduced by addressing deficits in information and motivation among perceivers. Nevertheless, several interventions have been unsuccessful, indicating that the path to symmetric understanding is a steep and thorny one. Further research is needed to develop strategies for fostering understanding of those who are most misunderstood: people with low self-esteem, low status, and low power.

A registered report on how implicit pro-rich bias is shaped by the perceiver's gender and socioeconomic status

Although high status is often considered a desirable quality, this may not always be the case. Different factors may moderate the value of high status along a dimension such as wealth (e.g. gender, perceiver income/education). For example, studies suggest men may value wealth and control over resources more than women. This may be especially true for high-income men who already have control over substantial resources. Other work suggests that low-income men and women may have different experiences in educational contexts compared to their richer peers who dominate norms at higher levels of education. These experiences may potentially lead to different attitudes about the wealthy among low-income men and women. In this registered report, we proposed two key predictions based on our review of the literature and analyses of pilot data from the Attitudes, Identities and Individual Differences (AIID) study (n = 767): (H1) increasing income will be associated with increased pro-wealthy bias for men more than for women and (H2) income will also moderate the effect of education on implicit pro-wealthy bias, depending on gender. Overall, men showed greater implicit pro-wealthy bias than did women. However, neither of our hypotheses that income would moderate the effects of gender on implicit pro-wealthy bias were supported. These findings suggest implicit pro-wealthy bias among men and are discussed in the context of exploratory analyses of gender differences in self-reported beliefs and attitudes about the rich and the poor.

Children's use of race and gender as cues to social status

Social hierarchies are ubiquitous and determine a range of developmental outcomes, yet little is known about when children develop beliefs about status hierarchies in their communities. The present studies (3.5-6.9 years; N = 420) found that children begin to use gender and race as cues to status in early childhood, but that gender and race related to different status dimensions and had different consequences for inter-group attitudes. Children expected boys to hold higher status as defined by access to resources and decision-making power (e.g., having more toys and choosing what other people play with) but did not expect boys to have more wealth overall. Gender-related status beliefs did not relate to gender-related social preferences; instead, children preferred members of their own gender, regardless of their status beliefs. In contrast, children expected White people to be wealthier than Black people, and among some populations of children, the belief that White people were higher status (as defined by access to resources and decision-making power) weakly related to pro-White bias. Children's status-expectations about others were unrelated to beliefs about their own status, suggesting children more readily apply category-based status beliefs to others than to themselves.

Punishing the privileged: Selfish offers from high-status allocators elicit greater punishment from third-party arbitrators

Individuals high in socioeconomic status (SES) are often viewed as valuable members of society. However, the appeal of high-SES people exists in tension with our aversion to inequity. Little experimental work has directly examined how people rectify inequitable distributions between two individuals varying in SES. The objective of the present study was to examine how disinterested third parties adjudicate inequity in the context of concrete financial allocations between a selfish allocator and a recipient who was the victim of the allocator’s selfish offer. Specifically, this study focused on whether knowing the SES of the victim or the allocator affected the participant’s decisions to punish the selfish allocator. In two experiments (N = 999), participants completed a modified third-party Ultimatum Game in which they arbitrated inequitable exchanges between an allocator and a recipient. Although participants generally preferred to redistribute inequitable exchanges without punishing players who made unfair allocations, we observed an increased preference for punitive solutions as offers became increasingly selfish. This tendency was especially pronounced when the victim was low in SES or when the perpetrator was high in SES, suggesting a tendency to favor the disadvantaged even among participants reporting high subjective SES. Finally, punitive responses were especially likely when the context emphasized the allocator’s privileged status rather than the recipient’s underprivileged status. These findings inform our understanding of how SES biases retributive justice even in non-judicial contexts that minimize the salience of punishment.

Who Comes to Mind? Dynamic Construction of Social Networks

Much remains unknown about moment-to-moment social-network cognition—that is, who comes to mind as we go about our day-to-day lives. Responding to this void, we describe the real-time construction of cognitive social networks. First, we outline the types of relational structures that comprise momentary networks, distinguishing the roles of personal relationships, social groups, and mental sets. Second, we discuss the cognitive mechanisms that determine which individuals are activated—and which are neglected—through a dynamic process. Looking forward, we contend that these overlooked mechanisms need to be considered in light of emerging network technologies. Finally, we chart the next steps for understanding social-network cognition across real-world contexts, along with the built-in implications for social resources and intergroup disparities.

Sex-related differences in self-care behaviors of adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus

PURPOSE

To describe sex-related differences in self-care; to identify determinants of self-care according to sex, and to investigate how sex interacts with the effect of clinical and socio-demographic variables on self-care in adults with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM).

