The Pursuit of Status in Social Groups

ABSTRACT— Status differences are ubiquitous and highly consequential. Yet with regard to human social groups, basic questions persist about how status differences develop. In particular, little is known about the processes by which individuals pursue status in social groups. That is, how do individuals compete and jockey for status with their peers? The current paper reviews recent research that helps fill this gap in our knowledge. Specifically, studies of a variety of face-to-face groups show that individuals pursue status by enhancing the apparent value they provide to their group. Individuals compete for status not by bullying and intimidating others, as some theorists have proposed, but by behaving in ways that suggest high levels of competence, generosity, and commitment to the group.     

Surveys and Data Sources on Gay Men’s Lifestyles and Socio-Sexual Behavior: Some Key Concerns and Issues

This paper explores and reflects upon the body of relevant social science data sources containing insights into gay male socio-sexual lifestyles. Considerable deficiencies seem to feature in this regard with respect to coverage, consistency, content and usability. The various reasons for collecting data on gay male lifestyles are considered and thought given as to some particular strengths and weaknesses. Examples of datasets and surveys are used in this light to potentially inform future developments and a critical perspective on their usage.

Stimulus and response conflict processing during perceptual decision making

Encoding and dealing with conflicting information is essential for successful decision making in a complex environment. In the present fMRI study, stimulus conflict and response conflict are contrasted in the context of a perceptual decision-making dot-motion discrimination task. Stimulus conflict was manipulated by varying dot-motion coherence along task-relevant and task-irrelevant dimensions. Response conflict was manipulated by varying whether or not competing stimulus dimensions provided evidence for the same or different responses. The right inferior frontal gyrus was involved specifically in the resolution of stimulus conflict, whereas the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was shown to be sensitive to response conflict. Additionally, two regions that have been linked to perceptual decision making with dot-motion stimuli in monkey physiology studies were differentially engaged by stimulus conflict and response conflict. The middle temporal area, previously linked to processing of motion, was strongly affected by the presence of stimulus conflict. On the other hand, the superior parietal lobe, previously associated with accumulation of evidence for a response, was affected by the presence of response conflict. These results shed light on the neural mechanisms that support decision making in the presence of conflict, a cognitive operation fundamental to both basic survival and high-level cognition.     

Endorsing Obama licenses favoring Whites

Three studies tested whether the opportunity to endorse Barack Obama made individuals subsequently more likely to favor Whites over Blacks. In Study 1, participants were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for Blacks after expressing support for Obama. Study 2 replicated this effect and ruled out alternative explanations: participants favored Whites for the job after endorsing Obama, but not after endorsing a White Democrat, nor after seeing Obama’s photo without having an opportunity to endorse him. Study 3 demonstrated that racial attitudes moderated this effect: endorsing Obama increased the amount of money allocated to an organization serving Whites at the expense of an organization serving Blacks only for participants high in a measure of racial prejudice. These three studies suggest that expressing support for Obama grants people moral credentials [Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43], thus reducing their concern with appearing prejudiced.     

Androgen dynamics in the context of children's peer relations: an examination of the links between testosterone and peer victimization

Testosterone levels have been shown to decrease in the face of social defeat in several mammalian species. Among humans, the loss of social status has been studied primarily in the context of athletic competition, with winners having higher testosterone levels than losers. This study examined testosterone levels in relation to peer victimization (bullying) in a sample of 151 boys and girls aged 12–13. Statistically controlling for age and pubertal status, results indicated that on average verbally bullied girls produced less testosterone and verbally bullied boys produced more testosterone than their nonbullied counterparts. Similar trends were evident comparing social and physical bullying with testosterone. Sex differences are discussed in terms of empirically validated differences in coping styles, as girls tend to internalize, whereas boys tend to externalize, their abuse. Aggr. Behav. 35:103–113, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The Conceptual Complexity of Central Bankers and the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper examines the impact of the conceptual complexity of central bankers on exchange rate volatility during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Theoretically, this paper develops a framework to study the cognitive style of individual central bankers in conjunction with the institutional features of the central banks they head. The paper also controls for a variety of other common explanations for exchange rate volatility during this time period, including the number of veto players representing the political system and underlying structural features of the Asian economies. Empirically, the cross-sectional time-series analysis finds that more conceptually complex central bankers were able to reduce exchange rate volatility during the crisis years, especially when they inhabited highly independent central banks. This paper concludes that linking the study of key individuals to macroeconomic outcomes in the global political economy is a promising area of research.     

Conditioned suppression of bar-pressing behavior by stimuli associated with drugs

Ten naive male albino rats were trained to press a bar under a variable-interval 30-sec schedule with water as the reinforcer in two experiments. This behavior was disrupted by chlorpromazine in Experiment I (two rats) and by lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in both Experiment I (two rats) and Experiment II (six rats). The administration of the drug was paired with an originally neutral white light. After several pairings with either drug, the light also depressed behavior. When the light was no longer paired with drug, the depression effect extinguished much faster than is usually observed in conditioned suppression studies.     

Selective attention in young children: the relations between visual search, filtering, and priming

Previous studies of visual attention in children have used a wide variety of tasks to demonstrate that visual selectivity improves with age. A guiding assumption (often implicit) of this work is the existence of a single attentional resource that increases in capacity with development. The present study examined the relations between three components of tasks that are often used in developmental studies of attention: search, filtering, and priming. Additive factors logic was applied to a simple speeded classification task performed by subjects aged 4, 7, and 24 years. The results showed (1) improvements with age occurred in each of the three task components, (2) visual search was unrelated to filtering and priming, and (3) filtering and priming were related to one another in a capacity-sharing fashion. Implications of these results for developmental studies of attention and for theories of attention are discussed.