Citation in APA format: Anderson, C. (2025). Social hierarchy: Power, status, and influence. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, E. J. Finkel, & W. B. Mendes (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (6th ed.). Situational Press. https://doi.org/10.70400/UXJF4934

Social Hierarchy: Power, Status, and Influence 

Cameron Anderson, University of California, Berkeley 

For humans, being a social animal means being a hierarchical animal. When people live in a community, develop a close relationship, play on a team, or work toward a collective goal, they inevitably form a hierarchy, in that some people come to have more power, status, and influence than others. People form hierarchies no matter their values, personality traits, motivations, demographic characteristics, or culture. They form hierarchies instantaneously and automatically, without conscious thought, and even when they desire egalitarianism. 

Once a hierarchy forms, it in turn has a profound impact on the well-being of those within it. Put simply, those at the top get to enjoy the good life. They are more respected and admired (Ng et al., 2011; Orghian et al., 2019), given more compliments and praise (Fragale et al., 2011; Keeves et al., 2017), accorded more deference than those lower on the hierarchy; (Brescoll, 2011; Kwaadsteniet & Dijk, 2010; Melamed & Savage, 2013; Mills, 2014; Ratcliff et al., 2011; Reschke et al., 2018; Ridgeway & Nakagawa, 2017; Savage et al., 2013), have their ideas taken more seriously; (Blue et al., 2020; Bridwell-Mitchell & Lant, 2014; Hutzschenreuter et al., 2015; Sijbom et al., 2016; Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012; Young-Hyman & Kleinbaum, 2020; Yu & Kilduff, 2020), have more freedom to be their authentic selves and the autonomy to satisfy their desires and wishes; (Dong et al., 2021; Lammers et al., 2016; Lelieveld et al., 2012; Morrison, 2011; Morrison et al., 2015; Petkanopoulou et al., 2019; Weick et al., 2017; Wellman et al., 2016), experience a stronger sense of belonging; (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012; Torlò & Lomi, 2017), and feel more competent, successful, and in control (Fast, Sivanathan, et al., 2012; Fischer et al., 2011; Lammers & Burgmer, 2019; Oldmeadow & Fiske, 2010; Park et al., 2011). 

In stark contrast, people nearer the bottom of a hierarchy live a considerably bleaker life.  Compared to those at the top, they are devalued by others and criticized more (Fragale et al., 2011), their ideas and opinions are more likely to be ignored or rejected (Brescoll, 2011), they are more constrained in their behavior (Kraus et al., 2011; Leach & Weick, 2018; Souitaris et al., 2020), they experience greater ostracism (Foulk et al., 2020; Waytz et al., 2015), they are more likely to feel incompetent and to lack control; (Fischer et al., 2011; Moon & Chen, 2014), they suffer more from low self-esteem, anxiety, negative emotion, and depression (Akinola & Mendes, 2014; Belmi & Pfeffer, 2016; Benson & Giacomin, 2020; Blincoe & Harris, 2011; Finkelstein et al., 2006; Flynn & Amanatullah, 2012; Mahadevan et al., 2020a; Mahadevan et al., 2019; Mooijman et al., 2020; Schaerer et al., 2021; Zeigler‐Hill et al., 2019), and they have heightened susceptibility to illness, and a diminished subjective well-being (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012; Cohen, 1999; Cooper et al., 2010; Euteneuer et al., 2012; Ghaed & Gallo, 2007; John et al., 2012; Kifer et al., 2013; Scholl et al., 2018; G. D. Sherman et al., 2012a; Yu & Blader, 2020).  

In addition to affecting individuals, hierarchies also fundamentally shape the functioning of social collectives as a whole. A hierarchy’s steepness – the degree to which it produces differences in power, status, and influence across individuals – determines whether those within it trust each other and share a sense of solidarity, or feel socially distant and antagonistic, viewing each other as competitors or even combatants (Anderson & Brown, 2010; Greer et al., 2018). Hierarchies also concentrate control at the top, giving high-ranking people more say over collective goals and the allocation of roles and responsibilities (Bixter & Luhmann, 2020), and the setting and enforcement of social norms and rules (Dannals et al., 2022; Kuwabara et al., 2016; Johnson et al., 2017; Jia et al., 2018; Mawritz et al., 2012; Moore et al., 2019; Shim et al., 2021). Those at the top of hierarchies exert outsized influence over whether others identify with and are committed to collective success (Farh & Chen, 2014; Fu et al., 2010; Harrell & Simpson, 2016; Hu & Judge, 2017; Klein et al., 2020; Triana et al., 2017), and, ultimately, whether groups achieve their goals (De Hoogh et al., 2015; Kopelman et al., 2016; Locke & Anderson, 2015; Madrid et al., 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Shim et al., 2021; Sung & Choi, 2021; Tost et al., 2013; Kumru & Vesterlund, 2010; LePine et al., 2016; Owens & Hekman, 2016; Simpson et al., 2012; Tost et al., 2013). 

Given the centrality of hierarchy to social life, it is somewhat surprising that social psychology began treating it as a core topic only about 25 years ago, as compared to adjacent fields, such as sociology and anthropology, which have treated hierarchy as a foundational subject since their inception. That said, social psychologists have been making up for lost time. In recent years, the field has witnessed an explosion of research on hierarchy as psychologists have begun to tackle a wide range of questions that they are uniquely equipped to address, such as why people form hierarchies, how they organize themselves into rank orders, and how hierarchies, in turn, affect health and well-being.  

The primary aim of this chapter is to overview the existing social-psychological literature on hierarchy. It will review the major theories of hierarchy in the field, summarize empirical findings, address ongoing debates, and highlight questions that need further examination. Hopefully, it will demonstrate what an exciting time it is to be a social psychologist studying hierarchy. The field has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time, but there is still much we do not understand about hierarchy. Open research questions abound, including fundamental issues with profoundly important theoretical and practical implications. 

The first section will define hierarchy and its most studied dimensions – power, status, and influence – and distinguish them from related dimensions, such as social acceptance, dominance, and social class. The second section will summarize some of the major theories of social hierarchy organization and their core tenets. The chapter will then turn to the empirical literature and review studies spanning five core research questions: (1) the human preference for hierarchy (vs. flatness or egalitarianism); (2) the organization of rank-order positions (namely, which individuals attain higher rank and why); (3) the temporal stability of hierarchies; (4) the psychological effects of possessing high vs. low rank on the individual; and (5) the effects of hierarchy on the welfare of the collective.  

Although this chapter might not provide a fully exhaustive review of the empirical literature, the aim here is to give readers a comprehensive and current sense of the field. Therefore, the empirical review will review as much research as possible that has been conducted since Fiske’s (2010) chapter on social stratification in the previous Handbook was published.  

DEFINITIONS 

In this chapter, social hierarchy is defined as an ongoing pattern of rank-order asymmetries in individuals’ influence, deference, and access to scarce resources. These asymmetries can stem from differences in individuals’ power, status, or both. This rather dense definition of hierarchy warrants unpacking to help delineate the scope of the subject matter. 

Influence is the ability to modify others’ states, including their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors  (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Fiske, 2010). If someone can change others’ opinion on an issue, induce positive or negative feelings in them, or lead them to do something they would not otherwise do, then that person can be said to possess influence over others (Falk et al., 2024). Within social hierarchies, asymmetries in influence mean that people higher in rank both have more influence over others and are less influenced by others; and that people lower in rank both have less influence over others and are more influenced by others. Notably, higher-ranked individuals need not exercise their influence at every opportunity to be considered influential; they simply must have the capacity to influence others when they wish to do so (Keltner et al., 2003; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). 

Deference is defined as being accorded enhanced rights and perquisites by others. For example, individuals higher in a hierarchy are granted the license to lead discussions, exemption from undesirable tasks and duties, enhanced control over group decisions, the authority to issue directives, and the freedom to satisfy their personal desires and needs (Berger et al., 1980; Cheng et al., 2013; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939). Depending on the type of hierarchy, this deference to high-ranking individuals might be voluntary or involuntary—an important distinction addressed later in more depth. 

Access to scarce resources refers to privileged access to resources that are both highly valued and limited in quantity and thus not available to all hierarchy members. Depending on the context, scarce resources can include money or material goods, food, mates, attention, praise, inclusion in socially exclusive activities, or prized living or working quarters (Cheng et al., 2013; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; von Rueden, 2014). 

The term ongoing is meant to indicate that asymmetries between people endure over a period of time and are not confined to a single moment. This temporal feature of hierarchies has been discussed thoroughly in work on non-human hierarchies (Bernstein, 1981; de Waal, 1986; Hinde, 1978) but it is also a defining feature of human social hierarchies. Hierarchies exist over time, not just in a single moment. The factors that govern people’s influence in a single occasion can differ from those that determine their rank within a social hierarchy. As an example, people might be able to use the threat of physical violence to successfully influence others on one single occasion, but they typically cannot use the continual threat of physical violence to attain and maintain high rank in a hierarchy (Blaker & van Vugt, 2014; Keltner et al., 2008; Mazur, 1985; Savin-Williams, 1980). The study of social hierarchy is thus focused on ongoing or continuing asymmetries between people in their influence, deference, and resources, rather than on isolated influence attempts (Briñol et al., 2007; Kipnis et al., 1980). 

Note that the term ongoing does not imply that an asymmetry between individuals is inviolable. For example, there can be instances in which a lower-ranked person influences a higher-ranked person rather than vice versa (Hinde, 1978; Mechanic, 1962). However, differences in hierarchical rank exist when one person generally has more influence over another than vice versa. 

The word pattern is meant to reflect that these three variables – influence, deference, and access to scarce resources – tend to correlate highly with each other (Bales et al., 1951; Berger et al., 1980; Hinde, 1978). If some people have more influence in a group than others, for example, it is highly likely they also receive more deference from others and enjoy better access to scarce resources than others. 

The term rank order is not meant in the pure mathematical sense, or as an ordinal dimension, which would imply that the differences in influence, deference, and resources between people in adjacent ranks are uniform up and down the hierarchy (e.g., the difference between the top-ranking member’s and second-ranked member’s influence is the same as that between the seventh-ranked member’s and eighth-ranked member’s influence). Instead, the differences between people in adjacent ranks might vary from one dyad to another. For example, the top-ranked member of a hierarchy might have far more influence than the second-ranked member, who might have only slightly more influence than the third-ranked member. Nonetheless, the term rank order is used here because it is intuitive and has been employed widely in the field. 

Finally, it is worth noting that social hierarchies are local—that is, understood only with reference to specific social groups or interpersonal relationships, rather than in relation to an entire society (Emerson, 1962). This means that the determinants of rank can vary from one context to another, such that what gives people high rank in one context may not give them high rank in another. For example, one study found that extraversion helped employees attain higher influence in a team-oriented organization, but not in a separate organization in which individuals worked alone and on technical tasks (Anderson et al., 2008). Relatedly, it also means that people’s rank can vary across the different groups to which they belong and the different relationships they have with others. People thus might have high rank in one context (e.g., at work) but low rank in another (e.g., in their family; Anicich et al., 2021; Fernandes et al., 2021; Sabey et al., 2020; Sessions et al., 2022). 

Power and Status 

The two most studied determinants of hierarchy in social psychology are power and status. Power is defined as “an individual’s relative capacity to modify others’ states by providing or withholding resources or administering punishments” (Keltner et al., 2003, p. 265; see also Fiske & Dépret, 1996; Emerson, 1962; Kipnis et al., 1976). By this definition, power provides an individual the ability to influence others, either because those others depend on the individual for resources they cannot obtain elsewhere, they fear punishments the individual might administer, or both. Power asymmetries are often formal in nature, stemming from lines of authority within an organizational structure (Cheng et al., 2013; Magee & Galinsky, 2008), but this is not always the case. For example, in a fledgling startup company with no formal structure as of yet, one member might have power because they have close relationships with key advisors and potential investors. 

This definition of power thus focuses on “social” rather than “personal” power (Galinsky et al., 2008; Lammers et al., 2009; Overbeck & Park, 2001; van Dijke & Poppe, 2006). Social power, sometimes called “power over,” refers to individuals’ influence over others. Personal power, sometimes called “power to,” refers to individuals’ autonomy and control over their own behavior. These two conceptions of power are related: if someone has power over others, they also tend to have more autonomy and control over their own behavior (Anderson et al., 2008). However, social and personal power can diverge. For example, if two people are in a close and highly cohesive relationship, they both tend to have considerable influence over each other (Emerson, 1962; Lawler & Yoon, 1996). Such a relationship thus enhances each person’s social power but dampens their personal power. As another example, if two roommates lived almost entirely separate lives, they would have a great deal of personal power (autonomy) but little social power over each other. This chapter focuses on social power because it is a primary determinant of hierarchical rank, whereas personal power is typically treated as a downstream consequence of hierarchical rank. 

This definition of power is broader than previous conceptions that viewed power as necessarily coercive. For example, Emerson (1962) stated, “the power of actor A over actor B is the amount of resistance on the part of B which can be potentially overcome by A” (p. 32). His emphasis on overcoming resistance suggests that the concept of power applies only to contexts in which people force others to comply against their will. In the definition used here, the concept of power also applies to contexts in which people’s suggestions or directives are voluntarily followed and there is no resistance to overcome. For example, subordinates might willingly follow their boss’s suggestions because of the valuable resources the boss controls (e.g., positive evaluations, promotion opportunities). In such instances, subordinates’ deference is due to their boss’s power, but their deference is nonetheless voluntary. 

Status is “the respect, admiration, and voluntary deference an individual is afforded by others, based on that individual’s perceived instrumental social value” (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2015, p. 2; see also Barkow et al., 1975; Benoit-Smullyan, 1944; Berger et al., 1972; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939). Status is sometimes called “prestige” (e.g., (Barkow et al., 1975; Cheng et al., 2010; Emerson, 1962; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939); or “sociometric status” because it is grounded in social perceptions and evaluations of the individual (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012). 