METHODS

Cross-sectional multicentre study with a consecutive sampling recruitment strategy, enrolling 540 adults with T2DM at six outpatient diabetes services. Clinical and socio-demographic variables were collected by medical records. Self-care maintenance, monitoring, management, and confidence were measured by the self-care of diabetes inventory.

RESULTS

Females reported higher disease prevention behaviors (P < 0.001), health-promoting behaviors (P < 0.001), body listening (P < 0.001), and symptom recognition (P = 0.010), but lower health-promoting exercise behaviors (P < 0.001). Determinants of self-care were different in male and female patients, where the role of task-specific self-care confidence predicted self-care monitoring (RR = 0.98; P < 0.001) and management (RR = 0.99; P < 0.001) among males, while persistence self-care confidence predicted self-care maintenance (RR = 0.97; P = 0.016) and management (RR = 0.99; P = 0.009) among females.

CONCLUSIONS

Males and females differently perform self-care. Self-care confidence plays a different role predicting self-care behaviors in males and females. Future research should longitudinally describe self-care and its determinants in males and females with T2DM. Sex-specific self-care confidence interventions should be developed to improve self-care in male and female patients with T2DM.

An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour

A novel two-dimensional matrix taxonomy, or atlas, of personality, emotion and behaviour is presented. The two dimensions of the atlas, affiliation and dominance, are demonstrated to have theoretical foundations in neurobiology and social psychology. Both dimensions are divided into five ordinal categories, creating a square matrix of 25 cells. A new catalogue of 20,669 English words descriptive of personality, emotion, behaviour, and power is also presented. The catalogue is more comprehensive than previous catalogues, and is novel in its inclusion of intrapersonal, group, and societal behaviours. All words in the catalogue were scored according to the atlas, facilitating visualisation in two dimensions. This enabled a contiguous and novel comparison of existing psychological taxonomies, as well as broader societal concepts such as leadership, ethics, and crime. Using the atlas, a novel psychological test is developed with improved sensitivity and specificity.

Social Mindfulness Shown by Individuals With Higher Status Is More Pronounced in Our Brain: ERP Evidence

"Social mindfulness" refers to being thoughtful of others and considering their needs before making decisions, and can be characterized by low-cost and subtle gestures. The present study compared the behavioral and neural responses triggered by observing others' socially mindful/unmindful choices and how these responses were modulated by the social status of the agency. At the behavioral level, observing socially mindful choices made observers feel better, rate the actors as more likable, and behave more cooperatively than did observing socially unmindful choices. Analysis of event-related potentials in the brain revealed that compared with socially unmindful choices, mindful choices elicited more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN). Notably, while this effect of social mindfulness was only significant when the actor's social status was medium and high, it was undetectable when the actor's social status was low. These results demonstrate that the social mindfulness of others can be rapidly detected and processed, as reflected by FRN, even though it does not seem to receive further, more elaborate evaluation. These findings indicated that low-cost cooperative behaviors such as social mindfulness can also be detected and appreciated by our brain, which may result in better mood and more cooperative behaviors in the perceivers. Besides, the perception of social mindfulness is sensitive to important social information, such as social status.

The "Why" and "How" of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit

We propose a self-regulation model of grandiose narcissism. This model illustrates an interconnected set of processes through which narcissists (i.e., individuals with relatively high levels of grandiose narcissism) pursue social status in their moment-by-moment transactions with their environments. The model shows that narcissists select situations that afford status. Narcissists vigilantly attend to cues related to the status they and others have in these situations and, on the basis of these perceived cues, appraise whether they can elevate their status or reduce the status of others. Narcissists engage in self-promotion (admiration pathway) or other-derogation (rivalry pathway) in accordance with these appraisals. Each pathway has unique consequences for how narcissists are perceived by others, thus shaping their social status over time. The model demonstrates how narcissism manifests itself as a stable and consistent cluster of behaviors in pursuit of social status and how it develops and maintains itself over time. More broadly, the model might offer useful insights for future process models of other personality traits.

Modulation of preference for abstract stimuli following competence-based social status primes

In the present study, we measured whether competence-related high and low social status attributed to two unknown individuals affects participants' implicit reactivity to abstract stimuli associated to the identity of the same individuals. During a status-inducing procedure, participants were asked to play an interactive game with two (fake) players coded as high vs low status based on their game competence. Before and after the game, a modified version of the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) was administered in which the players' faces were used as primes. The evaluation target, as is typical to AMP, was a Chinese ideogram. There were two different presentation timings for the prime image: 75 ms and 17 ms. After the status-inducing procedure, the evaluation targets preceded by the high-status prime (i.e. best player's face) were rated as more pleasant than those preceded by the low-status prime (i.e. worst player's face). This effect was only found, however, for the 75 ms lasting prime. Moreover, explicit ratings of the primes showed that the high-status player was rated as more intelligent, competent and dominant than the low status one. These results indicate that implicit preference and explicit evaluation of unacquainted individuals are rapidly modulated by competence-based social status attribution, thus hinting at the plastic nature of social categorization and, relatedly, the malleability of visual preference.

Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces

Impressions of competence from faces predict important real-world outcomes, including electoral success and chief executive officer selection. Presumed competence is associated with social status. Here we show that subtle economic status cues in clothes affect perceived competence from faces. In nine studies, people rated the competence of faces presented in frontal headshots. Faces were shown with different upper-body clothing rated by independent judges as looking 'richer' or 'poorer', although not notably perceived as such when explicitly described. The same face when seen with 'richer' clothes was judged significantly more competent than with 'poorer' clothes. The effect persisted even when perceivers were exposed to the stimuli briefly (129 ms), warned that clothing cues are non-informative and instructed to ignore the clothes (in one study, with considerable incentives). These findings demonstrate the uncontrollable effect of economic status cues on person perception. They add yet another hurdle to the challenges faced by low-status individuals.

Unravelling how low dominance in faces biases non-spatial attention

According to the Dual Dodel of Social Hierarchy, one pathway for attaining social status is through dominance (coercion and intimidation). High dominance stimuli are known to more readily attract eye gaze and social attention. However, when there is a competition for non-spatial attentional resources, low dominance stimuli show an advantage. This low dominance bias was hypothesised to occur due to either counter-stereotypicality or attention competition. Here, these two hypotheses were examined across two experiments using modified versions of the attentional blink paradigm, used to measure non-spatial attention, and manipulations of facial dominance in both males and females. The results support the attention competition theory, suggesting that low dominance stimuli have a consistently strong ability to compete for attentional resources. Unexpectedly, high dominance stimuli fluctuate between having a strong and weak ability to compete for the same resources. The results challenge the current understanding of how humans interact with status.

Inequality in personality and temporal discounting across socioeconomic status? Assessing the evidence

Personality traits such as conscientiousness and impulsivity correlate with temporal discounting, the degree to which individuals discount the value of future relative to present rewards. These variables have, in turn, been hypothesized to relate to income inequality in the United States. A key but untested assumption of this hypothesis is that the association among these variables is distinct across socioeconomic classes. The purpose of the present research is to test that assumption. N = 1,100 adults with annual income ranging from at or below the poverty line ($0-$20,000) to upper-middle class ($200,000+) completed personality measures and a measure of temporal discounting. The results of our preregistered analyses indicated a positive association of income with trait planfulness, and a negative association with trait impulsivity and one parameter of temporal discounting that captures a bias to prefer sooner rewards to a greater degree if they are delivered that day. Our results can inform psychological theories of inequality and a broader conversation about effective public policy.

Who Differentiates by Skin Color? Status Attributions and Skin Pigmentation in Chile

A growing body of research has shown that phenotypes and skin pigmentation play a fundamental role in stratification dynamics in Latin American countries. However, the relevance of skin color on status attribution for different status groups has been little studied in the region. This article seeks to broaden the research on phenotypic status cues using Chile as a context for analysis - a Latin American country with a narrow although continuous spectrum of skin tones, marked status differences, and a mostly white elite. We draw on status construction theory to hypothesize that skin pigmentation in Chile has become a status cue, although its heuristic relevance could differ across status groups. Using visual stimuli and a repeated measure design, we studied this relationship and tested whether the use of skin pigmentation as a status cue is conditional upon the status of those categorizing others. The results reveal that participants attribute, on average, lower status to others of darker skin. Besides, skin pigmentation has a conditional effect on the social status of participants: whereas skin pigmentation does not work as a status cue for lower status participants, it is an important status marker for the categorizations that middle and especially higher status participants perform. The phenotypic composition of reference groups of low- and high-status individuals and system justification are discussed as potential explanations for these results.

