When fertile, women seek status via prestige but not dominance.

Biological predictors of human dominance are hotly contested, with far-reaching implications for psychological sex differences and the placement of men and women in the social hierarchy. Most investigations have focused on dominance in men and testosterone, with diminished attention paid to dominance in women and other biological mechanisms. Investigating biological influences on other routes to status attainment popular among women-such as via prestige in addition to dominance-have also been neglected. Here, I examined whether status seeking via prestige and via dominance covaried with fertility probability in a citizen science project spanning 14 countries and 4 world regions. Across 4,179 observations, participants tracked their menstrual cycle characteristics, motivation for prestige and dominance, dominance contest outcomes, and three domains of self-esteem. Self-esteem is predicted by status within a group and helps individuals navigate social hierarchies. Bayesian mixed models controlling for menstruation indicated that the motivation to obtain status via prestige but not dominance peaked when conception was most likely, as did dominance contest losses and two self-esteem domains. Fertility appears to reorient female psychology toward prestige-based strategies to success, enhancing women's desire for social capital through influence and admiration but not through fear, coercion, or intimidation. These insights fundamentally advance the understanding of the biological correlates of status seeking among women. They further suggest that fertility motivates not only mating competition but gaining rank and positive regard in social hierarchies.

The role of exogenous testosterone and social environment on the expression of sociosexuality and status-seeking behaviors in young Chilean men.

Testosterone plays an important role as a social hormone. Current evidence suggests that testosterone is positively related to sociosexuality increasing the psychological attitudes toward investing in short-term versus long-term mating and promotes status-seeking behaviors both by dominance and prestige. In addition, the social environment may play an important role in the expression of mating effort through changes in sociosexuality and status-seeking behaviors. However, the causal relationships among the mentioned variables are still debated. We employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-individual design, in order to test and integrate the proposed causal relationships between testosterone and social environment over short-term and long-term mating orientation and dominant and prestigious status-seeking behaviors in a sample of 95 young Chilean men. We did not find evidence that the administration of exogenous testosterone increased short-term or decreased long-term mating orientation as expected. Moreover, exogenous testosterone did not affect either aggressive or cooperative behavior failing to support the social status hypothesis. We also did not find any relationship between short or long-term mating orientation with status-seeking behaviors. Finally, we found support for the effect of social environment on sociosexual attitudes but not over status-seeking behaviors. Thus, men reported higher levels of short-term mating orientation in the presence of a woman compared to a man and no differences were found for long-term mating orientation. We argue that sociosexuality may be expressed flexibly, but contextual factors such as the presence of women seem more important than changes in testosterone levels.

Pride: The Emotional Foundation of Social Rank Attainment.

Pride is a self-conscious emotion, comprised of two distinct facets known as authentic and hubristic pride, and associated with a cross-culturally recognized nonverbal expression. Authentic pride involves feelings of accomplishment and confidence and promotes prosocial behaviors, whereas hubristic pride involves feelings of arrogance and conceit and promotes antisociality. Each facet of pride, we argue, contributes to a distinct means of attaining social rank: Authentic pride seems to promote prestige-a rank based on earned respect-whereas hubristic pride seems to promote dominance-a rank based on aggression and coercion. Both prestige and dominance are effective routes to power and influence in human groups, so both facets of pride are likely to be functional adaptations. Overall, the reviewed research suggests that pride is likely to be a human universal, critical for social relationships and rank attainment across human societies.

Occupational prestige and future sickness absence and disability pension in women and men: a Swedish nationwide prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about associations between occupational prestige, that is, the symbolic evaluation and social positioning of occupations, and sickness absence (SA) or disability pension (DP). We explored whether occupational prestige was associated with future SA or DP among women and men. METHODS: A Swedish 4-year prospective cohort study of all those in paid work and aged 25-59 in 2010 (N = 2,605,227; 47% women), using linked microdata from three nationwide registers and Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale values, categorised as 'very low', 'low', 'medium', 'high', or 'very high'. Odds ratios (ORs), 95% confidence intervals (CIs), crude and adjusted for several sociodemographic factors, were calculated for three outcomes: at least one SA spell (>14 days), >90 SA days, or DP occurrence, during follow-up (2011-2013). RESULTS: The mean number of SA days in 2010 varied by occupational prestige group, for example, 'very high': 3.0, 'very low': 6.5. Compared to those in occupations with 'very high' prestige, all other groups had higher adjusted ORs for all three outcomes. Among men, those with 'very low' occupational prestige had the highest OR for at least one SA spell: OR 1.51 (95% CI 1.47-1.56); among women, the 'medium' group had the highest OR: 1.30 (1.27-1.32). The results were similar for SA >90 days. OR for DP among women with 'very low' occupational prestige was 2.01 (1.84-2.19), and 3.55 (3.15-4.01) for men. CONCLUSIONS: Working in lower occupational prestige occupations was generally associated with higher odds of future SA/DP than working in higher prestige occupations; these associations were stronger for men than for women.

