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12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE SDO should be higher in men than in women because such an orientation led ancestral men to greater control of and access to women. Furthermore, women would have been selected to choose men high in SDO, since this would have led to a greater bounty of benef...

12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE SDO should be higher in men than in women because such an orientation led ancestral men to greater control of and access to women. Furthermore, women would have been selected to choose men high in SDO, since this would have led to a greater bounty of benefts for themselves and their children. Taken together, both rationales suggest an evolutionary basis for predicting a sex diference in SDO. Indeed, men consistently score higher than women on SDO scales. In one study of 1,000 Los Angeles adults, men scored higher on SDO—a sex diference that proved to be consistent across culture of origin, income, education, and political ideology (Pratto, 1996). The sex diference in SDO has also been documented in other cultures, most notably in Sweden, which is one of the most egalitarian cultures on earth. In sum, men appear to score higher on attitudes endorsing getting ahead, including those that justify one person’s higher status than another and one group’s dominance over another. These fndings support the evolutionary hypothesis of a sex diference in motivational strength to gain dominance and status. Men and Women Express Their Dominance Through Diferent Actions Another source of evidence for a sex diference in dominance comes from the acts through which men and women express their dominance. In one study, 100 acts previously mentioned as dominant were listed (Buss, 1981). Examples are “I took command of the situation afer the accident,” “I talked a great deal at the meeting,” “I demanded a back rub,” “I decided which programs the group would watch on TV,” and “I hung up the phone on my lover.” The frst study asked men and women to rate each act for its social desirability, or how worthwhile it was in their eyes. Profound sex diferences emerged. Women more than men tended to rate prosocial dominant acts as more socially desirable, including “Taking charge of things at the committee meeting,” “Taking a stand on an important issue without waiting to fnd out what others thought,” “Soliciting funds for an important cause,” and “Being active in many community and campus activities.” In sharp contrast, men more than women tended to rate egoistic dominant acts as more socially desirable, including “Managing to get one’s own way,” “Flattering to get one’s own way,” “Complaining about having to do a favor for someone,” and “Blaming others when things went wrong.” Men appear to regard more selfsh dominant acts as more desirable, or less undesirable, than do women. Do these sex diferences emerge in the actual behaviors of men and women? Dominant men, but not dominant women, reported performing the following acts: “I told others to perform menial tasks rather than doing them myself,” “I managed to get my own way,” “I told him which of two jobs he should take,” “I managed to control the outcome of the meeting without the others being aware of it,” and “I demanded that someone else run the errand.” Dominant men, in other words, appear to perform a relatively high frequency of egoistic dominant acts, in which others are infuenced for the direct personal beneft of the dominant individual. Dominant women, in contrast, tended to perform a higher frequency of prosocial dominant acts, such as “I settled a dispute among the members of the group,” “I took the lead in organizing a project,” and “I introduced a speaker at the meeting.” Dominant women appear to express their dominance primarily through actions that facilitate the functioning and well-being of the group. This sex diference in the expression of dominance has also been revealed through a subtle psychological experiment by Edwin Megargee (1969). Megargee wanted to devise a laboratory test situation in which he could examine the efect of dominance on leadership. He frst administered a dominance scale to a large group of men and women who might serve as potential subjects. He then selected only those men and women who scored either high or low on dominance. On completion of this selection procedure, Megargee (1969) brought pairs of individuals into the laboratory, in each case pairing a high-dominant subject with a lowdominant subject. He created four conditions: (1) a high-dominant man with a low-dominant 345 346 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING man, (2) a high-dominant woman with a low-dominant woman, (3) a high-dominant man with a low-dominant woman, and (4) a high-dominant woman with a low-dominant man. Megargee presented each of these pairs a large box containing many red, yellow, and green nuts, bolts, and levers. Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between personality and leadership under stress. Each pair of subjects was to work as a team of troubleshooters and repair the box as quickly as possible by removing nuts and bolts of certain colors and replacing them with other colors. However, one person from the team had to be the leader, a position that entailed giving instructions to his or her partner. The second person was to be the follower and had to carry out the menial tasks requested by the leader. The experimenter then told the subjects that it was up to them to decide who would take the leading role. The important question for Megargee was who would become the leader and who would become the follower. He simply recorded the percentage of high-dominant subjects within each condition who became leaders. He found that 75 percent of the high-dominant men and 70 percent of the high-dominant women took the leadership role in the same-sex pairs. When high-dominant men were paired with low-dominant women, however, 90 percent of the men became leaders. The most startling result occurred when the woman was high and the man low in dominance. Under these conditions, only 20 percent of the high-dominant women assumed the leadership role. From these laboratory fndings alone, one might conclude that the women in this condition were suppressing their dominance or that the men, despite being low in dominance, felt compelled to assume a standard sex role by taking charge. It turns out, however, that neither conclusion is warranted. Megargee had recorded the conversations between each pair while they were deciding who would be the leader. When he analyzed these tapes, he made a startling fnding: The highdominant women were appointing their low-dominant partners to the leadership position. In fact, the high-dominant women actually made the fnal decision about the roles 91 percent of the time! This fnding suggests that women express their dominance in a diferent manner than the men in the mixed-sex condition. This basic sex diference in the expression of dominance has been found repeatedly by subsequent investigators (e.g., Carbonell, 1984; Davis & Gilbert, 1989; Nyquist & Spence, 1986), although it’s possible that it might not hold in today’s modern environments given the fuller integration of women in the workplace, a topic for future research. Megargee’s study highlights a key sex diference: Men tend to express their dominance through acts of personal ascension whereby they elevate themselves to positions of power and status. Women tend to be less oriented toward personal striving for status over others, opting instead to express their dominance for group-oriented goals. These studies, taken together, support the hypothesis that the sexes difer in status striving. These sex diferences show up in many spheres of activity. Men’s personal diaries, for example, contain more references to same-sex competition (Cashdan, 1998). And in the workplace, men on average tend to take greater risks, express a greater desire for status, and are more willing to sacrifce other qualities of life such as fexible hours or time with family in order to get ahead (Browne, 1998, 2002). Another possible sex diference stems from a hypothesis that proposes that men engage in riskier resource-related behavior when they are being observed by others who are similar in status but not when interacting with those who are demonstrably higher or lower in status (Ermer, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2008). The logic stems from the notion that in stable, well-established status hierarchies, it is wise to cede resources to the more formidable competitor without taking risk. Among competitors of roughly equal status, the outcomes are uncertain, and so selection should favor riskier decision making about resources. In a series of laboratory experiments to test this idea, Elsa Ermer and her colleagues had participants make decisions such as the following: Imagine that you bought $60 worth of stock from a company that has just fled a claim for bankruptcy. The company now provides you with two alternatives to recover some of your money. If you choose Alternative A, you will save $20 of your money. If you choose Alternative B, you will take part in a random drawing procedure with exactly a one-third probability of saving all of your money and a two-thirds probability of saving none of your money. Which of the two alternatives would you favor? (Ermer et al., 2008, p. 110) 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE Participants were led to believe that they were being observed and evaluated by other students who were from a higher-status college, a college of equal status, or a college of lower status. Men tended to choose the riskier resource decision (Alternative B) primarily when they thought they were being observed and evaluated by men of equal social status but less so when observed by higher-status or lower-status people. These efects occurred only for men, not for women, and only for risky decisions involving resources, not for risky decisions about other things such as medical procedures. These results support the idea that status competitions among men tend to be most intense when they involve men of equal status and that men shift to riskier strategies when observed by potential competitors of roughly equal status. Dominance Theory Evolutionary psychologist Denise Cummins (1998, 2005) proposed a dominance theory as a framework to account for many human cognitive capacities that are otherwise puzzling. She started with the proposal that the struggle for survival in human (and chimpanzee) groups was ofen characterized by conficts between those who were dominant and those who were trying to outwit those who were dominant: “The evolution of mind emerges from this scene as a strategic arms race in which the weaponry is ever-increasing mental capacity to represent and manipulate internal representations of the minds of others” (Cummins, 1998, p. 37). Selection will favor strategies that cause one to rise in dominance but also will favor the evolution of subordinate strategies to subvert the access of the dominant individual to key resources. These strategies include