People afford higher status to those with perceived instrumental social value or to those who appear to possess characteristics that will facilitate their own goal accomplishment (Berger et al., 1972; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939). For example, people afford higher status to those whose advice or assistance they seek, those from whom they wish to learn, or those who can help them accomplish important tasks and overcome problems (Benoit-Smullyan, 1944). In this sense, people confer status to others as part of a social exchange process; status is exchanged for help with one’s own goals (Barkow et al., 1975; Benoit-Smullyan, 1944; Emerson, 1962; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Willer, 2009).  

The word perceived in “perceived instrumental value” is operative: Status is afforded to people who are perceived to possess instrumental social value, but not necessarily to those who actually possess it. For example, someone might confer higher status to another person because that person projects a high degree of confidence in his skill and abilities, and thus appears competent, even if he is actually inept (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012). The process of evaluating others’ instrumental value is not necessarily a conscious process; in fact, it probably occurs non-consciously most of the time (Goldhamer & Shils, 1939; Magee & Galinsky, 2008).  

The personal characteristics deemed instrumentally valuable can differ across social contexts, depending on which goals, problems, and needs are salient to those involved. For example, physical abilities might lead to higher rank within an athletic team, where such abilities are crucial to the team’s primary goal of winning games. However, physical abilities might have little impact on rank in a team of scientists, where such abilities are irrelevant to the main goal of making scientific discoveries. Nonetheless, two broad categories of personal characteristics generally lead people to be afforded higher status across all social contexts: when they (1) seem to possess competencies related to the important tasks and challenges others face (Driskell & Mullen, 1990; Ridgeway, 1987) and (2) appear willing to use their competencies to help others (Griskevicius et al., 2009; Ridgeway, 1982; Willer, 2009). The willingness to contribute to others’ success is important to the status affordance process because, again, status is inherently part of an exchange process. People confer status to others if doing so will likely result in some kind of return for them. 

As determinants of rank within social hierarchies, power and status are often correlated (Cheng et al., 2013; Emerson, 1962; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Power can lead to status, in part, because people assume, rightly or wrongly, that those with power possess instrumentally valuable characteristics like competence (e.g., Dahrendorf, 2021). Further, status can lead to power in part because people with high status are often appointed to positions of authority that afford them control over scarce resources. Yet power and status are also distinct. While power can allow people to force others to comply with them involuntarily, status only involves voluntary compliance; people cannot force others to genuinely respect and admire them. Furthermore, power more often stems from what a person possesses (e.g., their valued resources, like money or access to important people), whereas status more typically stems from who a person is (i.e., their valued personal characteristics or skills, like competence). Therefore, power and status do not always coincide. For example, a religious leader might have high status but little power because they are highly respected but do not control resources on which others depend, and an organizational supervisor might possess high power but little status because their authority gives them license to hire and fire others, but they are known to have attained their position of authority through nepotism. 

Related Constructs 

It is useful to conceptually distinguish social hierarchy from adjacent social-relational variables. First, people’s rank within a social hierarchy is distinct from their social acceptance or belongingness (see Coie et al.; Mann, 1959). In several theories, hierarchical rank and social acceptance are conceptually orthogonal (Abele et al., 2021; Bakan, 1966; Moskowitz, 1994; Wiggins, 1979). While acceptance involves how well individuals “get along” with others, how many friends they have, and how well-liked they are by peers, social hierarchy captures how successfully individuals “get ahead” of others and achieve higher rank (Hogan, 1983). Therefore, someone can be fully accepted and well-liked in a social group yet still have little voice or influence in group decisions (Blau, 2017). 

The hierarchies under consideration here are also distinct from social class or socioeconomic status. As mentioned above, social hierarchies are understood with reference to a specific group or relationship, such as a work organization, school, or friendship. In contrast, social class is understood with reference to an entire country (e.g., see Stephens, Emery, & Townsend,  2025). Further, social class is based specifically on income, education, and occupation (Kraus et al., 2012), whereas rank in a group’s social hierarchy can be based on any factor that provides people with power or status – for example, hunting ability (von Rueden, 2014), creativity (Sutton & Hargadon, 1996), or morality (Bai, Ho, & Yan, 2020). For this reason, people’s rank within a group or relationship can completely diverge from their social class, as when working-class people have high rank in their friendship clique, or when upper-class people have low rank in their country club. Of course, people’s social class can affect their rank within a group, if money or education are viewed as valuable to others’ goals, or if others use income or education as signs of instrumentally valuable personal characteristics, such as intelligence (Berger et al., 1980), but social hierarchy in groups and social class are nonetheless distinct. 

The term dominance is used in different ways. Some use it to refer to trait dominance, which involves the tendency to behave in assertive, forceful, and self-assured ways (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; Wiggins, 1979). As compared to social hierarchy, which is a property of social groups or relationships, trait dominance is a personality dimension and thus a property of the individual. Trait dominance is often related to social hierarchy, as higher levels of trait dominance can facilitate the attainment of higher rank (e.g., Anderson & Kilduff, 2009), and over time, possessing higher rank can lead to higher levels of trait dominance in a person (e.g., Roberts et al., 2003). But the two can also be unrelated, for example when employees of an organization work mostly independently, and influence is based more on diligence and technical prowess than on trait dominance (Anderson et al., 2008). 

Others have used the term dominance to refer to what will be called here aggressive dominance, or “the induction of fear, through intimidation and coercion, to attain social rank” (Cheng et al., 2013, p. 105). Aggressive dominance is a strategy aimed at attaining higher social rank by forcing others into submission (Lee & Ofshe, 1981; Mazur, 1985). By threatening others explicitly or implicitly, or causing them to feel stress and anxiety, those showing aggressive dominance aim to bully others into deferring (Blader & Chen, 2014). Aggressive dominance is thus distinct from social hierarchy in that it involves a behavioral strategy; it does not reflect where a person actually ranks within a social hierarchy. For example, someone might use an aggressive dominance strategy to jockey for higher rank but fail to do so. Furthermore, while the two concepts share a similar term, aggressive dominance and trait dominance are also distinct from each other, in that people high in trait dominance do not necessarily rely on fear and intimidation, but instead simply act in more assertive and self-assured ways (Gough et al., 1951). Someone might be highly assertive but never attempt to bully or coerce others into submission. 

Finally, leadership, though sometimes construed as a form of hierarchy, can be distinguished from hierarchical rank. Leadership “involves persuading other people to set aside for a period of time their individual concerns and to pursue a common goal that is important for the responsibilities and welfare of a group” (Hogan et al., 1994, p. 493; see also Mann, 1959). Thus, leadership is defined by numerous tasks and responsibilities that are not part of the definition of rank, per se, such as planning and organizing, problem solving, supporting and motivating others, and so on. In some groups, highly ranked members do not serve any leadership function (Anderson et al., 2001), and sometimes people in leadership positions are not well-respected and do not control valued resources (Fast, Halevy, et al., 2012). Nonetheless, leadership and hierarchical rank correlate within many settings. People who serve as leaders are typically seen as providing instrumental social value and thus afforded higher status (Lukaszewski et al., 2016), and groups typically give leaders control over important resources and thus afford them higher power (e.g., Hogan et al., 1994). Accordingly, studies of leadership will be reviewed here when they are relevant to issues of social hierarchy. 

Scope of Chapter 

This chapter focuses on the hierarchies that emerge between two or more people, such as those that emerge in laboratories, friendship cliques, dance troupes, engineering teams, neighborhood communities, social-living groups such as fraternities and sororities, and athletic teams. It also summarizes some research on hierarchies within work organizations. Work organizations typically have more complicated hierarchical structures than, say, the informal status differences that emerge among friends. Most have a formal authority structure in which people are assigned specific roles and an informal structure that involves asymmetries in influence and deference that emerge more organically. The informal structure can be based on, for example, control over important resources like budgets (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1974), people’s reputation for competence and effectiveness (Anderson, Sharps, et al., 2020), or their position within the social network (Brass, 1984). Nonetheless, many hierarchical dynamics and processes within work organizations mirror those within other groups, in that power and status often stem from similar sources (e.g., control over resources, possessing instrumental value). Therefore, it is useful to include relevant organizational research in the current review.  

This chapter does not focus as much on other, albeit related, concepts covered elsewhere in this Handbook, such as social class (Stephens, et al., 2025), societal differences in rank between people in different social groups (Ellemers & Scheepers, 2025) and demographic categories (Bodenhausen & Cheryan, 2025; Devine et al., 2025; North, 2025; Richeson et al., 2025; Schmader & Nater, 2025; Sinclair & Turetsky, 2025), electoral politics (Federico, 2025), or the use of persuasion and influence in isolated instances (Falk et al., 2025). It also does not focus on the hierarchies that emerge among children or adolescents, as those have different qualities and are more the purview of developmental psychology (Olson & Dunham, 2025; Savin-Williams, 1979). 

For historians of the field, it is worth noting the change in scope and title from Fiske’s (2010) seminal chapter in the previous Handbook. That chapter focused much of its attention on how high or low rank shapes individual behavior in the moment and well-being over time. The current chapter covers those subjects but also reviews research on other topics such as the human preference for hierarchy, how hierarchies develop, the stability of hierarchies over time, and the effects of hierarchy on the collective. Fiske’s chapter also reviewed research on societal level stratification, which is covered elsewhere in this Handbook (Stephens et al., 2025). Finally, while Fiske used the term stratification in her title, the current chapter used social hierarchy because hierarchy has become the most common umbrella term for rank-order differences in power, status, and influence. 

THEORIES OF SOCIAL HIERARCHY 

There is perhaps no more fundamental question about social hierarchies than why they exist. And yet, prominent theories of hierarchy provide completely opposing answers. For example, functionalist theories posit that people organize themselves into hierarchies to solve problems inherent in social living, such as coordinating individual efforts and avoiding conflicts over resources. In contrast, dominance theories propose hierarchies emerge because individuals compete for power and influence, and some people are more successful than others in forcing others to defer to them. 

This section reviews the major theories of social hierarchy. As will become apparent, these theories not only offer opposing views on why hierarchies exist but also on which kinds of people attain higher rank than others, why hierarchies tend to be stable over time, and whether and how hierarchies affect the collective welfare of people within them. 

Functionalism 

Functionalist accounts of hierarchy, in their essence, argue that hierarchies form because they help people in groups and relationships solve important problems and achieve collective goals. Functionalism has roots in Davis and Moore’s (1945) treatise on occupational prestige, Parsons’s (1951) view of power as a mechanism to solve collective problems, the social-exchange theories of Thibaut and Kelley (2017), Emerson (1962), Blau (2017), and status characteristics theory (Berger et al., 1972). 

According to functionalism, hierarchies help people solve at least three major problems inherent in social life. First, people must coordinate their behavior to work in concert toward collective goals; they must allocate tasks and responsibilities, maintain effective communication, and minimize interpersonal conflict. For example, one primary challenge in any group or relationship is the allocation of influence. All too often, there are “too many cooks in the kitchen”— too many people want to make decisions, give commands, and dominate discussions. Hierarchies are seen as a primary way to solve this problem and avoid conflict by facilitating an orderly division of influence across people, using such means as allowing or denying different people the rights to perform certain behaviors (Bales et al., 1951; Berger et al., 1980; Chance, 1967; Keltner et al., 2008; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Tiedens et al., 2007). As evidence, groups that have a clear hierarchy, on which members agree, tend to perform better than groups whose members disagree on their individual ranks. In one study, middle-managers enrolled in a part-time MBA program who worked in project teams reported the degree to which their team engaged in conflict over status with items such as “My team members competed for influence,” and “My team members experienced conflicts due to members trying to assert their dominance” (Bendersky & Hays, 2012). Teams that reported engaging in more status conflicts during the school term received lower grades on their final project at the end of it. Similarly, a laboratory study of teams working on a creativity task counted the number of times in which members engaged in “upward status disagreements” – that is, times in which one individual member of a team reported privately that they were higher in status rank than another member, but that other member also reported privately that they were higher status than the individual (Kilduff et al., 2016). Teams whose members had more of those status disagreements performed more poorly on the creativity task than teams whose members agreed on their relative status ranks.  

Hierarchies are also thought to help information flow more efficiently and for people to integrate this information more easily (Bavelas, 1950). For example, the idea of a pyramidal hierarchy is that information travels up hierarchical levels until it reaches the leaders at the top. These leaders then integrate the information given to them, make decisions based upon it, and hand their decisions down to each respective hierarchical level to be implemented. Classic laboratory studies of communication structures in teams provide some evidence for the information-exchange function of hierarchies (e.g., Bavelas, 1950; Leavitt, 1951; Christie, Luce, & Macy, 1952). A typical design in those studies involves seating a team of participants around a table with partitions that physically separated them from each other; the researcher would then experimentally manipulate the team’s communication channels by varying which members could send written messages to each other through slots in the partitions (e.g., Mulder, 1960). Those studies found that when the team’s task was simple, a more hierarchical communication structure (such as the “wheel,” in which one member could communicate with all others but all other members could communicate only with this central person) led to more efficient information transfer and quicker decisions than did a more egalitarian communication structure (e.g., the “comcon,” in which all team members could communicate with all other members; Shaw, 1964). 

In addition, hierarchies are thought to coordinate activity across people by providing a system in which people model their behavior after those higher in rank. People pay an inordinate amount of attention to those with high rank (Chance, 1967; Keltner et al., 2003). For example, one study recorded people taking part in a team decision-making task and then showed video clips of these teams to a subsequent set of participants while tracking their eye movements (Foulsham et al., 2010). The participants who observed these teams paid almost three times as much attention to individual team members deemed highest in status than they did to those lowest in status, in terms of total fixation duration (i.e., the amount of time spent fixating on a target; Foulsham et al., 2010). This focus on those at the top is similar to other hierarchical species (Chance, 1967). For example, male rhesus macaques were willing to pay researchers their favorite fruit drink for the opportunity to view the faces of high-status monkeys on a television screen, but required a fruit juice payment to view the faces of low-status monkeys (Deaner et al., 2005). People’s preoccupation with those at the top stems in part from the desire to model one’s behavior after theirs (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001), and by mimicking the those higher up the hierarchy, people often behave in ways more helpful to the collective. In a study of public good dilemmas, group members contributed more to the collective good when their leader was more prosocial and set a generous example (Harrell & Simpson, 2016). Mimicking the leader thus led to higher average gains amongst all group members.  

