Political ideology shapes the amplification of the accomplishments of disadvantaged vs. advantaged group members.

Recent years have witnessed an increased public outcry in certain quarters about a perceived lack of attention given to successful members of disadvantaged groups relative to equally meritorious members of advantaged groups, exemplified by social media campaigns centered around hashtags, such as #OscarsSoWhite and #WomenAlsoKnowStuff. Focusing on political ideology, we investigate here whether individuals differentially amplify successful targets depending on whether these targets belong to disadvantaged or advantaged groups, behavior that could help alleviate or entrench group-based disparities. Study 1 examines over 500,000 tweets from over 160,000 Twitter users about 46 unambiguously successful targets varying in race (white, black) and gender (male, female): American gold medalists from the 2016 Olympics. Leveraging advances in computational social science, we identify tweeters' political ideology, race, and gender. Tweets from political liberals were much more likely than those from conservatives to be about successful black (vs. white) and female (vs. male) gold medalists (and especially black females), controlling for tweeters' own race and gender, and even when tweeters themselves were white or male (i.e., advantaged group members). Studies 2 and 3 provided experimental evidence that liberals are more likely than conservatives to differentially amplify successful members of disadvantaged (vs. advantaged) groups and suggested that this is driven by liberals' heightened concern with social equality. Addressing theorizing about ideological asymmetries, we observed that political liberals are more responsible than conservatives for differential amplification. Our results highlight ideology's polarizing power to shape even whose accomplishments we promote, and extend theorizing about behavioral manifestations of egalitarian motives.

Two Ways to Stay at the Top: Prestige and Dominance Are Both Viable Strategies for Gaining and Maintaining Social Rank Over Time.

The dual-strategies theory of social rank proposes that both dominance and prestige are effective strategies for gaining social rank (i.e., the capacity for influence) in groups. However, the only existing longitudinal investigation of these strategies suggests that, among undergraduate students, only prestige allows people to maintain social rank over time. The current study provides a longitudinal test of dominance and prestige in a context where dominance is more normative: MBA project groups. Among 548 MBA students in 104 groups, peer-rated dominance and prestige predicted gains in social rank over the course of 4 weeks, indicating that both strategies may help people not only gain social rank but also maintain it over time. Furthermore, prestige-but not dominance-led to social rank because of willingly given deference from group members. This confirms a central but thus-far-untested principle of dual-strategies theory: While prestige is based on freely conferred deference, dominance is not.

Incorporating insights about intergroup power and dominance to help increase harmony and equality between groups in conflict.

Human societies are organized into group-based hierarchies, with some groups enjoying the privileges of being on top and others struggling at the bottom. The position groups occupy in the hierarchy fundamentally shape their psychology, influencing their perception of and orientation toward the status quo and their perspectives and needs in conflict. Despite a growing body of interventions designed to reduce group-based conflict, the role of group power in shaping the effectiveness of these approaches remains underappreciated. We first review the psychological consequences of group power. We then highlight how overlooking this psychology can result in intervention efforts to reduce conflict that are either ineffective or successfully increase intergroup harmony but do so at the cost of entrenching inequality. We conclude with recommendations for incorporating insights from research on group power to develop approaches that help to achieve both greater intergroup harmony and equality.