deception, guile, false subordination, friendship, and manipulation to gain access to the resources needed for survival and reproduction. Among chimpanzees, for example, subordinate males attempt to conceal their erections when their “illicit” sexual activity with a female is discovered by a dominant male, suggesting a subordinate’s capacity for “reading” and deceiving a dominant male (de Waal, 1988). Cummins proposed that these cognitive capacities to reason about the minds of others have evolved in primates, including humans, to thwart the primary or exclusive access to resources by those high in dominance. Dominance theory has two key propositions. First, humans have evolved domain-specifc strategies for reasoning about social norms involving dominance hierarchies. These include understanding aspects such as permissions (e.g., who is allowed to mate with whom), obligations (e.g., who must support whom in a social contest), and prohibitions (e.g., who is forbidden to mate with whom). Second, dominance theory proposes that these cognitive strategies will emerge prior to and separate from other types of reasoning strategies. Cummins marshals several forms of evidence to support the dominance theory. The frst pertains to the early emergence in a child’s life of reasoning about rights and obligations, called deontic reasoning. Deontic reasoning is reasoning about what a person is permitted, obligated, or forbidden to do (e.g., Am I old enough to be allowed to drink alcoholic beverages?). This form of reasoning contrasts with indicative reasoning, which is reasoning about what is true or false (e.g., Is there really a tiger hiding behind that tree?). A number of studies fnd that when humans reason about deontic rules, they spontaneously adopt a strategy of seeking rule violators. For example, when evaluating the deontic rule “all those who drink alcohol must be twenty-one years old or older,” people spontaneously look for others with alcoholic drinks in their hands who might be underage. In marked contrast, when people evaluate indicative rules, they spontaneously look for confrming instances of the rule. For example, when evaluating the indicative rule “all polar bears have white fur,” people spontaneously look for instances of white-furred polar bears rather than instances of bears that might not have white fur. In short, people adopt two diferent reasoning strategies, depending on whether they are evaluating a deontic or an indicative rule. For deontic rules, people seek out rule violations; for indicative rules, people seek out instances that conform to the rule. These distinct forms of reasoning have been documented in children 347 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING 348 as young as 3, suggesting that reasoning emerges reliably early in life (Cummins, 1998). Perhaps not coincidentally, at age 3, children organize themselves into transitive dominance hierarchies. Moreover, young children also can reason about transitive dominance hierarchies earlier in life than they can reason transitively about other stimuli (Cummins, 1998). Dominance theory predicts that human reasoning will be strongly infuenced by rank, and there is some empirical support for this proposition. Evolutionary psychologist Linda Mealey showed study participants pictures of men along with biographical information that revealed each man’s social status (high versus low) and character (history of cheating, irrelevant information, or history of trustworthiness) (Mealey et al., 1996). A week later, participants returned to the lab and were asked to report which of the photographs they remembered from the previous week. Several important results emerged. First, the “cheaters” were remembered far more frequently than the non-cheaters. Second, memory for cheaters was especially enhanced if the cheaters were low in status, whereas the memory bias for cheaters was diminished if the cheaters were high in status. Third, the memory bias for cheaters was stronger for men than for women participants. People seem to have evolved selective attention and memory storage adaptations designed for processing important social information—mechanisms that are especially sensitive to who has cheated and the status of those who have cheated. These results also support Cummins’s dominance theory, which proposes that human social reasoning will be strongly afected by rank. In the most direct test of the efects of status on social reasoning, Cummins had subjects test for the rule “if someone was assigned to lead a study session, that person was required to tape record the session” (Cummins, 1998, p. 41). The reasoner’s task was to test for compliance with the rule by selecting which study session records to inspect. Here was the crucial manipulation: Half the participants were told to adopt the perspective of the high-ranking individual, in this case a dormitory resident assistant, and to check on the students under their care. The other half were told to adopt the perspective of a student (low-ranking) and to check on possible violations by the dormitory resident assistant. The results showed a compelling link between status and social reasoning: 65 percent looked for potential rule violations when they were checking on people lower in status than themselves, whereas only 20 percent looked for potential rule violations when they were checking on people of equal status or higher status than themselves. These studies all support dominance theory. Deontic reasoning strategies appear to emerge early in life. People are especially sensitive to social information about what