Second, hierarchies are theorized to motivate people to behave selflessly and contribute to collective success, even when such behavior requires personal sacrifices. Hierarchies reward people who make important contributions to the collective and punish those who behave selfishly (Berger et al., 1972; Davis & Moore, 1945; Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006; Keltner et al., 2008; Lambert et al., 1993; Lazear & Rosen, 1981; Pfeffer & Cohen, 1984; Van Emmerik et al., 2002; Willer, 2009). As Thibaut ane Kelley (2017) said about the allocation of status, “the status system constitutes a form of currency with which members upon whom the group is highly dependent may be paid off” (p. 232). By giving status and higher rank to individuals who contribute more and are highly valued, people also keep those individuals committed to the group or relationship and dissuade them from leaving (e.g., Frank, 1985). For example, in a study of teams, when participants were led to believe they had been granted high status by fellow team members, they in turn gave more generously to the team in a later experimental game, and reported a stronger commitment to the team (Willer, 2009). 

Third, it is thought that by putting the most qualified and committed people in charge, hierarchies give them power over decisions and thus place that control in the most competent hands. Competent people presumably make better decisions than those with lesser or average acuity (Berger et al., 1980; Davis & Moore, 1945; Ridgeway & Diekema, 1989). As evidence, teams of airmen performed better on a joint task when their assigned leader had previously showed aptitude on the task, as compared to teams whose leaders had not displayed such task abilities (Nicol & Farrell, 1963). 

In sum, functionalism proposes that the allocation of rank is a consensual process. People in a group or relationship develop an agreement (typically implicitly but sometimes explicitly) as to which individual characteristics provide the most instrumental value and allocate high- and low-ranking positions according to who possesses more or less of these valued characteristics. These characteristics can vary across social contexts, but in general, competence and other-orientation are key attributes. Once a hierarchy forms, it helps people function more effectively as a collective because of its effects on motivation, interpersonal coordination, and decision making. 

Dominance Theory 

In contrast to functionalism, dominance theories propose that hierarchies emerge not because they serve social functions, but because people jockey for influence, rights, and perquisites, and those who are more successful in this competition gain higher rank, whereas those less successful are relegated to lower rank (e.g., Cheng et al., 2013; Lee & Ofshe, 1981; Mazur, 1985). As the biologist George Williams (1966) said about non-human hierarchies, “the dominance-subordination hierarchy shown by wolves and a wide variety of vertebrates and arthropods is not a functional organization. It is the statistical consequence of a compromise made by each individual in its competition for food, mates, and other resources. Each compromise is adaptive, but not the statistical summation” (p. 218). Dominance theory applies the same logic to human social hierarchies.  

Dominance theory has roots in several academic disciplines. In biology, the first discovery of dominance hierarchies was of “pecking orders” among chickens (Schjelderup-Ebbe, 1935), though linear dominance hierarchies have been found in a wide variety of social-living animals, including crustaceans, fish, birds, and mammals (Bernstein, 1981; Chase et al., 2002; de Waal, 1986; Sapolsky, 2005). Animal dominance hierarchies might sometimes provide benefits for the collective, but such benefits are incidental.  

Dominance theory also has roots in Machiavelli’s (Machiavelli & Bull, 2003) philosophizing, which proposed that attaining and maintaining power requires people to use brute force, intimidation, and the manipulation of others (e.g., “Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived”). Finally, several classic sociological theories of social stratification also provided foundational ideas for dominance theory in arguing that domination and coercion are key drivers of stratification within societies as a whole (Dahrendorf, 2021; Weber, 2009; Mills, 1956). 

According to dominance accounts, people jockey for rank by attempting to intimidate and coerce others into submission, even if not through physical coercion: “In humans, dominance is not limited to physical conflict, but can be wielded by controlling costs and benefits in many domains, and is typically seen in individuals who control access to resources, mates, and well-being. Dominant individuals thus create fear in subordinates by taking or threatening to withhold resources” (Cheng et al., 2010, p. 335). In proposing that people attain higher rank by intimidating and threatening others, dominance theories focus on the attainment of power rather than status. The ability to administer punishments falls under the definition of power but not of status. 

In contrast to functionalism, dominance theories locate the engine of hierarchical differentiation in the individual rather than the collective. That is, functionalism asserts that individuals receive high rank from others based on their perceived value, while dominance accounts propose individuals seize their rank through force and intimidation. Further, whereas functionalist accounts predict that individuals who are perceived to provide value—in particular, those seen as competent and other-oriented—will attain high rank, dominance accounts predict that individuals high in aggressive-dominance and those who have the capacity to induce fear in others will attain high rank. 

Dominance theory has a fascinating and complicated history. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two groups of researchers proposed related but distinct dominance theories. Mazur and colleagues (1979) proposed their biosocial model of status, which posited that individuals engage in dyadic status competitions in which each tries to “out-stress” the other through aggressive-dominant behaviors, such as staring contests. In these encounters, one person eventually submits and accepts lower rank (e.g., by averting their gaze first), which elevates the other party to a higher rank. Around the same time, Ofshe and colleagues (Fisek & Ofshe, 1970; Lee & Ofshe, 1981), proposed their two-process theory of influence, which also argued that hierarchical differentiation is driven by differences in members’ dominant-aggressive behavior, but also argued that after a hierarchy has formed, people retroactively modify their perceptions of each other’s competence and value to rationalize the existing rank order. By convincing themselves that the aggressive-dominant individuals at the top are actually competent, people can more easily legitimize the hierarchy with a more socially acceptable explanation.  

These two theories generated a great deal of controversy. Lee and Ofshe’s (1981) work, in particular, elicited a host of critiques that were both theoretical (Berger & Zelditch, 1983; Greenstein, 1981; Nemeth, 1983; Sherman, 1983) and empirical (Carli et al., 1995; Driskell et al., 1993; Mohr, 1986; Ridgeway, 1987; Ridgeway & Diekema, 1989).  The empirical critiques are reviewed later in the “aggressive dominance” section of this chapter; some of the theoretical criticisms are discussed here.  

A primary critique of dominance theory is that within social collectives, people will not allow aggressive-dominant individuals to grab power when they are incompetent or selfishly motivated. It is in people’s self-interest to place competent and other-oriented individuals in positions of high rank so they can use their rank to improve everyone’s condition (Boehm, 2021; Chapais, 2015; Gintis et al., 2015; Keltner et al., 2008; Price & Van Vugt, 2014; von Rueden, 2014). Accordingly, it is also in people’s self-interest to stop individuals who are aggressive and selfish, but not competent, from taking charge. Therefore, if an individual attempts to attain high rank through force alone, people will form coalitions to block them (Boehm 2021; Chapais, 2015; Gintis et al., 2015; Keltner et al., 2008). Ridgeway (1984) made the following argument about task groups, using the abbreviations “M1” and “M2” to refer to two different members of the same group: “It is in the interests of each member that all other members grant deference on the basis of perceived performance capacity rather than some other criterion. Therefore, if other group members have higher expectation for M2’s performance than M1’s, they are likely to pressure M1 to defer to M2 (in effect, forming a coalition with M2 against M1) regardless of M1’s personal desire to defer. The implied possibility of such a coalition forming creates a power structure which enforces performance capacity as the appropriate basis for status and deference” (p. 68-69). Even if people somehow allowed a dominant-aggressive individual to take charge, it is thought that they might exit and form a group or relationship with someone else (Ridgeway, 1984). 

As a result of the empirical critiques (which, again, are reviewed below), dominance theory went dormant in the field for several years, with few scholars even mentioning it. Eventually, however, Henrich (who was later joined by Cheng and Tracy) proposed a dominance-prestige theory of hierarchy, which argued that both functionalist and dominance accounts are correct (Cheng et al., 2010; Cheng et al., 2013; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Specifically, they proposed there are two distinct pathways to gaining higher rank: one based on aggressive dominance and intimidation (or “dominance” processes) and the other based on competence and expertise (“prestige” processes). As they argued, “This account proposes that differences in hierarchical rank within human social groups are the result of both: (a) coerced deference to dominant others who induce fear by virtue of their ability to inflict physical or psychological harm (i.e., Dominance) and (b) freely conferred deference to prestigious others who possess valued skills and abilities (i.e., “Prestige”; Cheng & Tracy, 2014, p. 4). 

This dominance-prestige account of hierarchy not only resuscitated dominance theory but made its arguments more popular than ever. Since Henrich and Gil-White’s (2001) original treatise, hundreds of studies have adopted the dominance-prestige framework and used it to study a range of social-psychological phenomena, including aggression (Johnson et al., 2007), mate retention (Conlon, 2019), leadership (Mead & Maner, 2012), voting behavior (Kakkar & Sivanathan, 2017), person perception (Mattan et al., 2017), helping behavior (Kakkar et al., 2020), risk-taking (van Kleef et al., 2021), and dishonesty (Kim & Guinote, 2022). Looking at articles published within the last few years, it is clear that many scholars assume that the dominance-prestige account is fully supported by the empirical literature. Whether it is actually supported will be addressed in a later section.  

Bounded Functionalism 

Finally, bounded functionalism (Anderson & Willer, 2014) integrates functionalist ideas with social-psychological research on person perception and impression management, as well as several tenets of dominance theory. In short, it proposes that people strive to form hierarchies that will serve social functions, but very often fail to do so because of the difficulty of discerning instrumental value in others and because self-interest drives people to project the image of instrumental value in order to gain higher rank. The term “bounded” echoes Simon’s (1990) notion of bounded rationality, which describes people as not being perfectly rational beings who always maximize their utility, as neoclassical economic theory has suggested. Instead, the ability to make rational decisions is constrained by myriad factors, such as limitations in people’s cognitive capabilities and the incompleteness of the information available. People thus strive to make rational decisions but typically fall short. Analogously, bounded functionalism proposes that people seek to form hierarchies that will help solve collective problems and facilitate their own goal accomplishment, and strive to allocate hierarchical rank on individual differences in instrumental social value, but fall short due to a limited ability to do so. 

More specifically, this account asserts that people believe forming a hierarchy provides the benefits described above. For example, people believe hierarchies will optimize decision making, keep talented individuals committed to the relationship or group, and incentivize people to contribute to others’ success. People thus strive to organize rank according to the instrumental social value different individuals provide. However, people very often err in determining which personal characteristics and behaviors actually provide value. For example, much research has shown that groups benefit when they place agreeable individuals—that is, individuals who tend to be more trustworthy, generous, and concerned about others—at the top of the hierarchy and in positions of leadership (Judge & Bono, 2000). When those individuals are in charge, their groups have healthier cultures and happier members, and their groups perform better (Judge et al., 2002; Kalshoven et al., 2011; Peterson et al., 2003). However, groups rarely use agreeableness as a criterion for leadership selection, and instead focus on other personal qualities, such as charisma or technical prowess (Anderson & Brown, 2010) 

People also err in evaluating whether others possess the personal characteristics deemed instrumentally valuable. An obvious but important point is that others’ personal characteristics, such as their competence or generosity, is hidden from direct observation. Because we cannot peer into someone’s brain to gauge their abilities or motivation, we rely on observable external cues, such as their behavior, style of speaking, demographic characteristics, or physical appearance. While some contexts might offer opportunities to examine others’ records of success or failure, many (perhaps most) contexts provide no such opportunity (Pfeffer, 2010). As discussed in further detail below, people often use the wrong external cues to infer inner personal characteristics; for example, they use gender, race, age, or physical attractiveness as cues of competence, even when those characteristics are wholly unrelated to actual knowledge or ability (e.g., Berger et al., 1972; Berger et al., 1980; Ridgeway et al., 1998; Thomas-Hunt & Phillips, 2004). Generally speaking, it is more difficult to discern others’ personal qualities than people believe (e.g., (Ames & Kammrath, 2004; Ickes, 1993; Realo et al., 2003; Swann & Gill, 1997). 

As a further complication, people are motivated to attain high rank in a hierarchy because of the myriad social, material, and psychological benefits that high rank provides (Anderson et al., 2015). This creates an incentive to project the image of instrumental value to others, regardless of whether one actually possesses valuable characteristics. Indeed, the self-presentation and impression management literatures have documented the pervasiveness of self-promotion tendencies, or the motivation to signal one’s competence to others (for reviews, see Baumeister, 1982; Leary & Kowalski, 1990). That is, we tend to portray our skills and abilities in disproportionately positive ways by highlighting our abilities and downplaying our weaknesses, and taking credit for joint successes while blaming others for collective failures. Therefore, the ability to develop functional hierarchies becomes further constrained by individuals seeking higher rank and exploiting the opacity of instrumental value. 

Bounded functionalism thus builds from pure functionalist accounts in proposing that people strive to form functional hierarchies and that, ultimately, hierarchical rank is decided consensually and collectively. But it also builds from dominance theory in viewing the human desire for high rank as an important factor in shaping hierarchical orders. People are not mere passive recipients of their rank; they proactively and purposefully strive to achieve higher rank to reap its rewards. Breaking from dominance theory, however, bounded functionalism does not propose that people jockey for social position through force and intimidation. Instead, they seek to manage their impressions in the eyes of others and project the image of competence and other-orientation.  

Summary 

In sum, the major theories of hierarchy provide very different perspectives of why hierarchies form and how they are organized. These theories generate opposing hypotheses related to several questions fundamental to the study of hierarchy. The remainder of the chapter will review the empirical literature, organized by five primary research questions. These questions are outlined in Table 1 and will be addressed according to the roughly chronological order in which they are relevant in the lifespan of a social collective. 

First, the initial step for any social collective is for individuals to convene – for example, into a group, relationship, or organization. An important question relevant to this first step is, do the individuals forming a collective prefer hierarchy as a form of social organization? Over other forms such as egalitarianism? If so, that might help explain the ubiquity of hierarchy in human social life. Second, once the collective forms, it develops a hierarchy. In this second step, a key research question is how hierarchies are organized. For example, what personal characteristics and behaviors lead some people attain higher rank than others? Third, the hierarchy stabilizes over time, in that individuals tend to remain at their relative rank. An important question related to this third step is, what advantages do high-ranking individuals have in maintaining their lofty position, and disadvantages do low-ranking individuals face that block them from rising up? Fourth, the established hierarchy affects the individuals within it. There are two fundamental questions that will be addressed relevant to this fourth step: How does being high or low in rank affect individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior? And how do hierarchies affect the welfare and functioning of the entire collective? In addressing this latter question, researchers have typically compared the effects of steeper hierarchies (which involve greater disparities across individuals in their power, status, and influence) to the effects of flatter hierarchies (in which individuals have more equal levels of power, status, and influence). 