The interplay of social rank perceptions of Trump and Biden and emotions following the U.S. presidential election 2020.

The outcome of the 2020 U.S. election between Trump and Biden evoked strong emotions. In U.S. American (Study 1; N = 405) and German (Study 2; N = 123) samples, we investigated how observers' group membership (i.e. political orientation) and the social rank attainment of both candidates (i.e. dominance vs. prestige) predicted emotional reactions. Trump was generally perceived as more dominant, and Biden as more prestigious. However, perceptions of social rank attainment differed depending on the observers' political orientation, either matching or not matching with the leaders (i.e. Republicans and Democrats, respectively). The candidate who did not share the participants' political orientation was perceived as less prestigious and more dominant and elicited stronger contrastive emotions (i.e. schadenfreude, malicious envy) and weaker assimilative emotions (i.e. happy-for-ness, sympathy, anger), and vice versa. Crucially, dominance and prestige perceptions explained variance in the emotional reactions of more conservative and more liberal participants. Prestige positively predicted assimilative emotions and dominance contrastive emotions. Our work advances theorising by providing evidence that dominance and prestige perceptions contribute to the elicitation of various emotions. Furthermore, it suggests that prestige and dominance are not fixed characteristics of liberal and conservative leaders but depend on the observers' group membership.

Effective incentives for increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

In this study, we examined the relative effectiveness of prestige-based incentives (vaccination of an expert scientist/president/politician/celebrity/religious leader), conformist incentives (vaccination of friends and family) and risk-based incentives (witnessing death or illness of a person from the disease) for increasing participants' chances of getting vaccinated with respect to their coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine intention. We conducted a cross-cultural survey using demographically representative samples from the UK (n = 1533), USA (n = 1550) and Turkey (n = 1567). The most effective incentives in all three countries were vaccination of an expert scientist, followed by vaccination of friends and family members and knowing someone dying from the disease. Vaccination of an expert scientist was significantly more effective at increasing vaccine intention than any other incentive. Vaccine incentives, regardless of the incentive type, were much less effective for those who originally refused the COVID-19 vaccine than for those who were hesitant to receive the vaccine. Although the percentage of vaccine-hesitant participants was highest in Turkey, the mean effectiveness scores of incentives were also the highest in Turkey, suggesting that an informed vaccine promotion strategy can be successful in this country. Our findings have policy applicability and suggest that positive vaccination messages delivered by expert scientists, vaccination of friends and family and risk-based incentives can be effective at increasing vaccine uptake.

Salary and power: How occupational status affects children's occupational aspirations.

In many countries, labor markets are still highly gender segregated, with very few men working in communal occupations such as nursing. Because occupational aspirations start to develop during early childhood, it seems crucial to foster our understanding of which factors affect occupational aspirations during this period. Earlier correlational research showed that the status of occupations seems to be one important factor. Therefore, in the current work, we experimentally tested the effect of two dimensions of status (i.e., salary and power) on children's occupational aspirations and examined its interaction with child gender. We also tested the relationship among gender, self-perceptions, and occupational values. Using a 2 (Salary: high vs. low) × 2 (Power: high vs. low) within-participants design (N = 127 [59 boys and 68 girls], Mage = 9.37 years, SD = 0.50) with child gender as a between-participants factor, we show positive main effects of both salary and power on children's occupational aspirations but no interaction with gender. Correlational analyses show preliminary evidence for the mediating role of agentic self-perceptions in the relationship between gender and occupational values related to status. Thus, we provide evidence for the causal effect of occupational status on children's occupational aspirations but show experimentally that this is independent of child gender. Interestingly, the correlational analyses indicate that gender norms might play a role given that boys in trend reported stronger agentic self-perceptions, which then were associated with a stronger desire to pursue high-status occupations. Implications for early interventions to reduce occupational gender segregation are discussed.

Leadership in the eye of the beholder: Follower self-esteem is associated with divergent perceptions of leadership ability for dominant and prestigious leaders.