is permitted, obligatory, or forbidden. People spontaneously check for violations of deontic rules and do so more for people lower in status than those higher in status. Cummins concludes, “If one were to guess at which problems cognition evolved to solve, one would be hard pressed to come up with a better candidate than dominance” (Cummins, 1998, p. 46). Social Attention-Holding Theory Whereas Cummins stresses the information-processing strategies about dominance hierarchies, another theory developed by evolutionary psychologist Paul Gilbert (1990, 2000a) emphasizes the emotional components of dominance. Gilbert bases his theory in part on the concept of resource-holding potential (RHP) stemming from work conducted on non-human animals (Archer, 1988; Parker, 1974; Price & Sloman, 1987). RHP refers to an evaluation that animals make about themselves relative to other animals regarding their relative strengths and weaknesses. Losers of contests and those who determine before contests that they are inferior have low RHP. Winners of contests and those who determine that they are likely to win contests are superior in RHP. The behaviors that follow from these relative assessments give rise to dominance hierarchies. After evaluations of RHP are made, three types of behavior follow. First, the animal might attack the other, especially if it perceives itself to be superior in RHP. Second, the animal might fee, especially if it perceives itself to be inferior in RHP. Third, the animal might submit—relinquishing 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE critical resources to those higher in RHP. In this analysis, dominance is not a property of an individual per se but rather is a description of the relationship between two or more individuals. According to Gilbert (1990), humans have co-opted RHP for another mode: social attentionholding potential (SAHP). SAHP refers to the quality and quantity of attention others pay to a particular person. According to this view, humans compete with each other to be attended to and valued by others in the group. When group members bestow a lot of high-quality attention on an individual, that individual rises in status. Ignored individuals experience low status. Diferences in rank, according to this theory, stem not from diferences in threat or coercion but from diferences in attention conferred by others. Why would anyone bestow status on one person and ignore another? Gilbert suggests that humans bestow attention on those who perform a function that is valued by the bestowers. A doctor who helps aid someone when he is sick, for example, receives high-quality attention from the sick person. People compete to bestow benefts on others, in this view, to rise in SAHP. Those who fail to bestow benefts are avoided and do not receive attention and resources. The most novel theoretical contribution of Gilbert’s (1990, 2000b) theory comes from hypotheses about the role of mood or emotion as a consequence of changes in rank. Going up in rank produces two hypothesized consequences—elation and an increase in helping. Winning competitive encounters tends to produce an elevated mood, or “winner’s elation.” Those who witness the faces of the winners and losers after an athletic contest can easily identify diferences in elation. Presumably, a positive mood increases the likelihood of seeking out future competitions, along with an increased assessment of one’s probabilities of winning. The second change is an increase in helping. People who experience a rise in status are more likely to behave in a friendly and helpful manner (Eisenberg, 1986). Interestingly, some people avoid seeking help from others because they believe that doing so will reduce their perceived status (Fisher, Nadler, & Whitcher-Alagna, 1982). Perhaps that is why men are so often reluctant to ask for directions—an unconscious concern about status loss. Furthermore, there is evidence that higher-status individuals help more than lower-status individuals at hospital emergency wards (Brewin, 1988). In sum, elevations in rank appear to be linked with elevations in mood and helpful behavior. Plummeting in status has a diferent set of consequences for mood and emotion, according to SAHP theory—the onset of social anxiety, shame, rage, envy, and depression. In public speaking, the greater the potential consequences for status, the greater the social anxiety. Giving a talk to a group of undergraduates, for example, is generally not as anxiety provoking for professors as is giving a talk at an international conference of experts. Social anxiety presumably functions to motivate eforts to avoid status loss. Shame is a related emotion. Shame typically comes about when a public appraisal results in one’s being the object of scorn or disdain, with a decrease in perceived status. Shame becomes activated when there is a powerful signal that a person will be devalued by others in their social group (Sznycer et al., 2016). A shamed individual perceives himself or herself to be small, inferior, or contemptible. Body movements coincide with this selfevaluation, including avoiding eye contact with others, lowering one’s chin, and hunching one’s body posture (Wicker, Payne, & Morgan, 1983). Shame presumably motivates an individual to avoid being the object of scorn or devaluation, either at present or in the future. According to one theory, winning results in an elevated mood, producing an increase in helping behavior and an increase in the probability of winning future competitions (lef). Losing can produce depression, social anxiety, and envy (right). 349