It is worth noting that the chronological order laid out in Table 1 is for organizational purposes only and is not meant to propose a precise timeline in which these processes occur in the lifespan of an actual social collective. For example, the third and fourth steps likely overlap, in that the effects of high and low rank on individuals likely contribute to the stability of hierarchies; possessing high rank affects individuals in some ways that help them keep their position. 

Table 1: Organization of the Empirical Literature Review 

THE PREFERENCE FOR HIERARCHY 

It is widely believed that people desire equality and disapprove of inequality (Friesen et al., 2014; Starmans et al., 2017; Tiedens et al., 2007; Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). In fact, some have argued that humans possess an egalitarian motive and a natural aversion to inequality (Dawes et al., 2007; Fehr et al., 2008; Xiao & Bicchieri, 2010). As empirical support, studies have shown that in some cases, people are willing to sacrifice their own money to produce more equality across parties (Dawes et al., 2007). Because hierarchy by definition involves inequality in influence, deference, and resources, this suggests that people would prefer equality over hierarchy. However, the empirical evidence suggests that people show a preference for hierarchy over equality (at least outside the realm of romantic and close relationships). This section focuses on the human preference for hierarchy and its sources. 

People Show a Preference for Hierarchy 

Multiple forms of evidence suggest people prefer hierarchy over equality. First, people like the idea of hierarchy in social groups more than they like the idea of egalitarianism. When presented with a diagram of seven individuals in a hierarchical structure and a diagram of the same individuals in a flat egalitarian structure, people preferred the hierarchical structure (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). When given a verbal description of the dyadic relationships within a group of four individuals (e.g., “Stan takes orders from Tom”), people also liked hierarchical arrangements wherein group members had asymmetric influence more than when all group members had equal influence (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). 

People also have more faith in hierarchical groups performing well than they do egalitarian ones. When given illustrations of work organizations, participants believed more hierarchical organizations perform better than less hierarchical ones and that employees are happier in them (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). People agree with statements regarding the value of hierarchy in business contexts, such as “Businesses are most effective when there are a few people who have the influence to get things done,” “In a business, it’s important for one person to make final decisions,” and “Every company needs a boss who is in charge of everybody else” (Friesen et al., 2014). Finally, people reported liking a hierarchical organizational structure in which, for example, “Some people had much more power than others,” “some people directed others,” and “some people got paid much more than others” (Zitek & Jordan, 2016). 

Even when it comes to the simple distribution of resources, such as money or other forms of payment, people prefer fairness to equality (for a review, see Starmans et al., 2017). As proposed by equity theory (Adams, 1963), people prefer that the resources people receive are proportional to what they have contributed. People do not want everyone to receive equal pay if there is inequality in merit, contributions, or self-sacrifices, and even show neurological evidence for their distaste for equality in such circumstances. Specifically, when participants are presented with an equal pay distribution after they and others invested different amounts of work, regions of their brains associated with subjective valuation of outcomes, namely the left and right caudate nucleus in the striatum, show higher levels of activation (Cappelen et al., 2014).  

It appears that the only contexts in which people prefer perfect equality in the distribution of resources across individuals is when all individuals have made exactly equal contributions—either the same amount of work or the same self-sacrifices for the benefit of others (Starmans et al., 2017). In these very specific—and arguably rare—situations, people prefer perfectly equal outcomes only because this would be fair and equitable, and they dislike inequality in payments because this would be unfair and inequitable (Dawes et al., 2007; Tricomi et al., 2010; Xiao & Bicchieri, 2010). These findings provide further evidence that people prefer hierarchies, as people’s personal qualities, contributions, and merit differ in virtually all situations.  

Preferences regarding inequality at the societal level focus on a different question than the one considered here, in that preferences for inequality in income or wealth across citizens of an entire country are conceptually and empirically distinct from preferences regarding resource asymmetries in a relationship or face-to-face group. However, inasmuch as preferences for macro-level inequality within societies are related to preferences regarding micro-level hierarchy, it is worth noting that people prefer inequality over equality at the societal level as well (as long as the inequality is not too extreme). For example, Americans prefer a moderate level of inequality, similar to that found in Sweden, over perfect equality (Norton & Ariely, 2011), and people endorse the idea that CEOs should be paid much more than “unskilled” workers (Kiatpongsan & Norton, 2014).  

Taken together, studies of social hierarchies, resource distribution in groups, and preferences for societal inequality all converge on the idea that people prefer hierarchy over egalitarianism. Two important caveats are worth mentioning, however. First, the aforementioned studies of social hierarchies focused on participants’ attitudes in the abstract, by asking them to evaluate various hypothetical scenarios, groups, or organizations. They did not assess how participants actually felt when experiencing hierarchy or egalitarianism. This is a key point because, as we will see later, people’s thoughts about hierarchy in the abstract can diverge sharply from their actual experience of it. Second, the studies reviewed here focused on groups, organizations, and task-focused dyads and not romantic relationships or friendships. In those latter contexts, which have different implicit rules for social exchange (Clark & Mils, 1993), it is quite possible that people prefer equality over hierarchy. Indeed, research on dominance complementarity suggests people prefer hierarchy in contexts where they believe it will help achieve collective goals (e.g., task performance) but not when they believe hierarchy will not (Tiedens et al., 2007). 

Why People Prefer Hierarchy 

Why do people prefer hierarchy? Several reasons emerge from the empirical literature, some of which were already implied above. 

First, people appear to be implicit functionalists, in that they believe hierarchies help social groups operate more effectively. For example, they believe hierarchies help coordinate group members’ activity in a way that allows members to work together cooperatively and efficiently. People see hierarchical groups are more structured, predictable, well-coordinated, stable, and efficient than egalitarian groups (Friesen et al., 2014), and as providing greater clarity to group members regarding their own and others’ roles in the chain of command (Friesen et al., 2014). People also exhibit better cognitive fluency with hierarchical structures than they do with egalitarian social structures and view hierarchies as easier to see, understand, learn, and remember than egalitarianism (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). For example, in one study, participants were tasked with memorizing a diagram of seven people, who were arranged either in a pyramidal structure (akin to a hierarchy) or in a circle (reflecting equality); they memorized the diagram more quickly when people were arranged hierarchically (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012). When motivated to coordinate with another person while working on joint tasks, people also automatically begin to view themselves (Tiedens & Jimenez, 2003) and others (Tiedens et al., 2007) in more hierarchical ways, seeing one person (them or the other) as being more assertive and in charge, and the other person as being more submissive and deferential. 

Perhaps because people believe hierarchies provide clarity and order, they also view hierarchical structures as providing their members with a heightened sense of control and certainty. When people’s personal sense of control is threatened, they rate hierarchies even more favorably, are that much more attracted to hierarchy-enhancing occupations, and see more hierarchy in ambiguous social situations, suggesting that they seek hierarchy as a way to reestablish a sense of control (Friesen et al., 2014). Similarly, when people feel uncertainty and threat, such as in times of economic instability, they are more likely to join authoritarian churches that involve more submission to a moral authority than they are to join more egalitarian, nonauthoritarian churches (Sales, 1972; for a link between threat and the general preference for authoritarianism, see Doty et al., 1991; Feldman & Stenner, 1997; Sales, 1973). Therefore, people view hierarchy as a remedy for feelings of threat and uncertainty. 

As mentioned, people also prefer hierarchies because they believe them to be fairer in most circumstances (Starmans et al., 2017). A vast literature has demonstrated people’s strong preference for equity, or for resource allocations based on individual differences in input, effort, and merit (for reviews, see (Adams & Freedman, 1976; Carrell & Dittrich, 1978; Pritchard, 1969). In short, people believe that those who contribute more to the group should be compensated with higher rank and that those who do not or cannot make important contributions should be relegated to lower rank. This prescription can apply to the self as well as others. In one study (Anderson, Willer, et al., 2012), participants were led to believe that they would either be the highest- or lowest-performing member of their laboratory team on an upcoming task. Those who believed they were worst-performing preferred that they rank lower in the team’s hierarchy than those who believed they were best-performing. 

Finally, some people prefer hierarchy because they believe they will personally reap benefits from it. Those confident in their ability to attain high rank in the future, and those who are already highly ranked in their social group, tend to prefer hierarchy more than others do. For example, narcissists, who believe they possess superior talents and have more confidence in their rise up a hierarchy, reported liking hierarchical structures within organizations more than non-narcissists did (Zitek & Jordan, 2016). This selfish preference parallels an observation from the literature on social dominance orientation: People who stand to benefit from group-based social hierarchy at the societal level, such as men, White people, and even physically attractive people, endorse societal stratification more than do people who have been traditionally disadvantaged in group-based hierarchies, such as women and people of color (Sidanius, Pratto, et al., 1994; Sidanius, Liu, et al., 1994; Belmi & Neale, 2014). 

Implications for Theories of Hierarchy Organization 

In sum, converging evidence suggests people prefer hierarchy over egalitarianism and that they do so for several reasons. People believe hierarchies help solve their important problems and provide psychological well-being, are fairer, and, in some cases, provide personal benefits to them specifically. These findings thus speak to the aforementioned theories of social hierarchy organization in a few ways. First, they support the functionalist and bounded functionalist theories of hierarchy by showing that people believe in the benefits of hierarchy for social collectives. In fact, studies directly show that people are implicit social-functionalists, espousing beliefs that hierarchies help serve important social functions for groups, such as coordination and member motivation. The findings also provide some support for the dominance theory of hierarchy by showing that some people endorse hierarchy because they believe it will benefit them personally. Selfish motivations lie at the heart of dominance theory, in that hierarchies are thought to arise because selfishly motivated individuals compete with each other for higher rank, which then leads to the formation of social hierarchies. Therefore, at least in the research on the preference for hierarchy, the empirical evidence does not discriminate between the theories of hierarchy. 

ORGANIZATION OF RANK 

When a hierarchy forms, who ends up on top, and who is relegated to the bottom? The question of how people organize themselves into hierarchies has several critical practical and theoretical implications. For example, it tells us which kinds of people get to enjoy more autonomy, control, respect, happiness, and self-esteem, and who suffers from constraint, social invisibility, feelings of incompetence, and ill health. It also helps us understand who comes to possess power over others. On a theoretical level, this question might be the most direct way to test the major theories of hierarchy against each other because it is on this issue that they most clearly disagree. Functionalist accounts propose that hierarchical rank is driven by differences in instrumental social value, whereas dominance accounts argue that rank is driven by differences in aggressive-dominance and by the ability to force others to submit. 

Because the social-psychological literature on hierarchy has focused on power and status as the two primary dimensions of hierarchical rank, this section will discuss each of those dimensions in turn. It begins with the determinants of status, however, which have received more attention than the determinants of power. 

Determinants of Status 

People’s status tends to be based on their instrumental value in the eyes of others, or the degree to which they appear to possess characteristics that will help others achieve their goals. The specific qualities viewed as providing instrumental value can vary across contexts (e.g., Torelli et al., 2014), but two broad classes of characteristics tend to be viewed as valuable regardless of the context: First, competence is prized, especially any skills and abilities that are helpful to others’ current problems, goals, and tasks. If people appear to possess skills that will help others accomplish important tasks, they are afforded higher status. In contrast, if people appear to lack valuable skills and abilities, or even to possess personal qualities that are detrimental to others, then others afford them lower status. 

Second, status is allocated based on people’s apparent other orientation, or whether they seem willing and motivated to help others. To be afforded high status, people must appear willing to use their competence and skills for the good of those granting it and not just for their own selfish ends (Blau, 2017; Willer, 2009). The willingness to help others is important to the process of status affordance because, again, status is based on an individual’s instrumental value. An individual’s talents and abilities are only valuable to others if the individual uses them for the good of others in some way. 

These two kinds of personal qualities that tend to drive status, competence and other orientation, map fairly well onto circumplex models that organize personality traits and behavior along two axes: agency and communion (Bakan, 1966; Fiske et al., 2002; Horowitz et al., 2006; Wiggins, 1979). Agency pertains to people’s potency, including their ability to accomplish tasks and exert control over their environment, while communion reflects people’s desire to relate to, cooperate with, and help others. In the context of the status conferral process, possessing instrumental social value means being high in agency and communion. 

Perceived Competence 

Sociological research has long shown the importance of perceived competence to status affordances, and more recent psychological work has extended it in important ways (e.g., Bunderson et al., 2014; Gibson et al., 2018; Kalkhoff et al., 2020; McClanahan et al., 2022; Vartanian & Silverstein, 2013; Webster & Rashotte, 2010). For example, people are afforded higher status not only when others recognize their task-relevant talents and abilities, but also when they appear to have social and leadership skills that will help facilitate the success of the collective (Cheng et al., 2013). Furthermore, the link between perceived competence and status tends to be extremely high by social-scientific standards. For example, many studies have collected round-robin ratings within groups, asking members to rate each other’s competence on group tasks as well as each other’s status within the group (e.g., Cheng et al., 2013). In those studies, the correlations between the two are typically between r = .50 and r = .80 (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012; Ouyang et al., 2018; Weiss & Morrison, 2019). Therefore, perceived competence appears to lie at the very core of status affordances, in that if people are viewed as possessing important skills and abilities, it is exceedingly likely they will be afforded high status, whereas if people are viewed as lacking those skills and abilities, they will almost certainly be afforded low status. 

What makes the effect of perceived competence on status simultaneously fascinating from a theoretical viewpoint but problematic from a practical standpoint is that perceptions of others’ competencies are so often based on flimsy, and even faulty, information. As discussed earlier, people do not have the ability to directly measure others’ competence because competence resides within the person. As a result, we form judgments of others’ skills and talents based on what we can observe, such as their demographic characteristics, physical features, or confident and assertive behavior. Unfortunately, the cues we rely on often have little or nothing to do with actual competence. This means that when allocating status, people often put considerable weight on judgments grounded in highly flawed information. 