The architecture of network collective intelligence: correlations between social network structure, spatial layout and prestige outcomes in an office

A social network represents interactions and knowledge that transcend the intelligence of any of its individual members. In this study, I examine the correlations between this network collective intelligence, spatial layout, and prestige or status outcomes at the individual and team levels in an organization. I propose that spatially influenced social cognition shapes which individuals become members of prestigious teams in organizations, and the prestige perception of teams by others in the organization. Prestige is a pathway to social rank, influence and upward mobility for individuals in organizations. For groups, perceived prestige of work teams is related to how team members identify with the group and with their collaborative behaviours. Prestige enhances a team's survivability and its access to resources. At the individual level, I ran two-stage Heckman sample selection models to examine the correlation between social network position and the number of prestigious projects a person is a member of, contingent on the association between physical space and social ties and networks. At the team level, I used linear regressions to examine the relationship among network structure, spatial proximity and the perceived prestige or innovativeness of a project team. In line with my hypotheses, for individuals there is a significant correlation between physical space and social networks, and contingent on that, between social network positions and the number of prestigious projects that a person is a member of. Also in accordance with my hypotheses, for teams there is a significant correlation between network structure and spatial proximity, and perceived prestige. While cross-sectional, the study findings illustrate the importance of considering the spatial domain in examinations of how network collective intelligence is related to organizational outcomes at the individual and team levels.This article is part of the theme issue 'Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour'.

Tracking the Leader: Gaze Behavior in Group Interactions

Can social gaze behavior reveal the leader during real-world group interactions? To answer this question, we developed a novel tripartite approach combining (1) computer vision methods for remote gaze estimation, (2) a detailed taxonomy to encode the implicit semantics of multi-party gaze features, and (3) machine learning methods to establish dependencies between leadership and visual behaviors. We found that social gaze behavior distinctively identified group leaders. Crucially, the relationship between leadership and gaze behavior generalized across democratic and autocratic leadership styles under conditions of low and high time-pressure, suggesting that gaze can serve as a general marker of leadership. These findings provide the first direct evidence that group visual patterns can reveal leadership across different social behaviors and validate a new promising method for monitoring natural group interactions.

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Leadership shapes gaze dynamics during real-world human group interactions

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Social gaze behavior distinctively identifies group leaders

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Identification generalizes across leadership styles and situational conditions

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Gaze can serve as a general marker of leadership

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is particularly responsive to social evaluations requiring the use of person-knowledge

Humans can rely on diverse sources of information to evaluate others, including knowledge (e.g., occupation, likes and dislikes, education, etc.) and perceptual cues (e.g., attractiveness, race, etc.). Previous research has identified brain regions supporting person evaluations, but are evaluations based on perceptual cues versus person-knowledge processed differently? Moreover, are neural responses consistent when person-knowledge is available but unnecessary for the evaluation? This fMRI study examined how the use and availability of person-knowledge shapes the neural underpinnings of social evaluations. Participants evaluated well-known actors based on attractiveness or body of work (i.e., person-knowledge) and unknown models based on attractiveness only. Analyses focused on the VMPFC, following research implicating this region in positive evaluations based on person-knowledge. The VMPFC was sensitive to the (1) availability of person-knowledge, showing greater responses as ratings became more positive for actors (but not models) regardless of rating dimension and (2) use of available person-knowledge, showing greater activity as ratings for likability based on body of work became more positive for actors versus models rated on attractiveness. These findings indicate that although brain regions supporting person evaluation are sensitive to the availability to person-knowledge, they are even more responsive when judgments require the use of available person-knowledge.

Implicit Evaluative Biases Toward Targets Varying in Race and Socioeconomic Status

Generally, White (vs. Black) and high-status (vs. low-status) individuals are rated positively. However, implicit evaluations of simultaneously perceived race and socioeconomic status (SES) remain to be considered. Across four experiments, participants completed an evaluative priming task with face primes orthogonally varying in race (Black vs. White) and SES (low vs. high). Following initial evidence of a positive implicit bias for high-SES (vs. low-SES) primes, subsequent experiments revealed that this bias is sensitive to target race, particularly when race and SES antecedents are presented in an integrated fashion. Specifically, high-SES positive bias was more reliable for White than for Black targets. Additional analyses examining how implicit biases may be sensitive to perceiver characteristics such as race, SES, and beliefs about socioeconomic mobility are also discussed. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of examining evaluations based on race and SES when antecedents of both categories are simultaneously available.

Effects of dominance and prestige based social status on competition for attentional resources

Social status can be attained through either dominance (coercion and intimidation) or prestige (skill and respect). Individuals high in either of these status pathways are known to more readily attract gaze and covert spatial attention compared to their low-status counterparts. However it is not known if social status biases allocation of attentional resources to competing stimuli. To address this issue, we used an attentional blink paradigm to explore non-spatial attentional biases in response to face stimuli varying in dominance and prestige. Results from a series of studies consistently indicated that participants were biased towards allocating attention to low- relative to high- dominance faces. We also observed no effects of manipulating prestige on attentional bias. We attribute our results to the workings of comparatively early processing stages, separate from those mediating spatial attention shifts, which are tuned to physical features associated with low dominance. These findings challenge our current understanding of the impact of social status on attentional competition.