OBJECTIVE: Drawing from dual-strategies theory, leader-member exchange theory, and several theories of self-esteem, we develop and test hypotheses about how followers' self-esteem predicts their perceptions of dominant and prestigious leaders' leadership ability. METHOD: Across four studies (N = 1568), we tested the association between self-esteem and perceptions of leadership ability for dominant and prestigious leaders. RESULTS: Individuals with high self-esteem perceived greater leadership ability in prestigious leaders than did those with low self-esteem and individuals with low self-esteem perceived greater leadership ability in dominant leaders than did those with high self-esteem. These results emerged across ratings of leaders from hypothetical vignettes (Studies 1 and 4), abstract beliefs about what constitutes good leadership (Study 1), past personal experiences with leaders (Study 2) and clips of leaders from reality television (Study 3). In Study 4, we also tested potential mechanisms. Compared with followers with low self-esteem, followers with high self-esteem found prestigious leaders more trustworthy, and they anticipated feeling inauthentic around a dominant leader. CONCLUSIONS: Self-esteem is reliably and robustly related to perceived leadership ability of dominant and prestigious leaders, and these differences might stem from differences in trust in prestigious leaders and anticipated authenticity around dominant leaders.

Power motives, personality correlates, and leadership outcomes: A person-centered approach.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated how these motivations combined within individuals to form unique profiles, and how these different profiles relate to personality traits and team behaviors. BACKGROUND: Dominance, prestige, and leadership motives each play a key role in shaping social success or failure in gaining social rank and influence. METHOD: We used latent profile analysis across two samples (engineering student project teams, Nstudent = 1088; working adults, Nworker = 466) to identify profile configurations and how such profiles related to important outcomes. RESULTS: We identified qualitatively distinct profiles: ultra-dominance profile (prominent dominance motive with high prestige and leadership motives); prestigious leadership profile (moderately high prestige and leadership motives, low dominance motive); and weak social power motive profile (low on all three motives). Individuals with the prestigious leadership profile were more likely to emerge as leaders, compared to those with a weak social power motive profile. People with an ultra-dominance profile scored higher on narcissism and tended to perceive themselves as leaders, despite not being deemed more leader-like by teammates. CONCLUSION: Using a person-centered approach allowed us to identify three power motive profiles across independent samples and generate insights into how these profiles manifest different social behaviors and outcomes.

Psychological foundations of human status allocation.

Competing theories of status allocation posit divergent conceptual foundations upon which human status hierarchies are built. We argue that the three prominent theories of status allocation-competence-based models, conflict-based models, and dual-pathway models-can be distinguished by the importance that they place on four key affordance dimensions: benefit-generation ability, benefit-generation willingness, cost-infliction ability, and cost-infliction willingness. In the current study, we test competing theoretical predictions about the relative centrality of each affordance dimension to clarify the foundations of human status allocation. We examined the extent to which American raters' (n = 515) perceptions of the benefit-generation and cost-infliction affordances of 240 personal characteristics predict the status impacts of those same personal characteristics as determined by separate groups of raters (n = 2,751) across 14 nations. Benefit-generation and cost-infliction affordances were both positively associated with status allocation at the zero-order level. However, the unique effects of benefit-generation affordances explained most of the variance in status allocation when competing with cost-infliction affordances, whereas cost-infliction affordances were weak or null predictors. This finding suggests that inflicting costs without generating benefits does not reliably increase status in the minds of others among established human groups around the world. Overall, the findings bolster competence-based theories of status allocation but offer little support for conflict-based and dual-pathway models.

Productivity, prominence, and the effects of academic environment.

Faculty at prestigious institutions produce more scientific papers, receive more citations and scholarly awards, and are typically trained at more-prestigious institutions than faculty with less prestigious appointments. This imbalance is often attributed to a meritocratic system that sorts individuals into more-prestigious positions according to their reputation, past achievements, and potential for future scholarly impact. Here, we investigate the determinants of scholarly productivity and measure their dependence on past training and current work environments. To distinguish the effects of these environments, we apply a matched-pairs experimental design to career and productivity trajectories of 2,453 early-career faculty at all 205 PhD-granting computer science departments in the United States and Canada, who together account for over 200,000 publications and 7.4 million citations. Our results show that the prestige of faculty's current work environment, not their training environment, drives their future scientific productivity, while current and past locations drive prominence. Furthermore, the characteristics of a work environment are more predictive of faculty productivity and impact than mechanisms representing preferential selection or retention of more-productive scholars by more-prestigious departments. These results identify an environmental mechanism for cumulative advantage, in which an individual's past successes are "locked in" via placement into a more prestigious environment, which directly facilitates future success. The scientific productivity of early-career faculty is thus driven by where they work, rather than where they trained for their doctorate, indicating a limited role for doctoral prestige in predicting scientific contributions.