Demographic characteristics

People often base judgments of competence on demographic categories and the stereotypes with which they are associated. For example, women are stereotyped to be less competent than men in traditionally “masculine” contexts (for a review, see Ellemers, 2017); hence, women tend to be afforded lower status than men in domains historically dominated by men, such as the workplace (Djurdjevic et al., 2017), the military (McClean et al., 2018), and electoral politics (Pike & Galinsky, 2021). People are less inclined to appoint a woman to a leadership position than they are a man (Ratcliff et al., 2015), and they rate women supervisors as lower in status than men supervisors even when the two are objectively similar, aside from their gender (Vial et al., 2018), and even though women use a more effective leadership style than men do (Eagly & Johnson, 1990).  

People also rely on ethnicity as a competence cue, such that White individuals tend to be stereotyped as more competent than members of ethnic minority groups (Berger et al., 1980). Consistent with such stereotypes, White members of task groups tend to achieve more influence than Black members (Shim et al., 2021), analysts make higher stock price projections for firms led by White executives than by Black executives (Sauer et al., 2010), people are less willing to appoint a Black individual to a leadership position than a White individual (Ratcliff et al., 2015), and Latinx individuals defer to others in group tasks more than do White individuals (Manago et al., 2019). 

Finally, people often form perceptions of others’ competence based on those others’ social class and afford higher status to upper-class than to working-class individuals (Lucas & Phelan, 2012; Shim et al., 2021). To some, relying on social class as a competence cue might seem logical. By definition, members of the upper class are better educated, and education enhances cognitive abilities and critical-thinking skills. However, even if education enhances cognitive abilities, people appear to overuse social class as a competence cue. For example, they view others in the upper class as more competent and intelligent than those in the working class, even when there is objectively no difference between the two (e.g., Darley & Gross, 1983). In fact, people view working-class individuals as less socioemotionally skilled even when they are more skilled than upper-class individuals. In one study, participants varying in social class completed tests of their intelligence and socioemotional abilities (i.e., the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test; Baron‐Cohen et al., 2001), and weeks later, completed a mock job interview while being video recorded (Sharps & Anderson, 2021). Observers who watched recordings of these interviews rated working-class participants as being less intelligent and socioemotionally skilled than their upper-class counterparts, even though the working-class participants had scored just as highly on the intelligence test and scored higher on the socioemotional skills test.  

Physical features

People also use others’ physical features as signals of competence. For example, in a study of student project groups, the correlation between physical attractiveness and status was moderate in size (Carlson & DesJardins, 2015), even though physical attractiveness tends to correlate at a “near-zero” level with competencies actually relevant to student projects, such as intelligence and overall performance in school (Langlois et al., 2000). Similarly, individuals with more “competent-looking” faces are more likely to be anointed as leaders (Graham et al., 2017; Todorov et al., 2005), even though they are not more competent and do not perform better than individuals with less competent-looking faces (Antonakis & Eubanks, 2017; Graham et al., 2017; Stoker et al., 2016). Physical strength and height are also used as signs of competence. Stronger and taller men are afforded higher status than weaker and shorter men (for a review, see Blaker & van Vugt, 2014), because the former are seen as better equipped to be leaders than the latter (Lukaszewski et al., 2016). Conversely, overweight and obese individuals are afforded lower status because they are viewed as less competent than physically fit individuals (Vartanian & Silverstein, 2013). For example, participants who were told, falsely, that their ostensible partner in another laboratory room was overweight by 20-30 lbs. reported having lower respect and regard for that person, relative to participants who were not told their partner was overweight (Gibson et al., 2018). 

Confidence and assertiveness

People infer others’ competence from their behavior in addition to their static characteristics. In particular, people perceive as more competent and afford higher status to those who display confident and assertive behavior – for example, those who take initiative in group discussions, speak a lot and loudly, use a confident vocal tone, exhibit an expanded posture, possess a calm and relaxed demeanor, and express pride (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2012; Gan et al., 2018; Kilduff & Galinsky, 2013; Ko et al., 2015; McClean et al., 2018; Tu et al., 2022; Van Zant & Berger, 2020; M. Weiss & Morrison, 2019). This pattern helps explain why people who are internally confident in their task abilities, regardless of whether their confidence is warranted, attain higher status (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2012; Kennedy et al., 2013; Van Zant & Berger, 2020). For example, individuals who are higher in narcissism (Carlson & DesJardins, 2015; Mahadevan & Jordan, 2022; Zeigler‐Hill et al., 2019), trait dominance (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009), extraversion (Bendersky & Shah, 2013), and emotional stability (Bendersky & Shah, 2013), tend to attain higher status than do those who are less narcissistic, dominant, extraverted, and emotionally stable.  

These effects of confidence and assertive behavior on status might also help explain a longstanding mystery – namely, that people who desire status more strongly than others are more likely to achieve it. This finding is perplexing because, far from being viewed as socially valuable, the desire for status tends to be looked upon with disdain and as a sign of selfishness (Bai, Ho, & Liu, 2020; Kim & Pettit, 2015). Yet numerous studies find that people who desire status more strongly tend to achieve it at a higher rate (Mahadevan & Jordan, 2022), including people higher in self-monitoring (Djurdjevic et al., 2017), and those with higher levels of testosterone (T) and lower levels of cortisol (C; Edwards & Casto, 2013; Knight & Mehta, 2014; Sherman et al., 2016). Why do people with a socially objectionable trait tend to attain higher status? Likely in part because they display more confidence and assertiveness than others. People who desire status more strongly, including self-monitors and individuals with high T and low C, exhibit confident and assertive behaviors more than do individuals who desire status less strongly (Anderson, Kraus, et al., 2012; Flynn et al., 2006; Knight & Mehta, 2014). This likely leads others to see them as more competent and skilled, irrespective of their actual competence and skills. 

Backlash effects

While the chapters on gender and race in this volume discuss gender and racial biases in much more depth, it is worth briefly addressing backlash effects related to hierarchy here. Backlash effects, or social and economic reprisals for behaving counterstereotypically (Rudman & Phelan, 2008), can occur when women or ethnic minority group members behave in agentic ways. For example, women who display assertive, self-promoting, or power-seeking behavior tend to be liked less by others and considered less worthy of hire and promotion because those behaviors violate the feminine stereotype (Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010).  

Research on backlash would thus seem to suggest that confidence and assertiveness help only men and White individuals attain higher status in social groups, while not helping or even hurting the status of women and members of minoritized ethnic groups (e.g., Black, Latinx). Yet research on status does not find moderation by gender or race; confidence and assertiveness appear to help people of all demographic groups attain higher status (e.g., (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2012; Kennedy et al., 2013). Why might that be the case?  

A recent meta-analysis of backlash effects against women might help explain this apparent contradiction. Specifically, some kinds of agentic behaviors elicit backlash effects more than others (Williams & Tiedens, 2016; also see Ma et al., 2022). Backlash is more likely to occur when the agency exhibited is “explicit,” such as when people give direct commands to others or are labeled explicitly by experimenters as being “dominant.” It is less likely to occur when the agency exhibited is “implicit,” such as when people display confident and assertive nonverbal behavior (e.g., bodily expansion or a direct speaking style without hesitations). As it turns out, research on status has tended to focus on implicit expressions of confidence and assertiveness, such as nonverbal behaviors, rather than on explicit expressions, such as verbal proclamations of one’s superior talent (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2012). Therefore, research on status might not have found any backlash effects for women or members of minority ethnic groups to date because it has focused on behaviors and attributes that do not trigger backlash. Future research needs to examine whether explicit agentic behavior might incur backlash for women’s and minorities’ status per se. 

Perceived Other-Orientation 

People who by disposition are more other-oriented – those who tend to be helpful and unselfish with others, cooperative, caring, and trusting – tend to achieve lower status at the societal level (i.e., lower socioeconomic status). They make less money and attain lower occupational prestige than people who by disposition are more selfish, uncooperative, and uncaring (Boudreau et al., 2001; Judge et al., 2012; Ng et al., 2005; Wille et al., 2013). These findings have lent some unfortunate credence to the cliché that “nice people finish last.” 

However, in stark contrast, people who are more other-oriented in their relationships and social groups tend to attain higher status in those more local contexts (Bingham et al., 2022; Weiss & Morrison, 2019; for parallel findings in electoral politics, see Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010). People who appear committed to others, cooperative, and motivated to help others succeed tend to be granted higher status, whereas those seen as selfish or even as an obstacle to others’ goals tend to be accorded lower status. Very often, perceptions of other orientation stem from observing a person’s behavior. For example, when a person contributes more to a group’s discussion (Weiss & Morrison, 2019), spends extra time helping others with difficult issues or challenging tasks (Torelli et al., 2014; Yin & Smith, 2021), brokers beneficial connections between others (Halevy et al., 2019), or makes explicit statements about their other orientation (e.g., “I am caring and committed”; Livingston et al., 2012), they are viewed as more other-oriented and accorded higher status.  

Generous and self-sacrificial behavior has particularly strong effects on perceptions of other orientation and thus on the affordance of status (Bendersky & Shah, 2012; Ouyang et al., 2018), effects that might be universal (Durkee et al., 2020). For example, leaders who volunteer to work on the group’s tasks even when not required to do so (Carson Marr et al., 2019), participants who contribute more of their own money in a public goods game (Bai et al., 2020; Halevy et al., 2012), employees who let their coworkers select days off before they do (Bai et al., 2020), and power holders who refrain from exploiting the less powerful even when they have the opportunity (Willer et al., 2012) are viewed as more other-oriented and accorded higher status. In a study of teams in a large telecommunications firm, employees reported the “balance of exchange” between them and each of their fellow members, in terms of help and assistance each gave each other (i.e., did they tend to give more than they received, vice-versa, or was the exchange between them balanced?), and also rated each team member’s status in terms of respect and influence (Flynn, 2003). Employees rated as more generous with their coworkers were afforded much higher status; in fact, the correlation between perceived generosity and status was r = .61. 

Why would other orientation (or at least the perception of it) have a positive impact on status within relationships and groups despite having a negative impact on status at the societal level?  Here, it is important to recall the process of social exchange that underlies status affordances within the more local context of relationships and groups. Status is allocated according to a person’s perceived instrumental social value, or the degree to which a person seems capable of contributing to others’ goals. People who are seen as providing more value to others are afforded higher status than those seen as providing less value. With this implicit exchange in mind, the effect of other orientation on status begins to make more sense: other-oriented people tend to provide more instrumental value to others than do selfish people. Other-oriented people care more about others’ welfare, are motivated to help others achieve their goals, and will engage in behaviors that contribute to others’ success, whereas selfish people, who care more about their own welfare, will do little to contribute to others’ success.  

In contrast, the effect of other orientation on status at the societal level is less governed by social exchange processes and more complicated by factors such as occupation selection. For example, more other-oriented people tend to select occupations that earn less than more self-oriented people do (Barrick et al., 2003; Larson et al., 2002). Other-oriented people tend to be less interested in money and thus spend less time and energy pursuing it (Matz & Gladstone, 2020). 

Two additional sets of findings further highlight the importance of social exchange in the effects of other orientation on status. First, people afford status to other-oriented individuals only when the “other” is specifically them. For example, individuals high in agreeableness, who tend to be more indiscriminately altruistic, caring, and cooperative with everyone, do not attain higher status in groups or work organizations than do disagreeable individuals (Anderson et al., 2001; Anderson et al., 2008). One possible reason is that agreeable individuals are oriented toward too many others and spread their generosity and kindness too broadly, rather than exhibiting the more targeted goal of helping their ingroup members specifically. Indeed, people who give generously to outgroups are not afforded high status within their own group (Halevy et al., 2012). Agreeable individuals’ altruism and cooperativeness might seem too indiscriminate for them to be considered instrumentally valuable. 

Second, generous and self-sacrificial acts must be seen as a sign of other orientation to be afforded high status. People who behave in generous ways for other reasons are not necessarily rewarded with status. For example, employees who help their coworkers with tasks are not afforded status when their helpfulness is seen as driven by their desire for promotion and career advancement (Bai et al., 2020). Similarly, people who give generously to others in laboratory games are not given high status when their generosity is seen as driven by feelings of obligation (Flynn & Yu, 2021). Therefore, again, people seem unwilling to accord others status unless those others appear willing and motivated to help them (and specifically them, rather than everyone). 

An important issue for future research is whether perceived competence and other orientation have additive or interactive effects on status (see Bai, 2017 for a full treatment of this issue). Functionalist theories imply that perceived competence and other orientation have interactive effects. As Blau (1964) stated, “to earn the deference as well as the respect of others, it is not enough for an individual to impress them with his outstanding qualities; he must use these abilities for their benefit” (p. 165). This implies that people’s competence only provides instrumental value to others if they are motivated to use it for others’ benefit. If people’s selfishness precludes them from contributing to others, their competence holds no instrumental value. Similarly, people’s other orientation would only provide value to others if they have competencies relevant to others’ tasks and problems. People might care deeply about others’ success, but unless they can help others in some way, they will be unable to provide value. However, the empirical evidence is mixed on this issue, with some studies demonstrating additive effects and other studies interactive effects (Bai, Ho, & Liu, 2020). It is thus possible that other orientation has an independent, non-moderated effect on status. 

Determinants of Power 

French and Raven’s (1959) Taxonomy 

For decades, the most prominent theory of power in social psychology was French and Raven’s (1959) bases of power. Their original model included reward, coercive, expert, referent, and legitimate power and was later expanded to include other bases (e.g., informational power; Raven, 1993). However, this framework has been used less and less in recent years. 

Many in the field now view the sources of power differently from French and Raven (Blader & Chen, 2014; Fiske, 2010; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Current conceptions of power do align with French and Raven’s definitions of reward and coercive power, which reflect the ability to provide resources and administer punishments, respectively (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). But expert power, which involves the possession of valuable expertise and knowledge, is now seen more as a type of reward power because expertise can serve as a valuable resource, just like money, access, and affection (Blader & Chen, 2014). Alternatively, if people view an individual’s expertise as a stable personal attribute and look up to that person as a result, that individual would likely be viewed as having status. Referent power is operant when people are so admired that others seek to emulate them (French & Raven, 1959) – a level of reverence and modeling now viewed more as a feature of status than of power (Fiske, 2010; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Legitimate power, or the belief that someone has the legitimate right to influence others, is now seen more as a type of power than as a basis of it (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). For example, two people might occupy the same position in a work organization and have the exact same level of actual power but still vary in their perceived legitimacy. 

