Dominance and Prestige: Dual Strategies for Navigating Social Hierarchies

The presence of hierarchy is a ubiquitous feature of human social groups. An evolutionary perspective provides novel insight into the nature of hierarchy, including its causes and consequences. When integrated with theory and data from social psychology, an evolutionary approach provides a conceptual framework for understanding the Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 54 # 2016 Elsevier Inc. ISSN 0065-2601 All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2016.02.001 129 strategies that people use to navigate their way through social hierarchies. This article focuses on two strategies—dominance and prestige—that have played a key role in regulating human hierarchies throughout history. Dominance reflects a repertoire of behaviors, cognitions, and emotions aimed at attaining social rank through coercion, intimidation, and the selfish manipulation of group resources. Prestige instead reflects behaviors, cognitions, and emotions aimed at attaining social rank through the display of valued knowledge and skill. Despite their similarities (both are aimed at attaining social rank) the two strategies involve very different sets of social psychological phenomena. In addition to (1) discussing and differentiating the two strategies, this chapter (2) describes a program of research investigating their implications for leadership behavior, (3) considers implications of this framework for a number of other social psychological literatures, and (4) provides recommendations for further examining the operation of the two strategies in social groups. Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear. Machiavelli (1532/1992) Why are most human social groups organized hierarchically? And why are many people so motivated to acquire positions of high social rank within those groups? Many behavioral scientists, social psychologists included, would answer these questions by pointing to the macrolevel benefits experienced by groups that have social hierarchy, as well as the microlevel benefits enjoyed by the individuals who possess high social rank. For instance, groups that have some type of hierarchy often are better able to coordinate the actions of their members, and the presence of hierarchy can incentivize group members to behave in ways that benefit the group (eg, Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Van Vugt, 2006). For the individual, having high social status means getting to enjoy access to abundant resources, respect, and the ability to live comfortably without being too dependent on other people (eg, Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Thus, the benefits of hierarchy, both to the group and to the individual, seem quite evident. Indeed, social psychologists have not only clearly highlighted the proximate features of social hierarchy, but have provided strong evidence for the benefits to be had by hierarchically arranged groups and the individuals who comprise them. Yet, the answers social psychologists are likely to provide for questions about social hierarchy belie a deeper set of considerations—one that involves the history of the human species and ties the psychology of social hierarchy to the underlying evolutionary forces that set the stage for group living in contemporary humans. Throughout human history, the presence of hierarchy has been a very common, if not ubiquitous, feature of social groups. The 130 J.K. Maner and C.R. Case