The impact of food delivery applications on Romanian consumers' behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The main purpose of this study is to assess the impact that food delivery mobile applications have on consumers' behaviour in the context of the changes generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, we aimed to bridge the gap in the literature and practice by studying intrinsic and extrinsic variables that affect 18-50+ years old consumers' decision process. The data set was analysed using the Structural Equation Modelling Part Least Square model because this model has no limitations to integrating more variables into a path model. From a managerial perspective, our results show that food delivery companies should implement customer loyalty strategies, as the users' perceived risk of changing the online food supplier is high. The high degree of visibility of the food delivery applications is positively reflected in the consumers' empathy level and loyalty. Consumer loyalty is also based on the pricing strategy and time saving associated with using this type of applications. The safety value and accessibility represent both consumers' and organisations' priorities that underline the importance of the strategies of reducing the perceived risks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research offers to researchers and practitioners a starting point for their future activities. It can help them make decisions considering both periods (during a crisis as generated by pandemic crisis and post-crisis as new normality).

Harsh but Expedient: Dominant Leaders Increase Group Cooperation via Threat of Punishment.

Dominant leadership is, surprisingly, on the rise globally. Previous studies have found that intergroup conflict increases followers' support for dominant leaders, but identifying the potential benefits that such leaders can supply is crucial to explaining their rise. We took a behavioral-economics approach in Study 1 (N = 288 adults), finding that cooperation among followers increases under leaders with a dominant reputation. This pattern held regardless of whether dominant leaders were assigned to groups, elected through a bidding process, or leading under intergroup competition. Moreover, Studies 2a to 2e (N = 1,022 adults) show that impressions of leader dominance evoked by personality profiles, authoritarian attitudes, or physical formidability similarly increase follower cooperation. We found a weaker but nonsignificant trend when dominance was cued by facial masculinity and no evidence when dominance was cued by aggressive disposition in a decision game. These findings highlight the unexpected benefits that dominant leaders can bestow on group cooperation through threat of punishment.

Power grabbed or granted: Children's allocation of resources in social power situations.

Notwithstanding alternative ways of obtaining power, social power is mostly commonly acquired through either a dominance approach, where power is grabbed by the powerholder, or a prestige approach, where power is granted by group members. Although children's attitude toward power in the dominance situation has been studied, little is known about how children understand and distinguish different ways of obtaining power. We examined the understanding of power in children aged 4-8 years by their resource allocation behavior in two social power acquisition situations. In Study 1, 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 123) gradually shifted from distributing more to the powerholder to showing no preference for either party (in the prestige situation) or to distributing more to the subordinates (in the dominance situation) as they age. Older children (6-8 years), but not 4- and 5-year-olds, were more likely to favor the powerholders in the prestige situation than in the dominance situation. In Study 2, when power did not produce unfair results, 7- and 8-year-olds (N = 48) favored the powerholder in the prestige situation but showed no preference in the dominance situation. The results suggest that children's attitudes toward the two ways of acquiring power are gradually differentiated with age, and children's resource allocation in the power situations is influenced by the way of acquiring power and children's equity concern.

Consumers' evaluation and intention to buy traditional seafood: The role of vintage, uniqueness, nostalgia and involvement in luxury.

This study extends the understanding of the relationship between consumer motivation, involvement and evaluation of traditional food products (TFP). One important research issue was to explore whether consumers' perceived uniqueness could be one important quality or value that theoretically and empirically could differentiate TFP from ordinary, usual and "everyday" traditional food. A central location test of two different vintages (maturation times) of salt-cured clipfish in combination with a survey to assess individual motivational constructs was used to test the conceptual model. Our expectations were confirmed. Perceived uniqueness influences future intention to consume and is motivated by involvement in TFP. The theoretical arguments of the relevance of the perceived uniqueness of traditional food was also supported by the positive relationship between general involvement in luxury (prestige) and involvement in TFP. In addition, this study found a significant positive relationship between product-specific nostalgia and involvement in TFP. To our knowledge, no previous study we are aware has discussed, designed or tested these theoretical relationships. Our findings have promising implications for the seafood industry in order to achieve unique product value and increase consumers' willingness to pay, by promoting uniqueness, prestige and nostalgic product features of vintage salt-cured clipfish.

Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies.

We examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based power exerted by a leader (who might be an authority figure with legitimate power, a prestigious individual with merited power, or some combination thereof) and fear-based power exerted by a bully. Infants first saw three protagonists interact with a character who was either a leader (leader condition) or a bully (bully condition). Next, the character gave an order to the protagonists, who initially obeyed; the character then left the scene, and the protagonists either continued to obey (obey event) or no longer did so (disobey event). Infants in the leader condition looked significantly longer at the disobey than at the obey event, suggesting that they expected the protagonists to continue to obey the leader in her absence. In contrast, infants in the bully condition looked equally at the two events, suggesting that they viewed both outcomes as plausible: The protagonists might continue to obey the absent bully to prevent further harm, or they might disobey her because her power over them weakened in her absence. Additional results supported these interpretations: Infants expected obedience when the bully remained in the scene and could harm the protagonists if defied, but they expected disobedience when the order was given by a character with little or no power over the protagonists. Together, these results indicate that by 21 months of age, infants already hold different expectations for subordinates' responses to individuals with respect-based as opposed to fear-based power.

Race, ethnicity and nativity and the prestige of colleges attended.

Although much literature examines racial/ethnic variation in college attendance, comparable research on the prestige of colleges attended is quite limited. Of particular interest are the colleges attended by Asian and Hispanic Americans, two populations with varied education outcomes across ethnicity and nativity. The analysis draws on a diverse sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to estimate OLS and Heckman selection models of prestige of the bachelor's institution attended among current college enrollees (Wave III) and graduates (Wave IV). Across all model specifications Chinese Americans tend to enroll and graduate from more prestigious colleges than Whites and most other racial/ethnic-nativity groups in the analysis. In contrast, economic disadvantage accounts for Mexican Americans' enrollment at less prestigious colleges than Whites. These findings suggest the important role of college prestige in stratification, especially for specific Asian American populations.

Modelling the on-going natural selection of educational attainment in contemporary societies.

There has been substantial increase in education attainment (EA) in both developing and developed countries over the past century. I present a simulation model to examine the potential evolutionary trajectories of EA under current selective pressure in western populations. With the assumption that EA is negatively correlated with fitness and has both a genetic component and a cultural component, I show that when prestige-biased transmission of the EA (i.e. people with more education are more likely to be copied) is present, the phenotype of EA is likely to keep increasing in the short term, yet the genetic component of EA may undergo a constant decline and become the limiting factor in further phenotypic increase.

When the appeal of a dominant leader is greater than a prestige leader.

Across the globe we witness the rise of populist authoritarian leaders who are overbearing in their narrative, aggressive in behavior, and often exhibit questionable moral character. Drawing on evolutionary theory of leadership emergence, in which dominance and prestige are seen as dual routes to leadership, we provide a situational and psychological account for when and why dominant leaders are preferred over other respected and admired candidates. We test our hypothesis using three studies, encompassing more than 140,000 participants, across 69 countries and spanning the past two decades. We find robust support for our hypothesis that under a situational threat of economic uncertainty (as exemplified by the poverty rate, the housing vacancy rate, and the unemployment rate) people escalate their support for dominant leaders. Further, we find that this phenomenon is mediated by participants' psychological sense of a lack of personal control. Together, these results provide large-scale, globally representative evidence for the structural and psychological antecedents that increase the preference for dominant leaders over their prestigious counterparts.

Do nurses rate diseases according to prestige? A survey study.

AIMS: To see whether nurses rate diseases according to prestige and, if so, how their ratings compare to the disease prestige hierarchy previously uncovered among physicians. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. METHODS: In 2014, 122 nurses in a continuing education programme for healthcare personnel in Norway rated a sample of 38 diseases according to how prestigious they see these as being among healthcare workers in general. RESULTS: The nurses were found to rank myocardial infarction, leukaemia, and brain stroke at the top of the prestige hierarchy and depressive neurosis, anxiety neurosis, and fibromyalgia at the bottom. Their rankings overlap significantly with those previously documented for physicians and suggest that nurses assess the diseases through a 'cure' rather than a 'care' perspective on health care. CONCLUSION: The nurses ordered diseases in a prestige hierarchy and their rankings are strikingly like those of physicians. The findings are of significant relevance to nursing practice and set a new course for future research into prestige and nursing culture. IMPACT: The findings should encourage nurses - individually and collectively - to reflect on whether and how notions of disease prestige influence their decision-making. By showing that nurses as well as physicians are able to rate diseases according to prestige, the study suggests new avenues for future disease prestige research.