Resources and Punishments 

The field has coalesced on a definition of power focused on control of valued resources and the ability to punish others. As a result, it views any structural, relational, or personal factor that provides people control over resources or punishments as sources of power. The resources that provide power can vary widely, including things like money and material goods, information, access to important people, the ability to enhance or damage another’s reputation, and even love and affection (Lemay & Dudley, 2009; Rusbult, 1980; Schaerer et al., 2015). The type of punishments people control that can lend power tend to be material or psychological rather than physical, such as the ability to fire people, end a relationship with them, or damage their reputation. 

Very often, power stems from occupying a position in a formal hierarchy that comes with control over resources, such as budgetary discretion, decision-making authority, or the ability to evaluate, promote, or fire others (Eaton et al., 2009; Lovaglia et al., 2017). But power can also stem from membership within a powerful group, such as belonging to a powerful department within an organization or being in the majority in a majority-wins decision context (Melamed & Savage, 2013; Savage et al., 2013; Savage & Melamed, 2022). Power can also come from being associated with others who have power (Brass, 1984). People close to someone with power often accrue power because they gain access to the powerholder’s resources, such as the person’s money or information, or because they serve as a gatekeeper between the powerholder and others who seek connection to the person. 

“Powerful” Behavior 

Above and beyond one’s structural position, power can also stem from behavior. A number of studies suggest that behaving “powerfully,” or acting in ways typical of powerholders, can facilitate the attainment of actual power. For example, people who behave more assertively tend to accrue more power in teams (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009) and they attain more powerful positions and greater influence in their work careers. For example, two longitudinal studies assessed individuals’ assertiveness while they were still in school, before they entered the labor market, and then measured the power they had accrued in their workplaces about 14 years later (Anderson, Sharps, et al., 2020). In both studies, more assertive individuals had attained higher rank in their organization in that time and were rated by their colleagues as having more power. 

Behaving assertively can facilitate the attainment of power in part because assertive people proactively secure resources for themselves and seek positions of authority. In addition, others may view people who behave in ways typical of those with power as actually possessing power. This holds for assertive behavior as well as other “power-typical” actions, such as breaking rules and violating social norms (Van Kleef et al., 2011), using higher-level and abstract language (Wakslak et al., 2014), overtly criticizing others (Chou, 2018), or expressing forgiveness for others’ transgressions (Yao & Chao, 2019). When people are perceived as powerful by others, these perceptions can become reified (Chou, 2018; Yao & Chao, 2019; Van Kleef et al., 2011) because power is grounded in social perception. When people view an individual as powerful, they tend to defer to that individual’s suggestions or commands, in effect giving that person real power. Halo effects can also play a role: People with power are stereotyped as being highly competent and thus as possessing valuable personal resources (e.g., Ng et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2018). Powerful behavior can also be interpreted as a sign of leadership potential (Lukaszewski et al., 2016), thus making the actor more attractive for promotion into positions of leadership and authority. 

Of course, people who behave “powerfully” do not always attain power. As mentioned above, powerful-looking behavior, such as assertiveness, can lead to a backlash if others view such behavior as illegitimate (Williams & Tiedens, 2016) or as violating expectations for one’s social group (Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010). In such situations, people are viewed as failing to “know their place” and socially punished via social rejection, ostracism, sabotage, or demotion.  

When does powerful behavior lead to power and when does it lead to backlash? One potentially important moderating variable is whether observers have already formed perceptions of the actor and the degree to which they feel certain of those perceptions (Swann & Ely, 1984). If observers are unacquainted with the actor, they might be more likely to interpret that individual’s powerful behavior as a sign the actor possess actual power. Such an inference makes perfect sense when observers lack any other information about the actor, such as their position in a hierarchy. However, if observers have already formed judgments of an actor’s power based on prior acquaintance (Anderson et al., 2006), or the actor’s demographic characteristics (Berger et al., 1980), they are more likely to bristle if the actor behaves more powerfully than their position allows. Indeed, studies demonstrating a positive effect of powerful behavior on power tend to involve contexts in which observers and actors are unacquainted (e.g., Chou, 2018; Van Kleef et al., 2011), whereas studies demonstrating backlash effects tend to involve contexts in which observers either know the actor or at least know their demographic characteristics and thus have likely formed stereotype-based assumptions of them (e.g., Anderson et al., 2008; Rudman & Glick, 2001). Future research should directly test whether the effects of powerful behavior depend on whether observers have already formed perceptions of the actor’s power. 

The Personal Sense of Power 

People’s sense of their own power can also shape their actual power, partly through mechanisms described in the previous section – that is, people who perceive themselves as powerful sometimes attain power because they behave in more powerful ways. In one particularly striking demonstration, participants were made to feel either more or less powerful by asking them to recall a previous time in which they possessed high or low power (Kilduff & Galinsky, 2013). The participants were then placed into groups and video recorded while working on joint tasks, and two days later were reassembled into the same groups to work on additional tasks. The participants who had been made to feel powerful behaved in more assertive ways during the first group session, such as by speaking first, and attained higher influence in the group in both that and the follow-up group session two days later (Kilduff & Galinsky, 2013). Therefore, a higher sense of power led to more powerful behavior, which in turn led to enduring effects on influence. In addition to behaving powerfully, people who view themselves as powerful also tend to use more effective influence tactics, thereby enhancing their control and influence over others (Bugental & Lewis, 1999). 

The consequences of personal sense of power make it important to better understand what leads some people to feel more powerful than others, holding constant social position and control over resources and punishments. Related to the previous section, acting powerfully can boost feelings of power. When people give advice to others (Schaerer, Tost, et al., 2018), criticize others’ ideas or output (Chou, 2018), or successfully influence others through persuasion techniques (Rind & Kipnis, 1999), they tend to feel more powerful. Therefore, powerful behavior and the sense of power have a bidirectional relationship. But some people view themselves as more powerful because they view themselves and the social world generally more positively and optimistically than others do. For example, people higher in the behavioral activation system, who attend to more rewarding aspects of their interpersonal relationships (Carver & White, 1994), view themselves as more powerful in general, whereas people higher in the behavioral inhibition system, who focus more on negative and threatening aspects of themselves and their relationships (Gray, 1982) view themselves as less powerful (Anderson, John, et al., 2012). More research is needed on the factors that drive the personal sense of power. 

Aggressive Dominance 

A controversial issue in the field of social hierarchy currently is the role of aggressive dominance in the attainment of power. Aggressive dominance is “the induction of fear, through intimidation and coercion, to attain or maintain rank and influence” (Cheng & Tracy, 2014, p. 5). Dominance theories propose that aggressive dominance is a viable path to power because the way in which we form social hierarchies is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past (Lee & Ofshe, 1981; Mazur, 1985). We have inherited much of our ancient ancestors’ psychological architecture, and because they sorted out differences in hierarchical rank through agonistic encounters, we continue to do so today.  

In contrast, functionalists argue that aggressive dominance is not a viable path to power because hierarchical rank is ultimately decided consensually in face-to-face groups. If a person attempts to grab power through brute force and aggression, and they do not appear competent or other-oriented, one of two things can happen: The other members can form a coalition to block them from taking charge (Boehm 2021; Chapais, 2015; Gintis et al., 2015; Keltner et al., 2008; Price & Van Vugt, 2014; Ridgeway, 1984; von Rueden, 2014), or, when circumstances allow, they can exit the group and seek membership in other groups (Barclay, 2013; Chapais, 2015; Gintis et al., 2015; Lukaszewski et al., 2016; Price & Van Vugt, 2014). 

The role of aggressive dominance in the attainment of power is given special attention here, given this debate and its importance. For example, if aggressive dominance does not help people attain power, studies suggesting otherwise might convey a false and potentially dangerous message by encouraging power-seekers to act in more coercive and bullying ways. However, if aggressive dominance does help people attain power, this means selfish and toxic people have an advantage in the competition for rank, and a systematic dysfunction might pervade human power-allocation systems. 

Rosa and Mazur (1979) conducted what might be the first examination of aggressive dominance and its effects on hierarchical rank. Placing participants into discussion groups and coding their behavior, they found that those who held eye contact with others longer when they were first introduced, and those who spoke earlier in the group discussion, attained more influence in the group – as compared to participants who broke eye contact more quickly when introduced to others, and those who were quieter early in the group discussion. In a separate study conducted around the same time, Lee and Ofshe (1981) had participants watch a video of a mock jury deliberation and manipulated the behavior of a confederate in the video. They found that participants’ opinions were more influenced by the confederate when he exhibited “deference-demanding” behavior, such as eye contact while speaking, faster speech with few hesitations and stumbles, a firm and non-quiet voice, and a periodic lowering of eyebrows, in addition to wearing a dress shirt and sports jacket. 

Those first studies generated multiple critiques, a consistent theme being that they had conflated aggressive dominance with agency (Carli et al., 1995; Driskell et al., 1993; Mohr, 1986; Ridgeway, 1987; Ridgeway & Diekema, 1989). To understand this critique, it is worth revisiting the circumplex models mentioned earlier. Circumplex models map out a two-dimensional space organizing interpersonal behavior, anchored by a vertical axis called agency (also called dominance or competence), which reflects individuals’ influence over others, self-assertion, competence, confidence, and intelligence; and by a horizontal axis called communion (also called love or warmth), which reflects individuals’ connection with others, cooperativeness, trustworthiness, and concern for others’ well-being (Bakan, 1966; Foa & Foa, 1974; Fiske et al., 2002; Horowitz et al., 2006; Wiggins, 1979). In circumplex models, aggressive dominance lies in the northwest quadrant, as it is high on agency but low on communion. Aggressive dominance aims to secure resources for the self through the mistreatment of others and thus reflects a behavioral strategy that is both assertive (high on agency) and antisocial (low on communion). In contrast, agency is simply the northern pole of the horizontal axis. It is neither selfish nor selfless, antisocial nor prosocial.  

In short, the critiques of Rosa and Mazur (1979) and Lee and Ofshe (1981) were that they characterized behavior as aggressive dominant when it was actually agentic. More specifically, eye contact, fast and smooth speech, louder speech, and dressing formally are all “competence cues,” or cues used by observers to infer task skills in an actor (e.g., Ridgeway, 1987), and what appeared to be positive effects of aggressive dominance on influence were instead the effects of agency. Therefore, a number of follow-up studies attempted to more cleanly manipulate aggressive dominance behavior per se. Leveraging Lee and Ofshe’s (1981) methodological paradigm, these studies manipulated a confederate’s behavior (on video or in person) and examined its effects on participants. For example, the confederate stared at fellow group members with glaring eyebrows while they spoke, spoke loudly, and used intrusive and pointing gestures (Carli et al., 1995; Driskell et al., 1993; Mohr, 1986; Ridgeway, 1987; Ridgeway & Diekema, 1989). These studies consistently found null effects of aggressive dominance on influence, and instead showed that aggressive dominance led to resistance by others, social rejection, and ostracism (Carli et al., 1995; Driskell et al., 1993; Ridgeway, 1987; Ridgeway & Diekema, 1989). 

For many years after these empirical critiques, few scholars discussed the role of aggressive dominance in the attainment of rank. Then in the early 2000’s, Henrich and Gil-White (2001) proposed what was later termed the dominance-prestige theory of hierarchy. This account argued there are two distinct pathways to gaining higher rank: one based on aggressive dominance and intimidation (or “dominance” processes) and the other based on competence and expertise (or “prestige” processes). The theory sparked a resurgence of attention to the role of aggressive dominance and led to several studies purporting to show that aggressive dominance helped individual attain influence over others (Cheng et al., 2010; Cheng et al., 2013; Halevy et al., 2019; McClanahan et al., 2022; Yin & Smith, 2021; Witkower et al., 2020; though see Halevy et al., 2012; Redhead et al., 2019). 

This new generation of studies tended to take a more naturalistic methodological approach than their predecessors did, measuring rather than manipulating individuals’ aggressive dominance behavior, and doing so in actual group settings. More specifically, most of these studies assessed individuals’ aggressive dominance using the Dominance-Prestige Scales (Cheng et al., 2010), and found that individuals who score higher on the “Dominance” scale attain higher influence in their laboratory or extant group (e.g., in their student project group; Cheng et al., 2013; Halevy et al., 2019; McClanahan et al., 2022; Yin & Smith, 2021; Witkower et al., 2020).  

However, these newer studies might be similarly conflating aggressive dominance with agency. A closer examination of the items in the “Dominance” scale shows that half the items actually tap into assertiveness – a facet of agency in circumplex models – rather than into aggressive dominance per se. Items such as “He/she enjoys having authority over other members of the group,” “He/she enjoys having control over other members of the group,” “He/she does NOT have a forceful or dominant personality” (reverse-scored), and “He/she tries to control others rather than permit them to control him/her” focus on the desire for authority and control and possessing a forceful personality. They do not assess intimidation, coercion, or the induction of fear in others. Other studies that have used slightly different measures of aggressive dominance have the same issue, assessing aggressive dominance with items such as “He/she enjoys having control over others,” “I always expect him/her to take charge,” and “I have no respect for his/her opinions” (Bai et al., 2020), or items such as “assertive,” “dominant,” and “submissive” (Yin & Smith, 2021). The problem with confounding aggressive dominance with assertiveness, of course, is that it obfuscates the unique effects of aggressive dominance. Given the strong and pervasive effect of assertiveness on hierarchical rank (Lord et al., 1986), any apparent effect of aggressive dominance on rank in these studies could have actually been driven by assertiveness. 

Accordingly, whether aggressive dominance leads to power remains an open question, and more research is sorely needed. First, future work needs to examine the effects of aggressive dominance using experimental manipulations or measures that avoid confounding it with agency, such as with a person’s assertiveness, confidence, or their desire for control and authority. Instead, manipulations and measures should focus solely on individuals’ ability to intimidate and bully others and to force others to defer against their will. 

Future research also needs to examine social collectives besides small groups like laboratory task groups or student project teams. For example, it is possible that aggressive dominance helps individuals attain power in larger work organizations with more complicated structures, even if it does not in small group settings. Larger work organizations tend to have far more complex structures than do small groups, in that their members are split into distinct roles, teams, and departments, with multiple lines of authority (such in a “matrix” organization), which might preclude coalitions from forming that would block dominant aggressive individuals from taking charge. Furthermore, individuals in work organizations can gain power by attaining positions of formal authority (Mintzberg, 1983), gaining control over important resources like budgets (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1974), securing central positions within the organization’s social network (Burt, 2004), or even forming close relationships to those with power (Brass, 1984). Individuals might thus be able to use their position or resources to intimidate others and thereby gain more power. Indeed, one recent study of work organizations found that employees rated higher by their coworkers on aggressive dominance (e.g., on items like “He/she intimidates others,” “He/she knows how to strike fear in others,” “He/she is willing to bully others to achieve important goals,” and “He/she is not afraid to engage in conflict with others”) attained higher power (Anderson, Sharps, et al., 2020). However, because both aggressive dominance and power were assessed concurrently, it is unclear the degree to which aggressive dominance led to power or vice-versa, because much prior work has shown that the possession of power allows for and leads to higher rates of aggressive-dominant behavior (Keltner et al., 2003). Ideally, therefore, future research would measure aggressive dominance before the individuals have had the chance to attain power. 

Implications for Theories of Hierarchy Organization 

In terms of the major theories of hierarchy organization, the determinants of status remain uncontroversial; scholars in opposing theoretical camps agree that status is accorded to people who appear to possess instrumental social value, specifically in the form of perceived competence and other orientation. And in terms of the empirical record, functionalist theories and bounded functionalism receive ample support. However, for the determinants of power, and specifically whether aggressive dominance leads to power, this question remains open. Studies that have provided affirmative evidence have often conflated aggressive dominance with other variables related to agency, such as the display of competence or assertiveness. Other studies that have more cleanly measured or manipulated aggressive dominance have mostly produced null effects, but a recent study suggests that aggressive dominance might lead to power in work organizations, even if not in smaller face-to-face groups like laboratory groups or student project teams. Therefore, this question requires further empirical inquiry. 

HIERARCHIES ARE STABLE 

Social mobility is limited in many countries, in that people born poor tend to remain poor throughout their lifetime. This fact has inspired behavioral scientists across disciplines to examine the advantages upper-class individuals have that keep them at the top of the societal ladder, and the disadvantageous working-class individuals have that keep them at the bottom (Stephens & Emery, 2025). 

In parallel, hierarchical mobility tends to be limited in interpersonal relationships and social groups: Once a hierarchy forms, it quickly stabilizes and resists change. People initially ranked low tend to remain low over time, while those initially ranked high tend to remain high (Anderson et al., 2006; Kalma, 1991; Mast, 2001). For example, in a study of college dormitory floors, residents rated each other’s status at three times in the academic year: within the first 2 weeks of the fall semester, in the last week of the fall semester, and in the last week of the spring semester (Anderson et al., 2001). The status residents had after two weeks correlated with the status they had at the end of the first semester with an r = .61; furthermore, residents’ status at end of first semester correlated r = .86 with their status at end of the academic year. This stability in status ranks makes it important to understand why those at the top of hierarchies in interpersonal relationships and social groups have such an advantage in the competition for rank over those at the bottom of hierarchies.  

Hierarchical stability would be unremarkable if hierarchies were based solely on merit. It would simply reflect stable differences in people’s instrumental social value; some people consistently provide more value than others over time, and are thus accorded higher rank. However, as discussed in the previous section, hierarchies are not based entirely on merit. For example, they are often shaped by many personal characteristics that have little to no connection to actual instrumental value, such as people’s gender or ethnicity. 

Hierarchies’ resistance to change is highlighted by one study that created optimal conditions for change to occur (Kennedy et al., 2013). Researchers placed people into teams and allowed them to form hierarchies as they normally would. Consistent with prior research, initial rank correlated only moderately with task competence and slightly more strongly with self-confidence. Halfway through the team’s task, the researchers disclosed to the members their actual rank order on task abilities (which was assessed before the team began working). Given the moderate link between competence and rank, this gave teams the opportunity to rearrange their hierarchy to be more in line with differences in members’ competence. However, teams stubbornly kept their hierarchies largely intact; the correlation between the rank order before team members’ scores were disclosed and after they were disclosed was r = .73 (Kennedy et al., 2013). 

This section focuses on the social-psychological mechanisms that make hierarchies so stable and resistant to change. These mechanisms can be sorted into two categories: interpersonal, or those that reflect how people high and low in rank are perceived and treated by others, and intrapsychic, or those that reflect how possessing high and low rank affects people’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Each type of mechanism will be discussed in turn. Because Magee and Galinsky (2008) provided an excellent review of the research on the stability of social hierarchies, this section focuses primarily on research published after their review. Some of the mechanisms discussed here dovetail with the mechanisms they identified, and some are new. 

Interpersonal Mechanisms of Stability 

Perceptions of Competence

As outlined above, status tends to be based strongly on perceptions of individuals’ competence. Social hierarchies shape interpersonal dynamics in ways that make it easier for those higher in rank to appear more competent than those lower in rank. First, people assume that those ranked high are more talented and skilled. For example, people rated photographed individuals as being more competent when those individuals were labeled “manager” rather than “subordinate” (Orghian et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). In a study of the military, superiors were rated as more competent than subordinates, a view driven at least partly by rank-based halo effects (Ng et al., 2011). In professional baseball, umpires give high-status players more favorable strike calls, indicating those players made the correct play – regardless of whether they actually did (Mills, 2014). In work organizations, higher-status employees are seen by others as contributing more than lower-status employees, even when both sets of employees report contributing the same amount (Howell et al., 2015). In terms of leadership skills, individuals higher in both power and status are stereotyped as possessing traits associated with effective leadership (Fragale et al., 2011). 

People also pay attention to those higher in rank and ignore those lower down, giving the former more opportunities to demonstrate task-related competence and denying the latter from doing so (Ratcliff et al., 2011; Shriver & Hugenberg, 2010). People allow those on top to speak up but expect those on bottom to remain quiet (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012). For example, more powerful male U.S. senators are allowed to speak more on the Senate floor than less powerful male senators (Brescoll, 2011). And people solicit advice from those higher in status rather than those lower (Bridwell-Mitchell & Lant, 2014; Torlò & Lomi, 2017).  

In terms of social-leadership abilities, more highly ranked people are allowed to behave like leaders and thus demonstrate their leadership potential, whereas low-ranking people are disallowed from doing so. For example, when people higher in status used leader-like speech (e.g., “this is our best course of action”), they were liked better by others, whereas when people lower in status did so, they were socially punished (Lewin Loyd et al., 2010). People lower in rank who hold direct eye contact (a leader-like behavior) are challenged by others with eye contact in return, but the direct eye gaze of people higher in rank goes unchallenged (Holland et al., 2017).  

People with high status tend to form friendships with others who have high status (Cornwell & Dokshin, 2014; Torlò & Lomi, 2017), which enhances their image of competence via “status by association” effects. In a laboratory task, people deferred more to others who had previously worked with high-status (i.e., high-performing) others on a similar task (Overton, 2021). Candidates for college basketball coaching positions are more likely to win the job if they have an affiliation with a high-status coach (Halgin et al., 2020). Having high rank can thus bolster one’s image of competence, while having low rank can damage it, by virtue of one’s relationships with others of similar rank. 

Even when people with high rank express misguided ideas and opinions, others are unlikely to disagree with them (Kwaadsteniet & Dijk, 2010; Liu et al., 2015; Melamed & Savage, 2013; Ridgeway & Nakagawa, 2017; Savage et al., 2014; Sijbom et al., 2016). This means it is often difficult to detect any incompetence among those at the top. For example, in one laboratory study, participants were partnered with a confederate who had higher status (i.e., the partner was portrayed as a graduate student) and power (i.e., they were told the partner would evaluate their performance and determine their compensation) than they had (Locke & Anderson, 2015). In a joint decision-making task, when the confederate argued confidently for the wrong decision, participants deferred to that decision 69% of the time, even though they had been given information that made clear the correct decision. In contrast, people with lower rank are frequently challenged by others, which increases the chances that others will detect any flaws in their thinking. 

Perceptions of Other-Orientation

Similar to perceptions of competence, hierarchies make it easier for high-ranking people to appear other-oriented and more difficult for low-ranking people to do so. First, those with higher rank are assumed to be other-oriented and to possess related characteristics, such as trustworthiness, cooperativeness, and warmth – an assumption some have called a “benevolence bias” (Orghian et al., 2019). When people are labeled as having both power and status within a work organization, they are assumed to be more cooperative, agreeable, warm, and respectful than those labeled as having little power and status (Fragale et al., 2011). People also trust those higher in rank more than those lower. For example, in one laboratory study, college student participants were paired with someone in a Trust Game who was ostensibly from either a lower- or a higher-status school; in the game, participants were given money and asked how much money they would like to send to their partner, knowing that whatever they sent would be quadrupled by the experimenter, and that the partner could then choose how much of that quadrupled sum to return back to them (Blue et al., 2020). Some participants were told that their partner had promised to return half of whatever sum they received and that was quadrupled. The studies found that participants believed the promises of high-status partners more than those of low-status partners, and sent more money to the former than the latter. This assumption that high-ranking people are more other-oriented again highlights the distinction between rank at the societal level and rank within the local context of interpersonal relationships and groups. Namely, people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder within a society (e.g., the wealthy) are stereotyped as being less sincere, less good-natured, colder, and more intolerant than those at the bottom (Fiske et al., 2002). 

Even when high-ranking people behave in ways that might damage their reputation as being other-oriented, they are forgiven more readily, whereas low-ranking people are punished more severely for the same misbehavior. For example, managers are forgiven more than subordinates when they allocate tasks selfishly (Ksenofontov & Becker, 2020), fail to show up for meetings (Walfisch et al., 2013), behave narcissistically (Xu et al., 2022), or use group resources for personal gain (Bowles & Gelfand, 2010). When high-ranking people exhibit prejudice in the form of sexism or racism (behavior associated with low warmth), they are not confronted or punished as much as are those with low rank (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2014; Kakkar et al., 2020). 

Intrapsychic Mechanisms of Stability 

In addition to interpersonal mechanisms, several intrapsychic mechanisms contribute to the stability of hierarchies. Many of these are addressed in the next section, which reviews the effects of possessing power; for example, having power has been shown to boost one’s self-perceived competence, assertiveness, and task performance (DeWall et al., 2011; Fast, Halevy, et al., 2012; Fischer et al., 2011; Kang et al., 2015; Rios et al., 2015; Weiss et al., 2006). These effects help those at the top keep their elevated position by maintaining their image of competence, and thus instrumental value, to others. 

However, one intrapsychic mechanism will be discussed here because it is likely crucial to hierarchy stability and is not easily explained by the theories of power discussed in the next section: Namely, possessing high status strengthens the status motive, and having low status weakens it. When people have high status, they place more importance on status and invest more of their time and energy into competing for it, whereas when people have low status, they become less concerned with it and disengage from status competition, directing their energy to other goals and concerns (Cheng et al., 2018; Sherman et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). In one laboratory experiment, participants were told they had been afforded high (or low) status by their ostensible teammates, based on their scores on several individual difference measures (Anderson, Hildreth, et al., 2020). They were also told the team would work on a second task later, and were given the opportunity to choose their role in the team on that task; if they chose a more difficult role, they would likely have high status in that second task as well. Participants who were initially afforded high status were more likely to choose the difficult role than participants initially afforded low status (Anderson, Hildreth, et al., 2020). This motivational divide thus creates another advantage for those at the top of hierarchies and a disadvantage for those at the bottom, as it creates a metaphorical footrace in which some participants are encouraged to run their hardest and others are dissuaded from doing so. 

There are several possible reasons why status is more important to those with high status. First, having high status boosts individuals’ confidence in their ability to compete for it, which in turn stimulates their motivation to compete (Anderson, Hildreth, et al., 2020). Generally speaking, people tend to develop stronger motivation in domains where they have previously excelled. Second, having high status leads individuals to center their sense of self and identity around their social position. They come to believe that “My status defines who I am” (Wang et al., 2020) and to pursue more vigorously goals important to their identity. Third, status losses loom larger than status gains, in that the threat of losing status carries more psychological weight than the allure of gaining status does (Pettit et al., 2010). By definition, those at the top have more status to lose than those at the bottom, which might further contribute to their motivational divide. Finally, people at the top of hierarchies feel more entitled to their high status (Anicich et al., 2022; Lange et al., 2019), which leads them to pursue it more forcefully than do people at the bottom (Anderson, Willer, et al., 2012). 

With a stronger status motive, those who possess high status are more vigilant for any possible threats to their social standing – that is, they have a more sensitive “hierometer,” which tracks their status in the eyes of others (Mahadevan et al., 2020). For example, people interpret the fairness with which they are treated as a sign of their status in others’ eyes (Lind & Tyler, 1988), and high-status individuals are quicker to detect when they are being unfairly treated, such as when they are allocated an unfair distribution of money or are socially excluded (Blader & Chen, 2011; Sawaoka et al., 2015). In one laboratory study of negotiations, participants who were told that they were a high-status individual in their industry reported that it was more important to them that their partner show respect for them during the negotiation than did participants in a control condition who were not told they had high status (Blader & Chen, 2012). Individuals higher in status also show a larger threat response to the possibility of status loss. Professional baseball players’ performance tends to suffer after experiencing a threat to their status in the league (i.e., a loss in a salary arbitration hearing), suggesting that increases in stress hamper their subsequent performance. However, this drop in performance is steeper for players who were originally higher in status (Marr & Thau, 2014). This effect coincides with earlier studies showing that individuals with higher status in their social group experience more stress than others – as evidenced by spikes in their cortisol levels in the Trier Social Stress Task – which produces a status threat (Gruenewald et al., 2006; Hellhammer et al., 1997). Notably, this effect means that while high-status individuals might show lower baseline levels of cortisol, they are more reactive to acute status threats than are others.  

Those with high status also engage in more behaviors that protect or further enhance their status. For example, people who recall a time in which they had high status or who are randomly assigned a high-status position work harder in later team tasks, striving to attain high rank in the later team task (Anderson, Hildreth, et al., 2020). Individuals whose high status in a group is threatened work harder and longer at their group’s task than do individuals with lower status who have the potential to gain higher status (Pettit et al., 2010); for a similar effect at the inter-group level, see (Pettit & Lount, 2010). High-status individuals are even willing to make larger financial sacrifices to protect or further enhance their status (Pettit et al., 2010; Willer, 2009). 

When individuals are accorded high status, they also become more committed to the group or individuals who bestow status to them (Chen & Moons; Huo et al., 2010; Joshi & Fast, 2013; Kennedy et al., 2013; Okimoto & Wenzel, 2011). This commitment, in turn, helps them project an image of other-orientation and thus further secure their standing. For example, participants in one study were treated respectfully or not by an ostensible fellow participant and were then asked to help the experimenter by voluntarily completing a set of anagrams (the more the better; Bendersky & Brockner, 2020). Those treated respectfully completed about 25% more anagrams than those treated disrespectfully. People afforded high status also engage in more social-networking behavior (Casciaro et al., 2014); treat others better, including showing more empathy and treating others more fairly (Blader & Chen, 2012; Blader & Chen, 2014) and resist being hurtful toward others, even when they have the power to get away with it (Fast, Halevy, et al., 2012). They become more generous toward others, especially when they are concerned about losing their elevated position (Hays & Blader, 2017). People afforded high status even treat their adversaries better: in the United States, when members of the Tea Party political group’s status was affirmed, they became more conciliatory regarding the laws they opposed (e.g., the Affordable Care Act) and viewed their ideological opponents in less adversarial ways and were more generous with them (Bendersky, 2014).  

The specific behaviors high-status individuals enact to manage their position can depend on the context. For example, in the United States, individuals given high status punished others less for bad behavior than did individuals with equal status, whereas in China and India, those given high status punished others more (Kuwabara et al., 2016). These divergent responses to high status align with cultural variation in vertical collectivism: in the latter countries, maintaining others’ respect requires using one’s power to enforce collective norms.  

Finally, individuals afforded high status will even engage in antisocial behavior if they believe it will help them hold their place. For example, they will grab more group resources for themselves (Pettit et al., 2010), undermine and socially isolate rivals (Case & Maner, 2014; Reh et al., 2018), refuse to share control over decisions (Stewart et al., 2017), or even engage in violence (Gullickson, 2010). Note that these individuals engage in such behavior because they believe it will help them maintain high rank; whether such behavior actually helps them is up for debate (see the section above on aggressive dominance). 

When Hierarchies Change 

Although this section has focused primarily on the social-psychological mechanisms that contribute to hierarchies’ stability, hierarchies can and do sometimes change (e.g., Bendersky & Shah, 2012): Some people move up the local ladder, while others move down. In fact, the concept of hierarchy fluctuation appears to be intuitive. When target individuals are portrayed as rising or falling in a status hierarchy, people assume those individuals will continue on that trajectory rather than revert back to their starting place (Pettit et al., 2013). And just as mechanisms related to perceived competence and other-orientation can help explain why hierarchies tend to be stable, they can also help explain when and why hierarchies sometimes change.  

Sometimes people fall from high-ranked positions because of their unambiguously low performance (Ratcliff & Vescio, 2013). Ironically, the possession of power or status can cause leaders to make poor decisions due to biases stemming from having high rank, such as overconfidence (Park et al., 2011) and the confirmation bias (Fischer et al., 2011). This suggests that overconfidence and related biases can help people rise to the top of hierarchies (Anderson, Brion, et al., 2012), but lead to their downfall after they reach the top. This might help to explain why narcissists initially attain high status in task groups but lose status over time (Carlson & DesJardins, 2015). Their confidence might initially project an image of competence to others but could contribute to poor decisions and performance over time. 

In “heterarchies,” teams purposefully shuffle and reshuffle their hierarchy as they tackle different tasks over time (Aime et al., 2014). As an example, the team’s “research expert” might be afforded the highest rank when the team conducts research, but the “presentation expert” might be given highest rank when the team builds its presentation. Though not common, heterarchies appear adaptive: Teams that reordered their hierarchy according to changing demands performed better than teams whose hierarchies remained more rigid regardless of changes in their tasks (Aime et al., 2014). 

Changes in perceptions of people’s other-orientation can also sometimes cause changes in hierarchies. For example, within teams, people can rise or fall in status depending on how generous and helpful they are toward their fellow teammates (Bendersky & Shah, 2012). People high in extraversion, whom others tend to afford high status due to high expectations, can lose status by behaving selfishly, whereas individuals high in neuroticism, whom others tend to afford low status based on low expectations, can gain status when they make sacrifices for the team (Bendersky & Shah, 2013). Team leaders are more likely to be replaced if they disengage from the team’s work following a setback rather than continuing to contribute (Carson Marr et al., 2019). 

Sometimes high-ranking people lose their lofty position because they treat others shabbily. For example, powerholders who take others for granted and overestimate how loyal others are to them are more likely to lose their power, presumably because they fail to invest in their relationships with others (Brion & Anderson, 2013). CEOs who force their subordinates to ingratiate and flatter them are sometimes secretly undermined by those subordinates over time (Keeves et al., 2017). And leaders who treat their subordinates unfairly are sometimes viewed as illegitimate and untrustworthy, which can spark movements to replace them (van Dijke et al., 2010). 

If stability in hierarchies tends to be the norm, a key question is when hierarchies will change. Do those high in rank need to exhibit particularly incompetent or destructive behavior to be deposed? Do low-ranking people need to be especially assertive and confident for others to notice them? Do some contexts allow for more hierarchy fluctuation than others, and, if so, what are those contextual features? At present, we know little about the factors that govern hierarchy stability vs. change. 

Implications for Theories of Hierarchy Organization 

How does research related to the stability of hierarchies speak to theories of hierarchy organization? That hierarchies tend to be so stable and change resistant casts doubt on pure functionalist arguments. Hierarchies develop within the first moments of interaction (Fisek & Ofshe, 1970; Kalma, 1991; Mast, 2001; Tiedens & Fragale, 2003), much faster than it takes people to form accurate perceptions of others’ competence, for example (Paulhus & Morgan, 1997). Functionalist theories would suggest either that hierarchies develop more slowly, as people come to gauge each other’s competence and other-orientation more accurately over time, or that they fluctuate over time, as people calibrate and recalibrate their perceptions of each other’s characteristics. But neither pattern is observed in the empirical data. Instead, hierarchies emerge rapidly and remain resistant to change.  

The question is thus whether the stability of hierarchies supports bounded functionalism or dominance theories. That hierarchies remain stable because of mechanisms related to perceived competence and group-orientation, and not because of mechanisms related to intimidation and involuntary submission, supports bounded functionalism over dominance theory. According to dominance theory, people attain and maintain high rank by coercing others. Therefore, if dominance theory were right, then hierarchies would tend to be stable because people with high rank use intimidating and coercive tactics to keep others down. Yet no studies demonstrated such tactics as contributing to hierarchy maintenance. Some studies have found dominance-oriented leaders to engage in nefarious tactics in the hopes of keeping their power (e.g., (Maner & Mead, 2010; Mead & Maner, 2012); however, those tactics did not involve intimidation or fear, but rather managing the group’s perceptions of others’ task competence. 

THE EFFECTS OF RANK ON THE INDIVIDUAL 

News stories are replete with individuals in high-ranking positions behaving badly: politicians engaging in financial malfeasance, CEOs abusing their subordinates, religious leaders caught in sexual scandals. Stories like these prompt questions about the effects of possessing power: Were these people corrupted by the power of their position? Did their power allow darker desires, long dormant, to emerge? Or did they always behave that way? 

Conventional wisdom suggests that possessing high rank (specifically, in the form of elevated power) is corrupting, but the truth appears to be more complicated. Power can corrupt, but it can also promote prosocial behavior, and its effects reach far beyond the sphere of moral decision making. For example, as discussed in this section, people’s power can shape their self-perceptions, style of dress, motives, body language, creativity, moods and emotions, vocal tone, task performance, and optimism, and the complexity of their cognitive processing. Power’s effects can also depend on the person and their context, such as their personality, values, and culture, and the stability of their social position. 

This section discusses how people are affected by their rank within social hierarchies. It focuses primarily on the effects of possessing or lacking power, because most research on the intrapsychic effects of rank has concentrated on power rather than status, and because the previous section covered much of the effects of possessing status. The section is organized by theory: it will describe each of the major social-psychological theories of the effects of power and review the subsequent studies that built on it. 

Metamorphic Theory 

Kipnis’s pioneering metamorphic theory proposed, consistent with conventional wisdom, that power has a corrupting effect on individuals, but fleshed out more thoroughly what “corrupting” can mean (Kipnis, 1972; Rind & Kipnis, 1999). Specifically, it argued that when people control valuable resources, they become prone to influencing others to satisfy their personal wants. Their success in influencing others leads them to devalue those others, judging them as pliable and incompetent. As a result, powerholders come to seek more distance from other people. At the same time, because they receive disproportionately positive treatment from others and are consistently validated and praised, powerholders develop inflated self-views and deem themselves superior to others. 

Early studies supported the metamorphic mode by finding that people who possess more power in their personal relationships or who are assigned a powerful role in a laboratory task make more attempts to influence others, value others’ contributions less, attribute others’ successes to their own leadership, and seek more distance from others (Kipnis, 1972; Kipnis et al., 1976). For example, in Kipnis’s (1972) original laboratory study, all participants were put in a position in which they supervised a group of ostensible workers in another room (workers who did not actually exist); half of the participants were given power over these subordinates, such as the ability to increase or decrease their pay, whereas the other half were not given such power. Although the “subordinates” ended up performing at the same level in both conditions, regardless of whether they worked for the powerful or the control participants, the powerful participants rated their subordinates as less capable and were less willing to rehire them for a second experiment, as compared to control participants; furthermore, only 35% of the powerful participants were willing to meet socially with the subordinates after the experiment, as compared to 79% of the control participants (Kipnis, 1972). More recent research continues to support this theory, particularly work that demonstrates that the possession of power causes people to view others negatively and to distance themselves from others (e.g., Inesi et al., 2012; Lammers et al., 2012). However, because more recent theories account for these findings under a broader theoretical umbrella, the findings are summarized below for the sake of parsimony.  

Power-as-Control Theory 

Fiske’s power-as-control theory (1993), the next major theory of power’s effects, is perhaps most responsible for igniting the study of power in social psychology. It proposed that when people occupy a powerful position, they are less dependent on others and become motivated to keep others subordinate to them. Consequently, they pay less attention to others and instead rely on stereotypes when evaluating them (e.g., Fiske & Dépret, 1996; Goodwin et al., 2000; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987). For example, people in a powerful role who are given a list of diverse pieces of information about another person pay more attention to stereotypic-consistent information about the person, especially negative information, and less attention to counter-stereotypic information (Goodwin et al., 2000). 

Power-as-control theory departed from the metamorphic model in a few ways. For example, it proposed the novel hypothesis that powerholders pay less attention to others and are less motivated to individuate them as compared to people without power. It also emphasized powerholders’ reliance on stereotypes when evaluating others. This means power can affect individuals’ evaluations of others not just on pliability and competence, but on any dimension in which stereotypes come into play (e.g., others’ work ethic, honesty, pugnacity, etc.). It also means powerholders’ evaluations of others in stigmatized groups are particularly affected because those groups are most subject to negative stereotypes. In contrast, in the metamorphic model, powerholders are thought to view all others in more negative ways, regardless of membership in stigmatized groups. Finally, the two theories proposed different mechanisms that underlie the effects of power. In the metamorphic model, the successful influence of others is key to power’s effects, whereas in power-as-control theory, both the reduction of dependence on others and the desire to keep others subordinate to oneself underlie the effects of power. 

Studies supporting power-as-control theory have shown that when people are placed in a powerful position, they pay less attention to others and rely more on stereotypes to evaluate them (Fiske & Dépret, 1996; Goodwin et al., 2000; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987). These effects can arise simply from control over resources; it is not necessary for the powerholder to successfully influence others (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2000). However, because these findings are also explained by more recent theories that cover a broader swath of theoretical ground, they will also be summarized below. 

Approach-Inhibition Theory 

As studies of the effects of power proliferated in the 1990s and early 2000s, it became clear that the possession or lack of power affects a wide range of phenomena. The approach-inhibition theory of power (Keltner et al., 2003) aimed to integrate these seemingly disparate effects with a broad and comprehensive theoretical account. It hypothesized that power tips the balance of activation between the behavioral approach and inhibition systems—systems that recruit diverse affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes to help individuals attain rewards and mitigate threats, respectively. The behavioral approach system regulates behavior associated with rewards such as food, achievement, sex, safety, and social attachment. In contrast, the behavioral inhibition system has been equated to an alarm system. Activated by threats or potential punishments, this system triggers affective states such as anxiety, heightened vigilance for threats in the environment, avoidance, and response inhibition (Higgins, 1997). Having high power was posited to activate the approach system in part because elevated power is associated with increased access to rewards, and when people have power, they know they will encounter less interference from others when approaching potential rewards. Having low power was proposed to activate the inhibition system because when people have low power, they are subject to more social and material threats, such as social exclusion, public embarrassment or shame, reduced pay, or job termination (Keltner et al., 2003). 

Approach-inhibition theory was inspired by both Kipnis’s and Fiske’s theories and extended them in several ways. Its hypotheses encompassed a wider range of psychological phenomena than interpersonal perceptions and self-perceptions, including emotional experience and expression, sensitivity to threats and rewards, behavioral disinhibition, and the link between people’s actions and their underlying states or traits. It proposed a different set of mechanisms that drive the effects of possessing or lacking power, namely the relative activation of the behavioral approach and inhibition systems. It also addressed the effects of lacking power in addition to the effects of possessing it. Finally, it proposed a set of moderating factors that can mitigate or even reverse the effects of power, such as hierarchical stability, culture, and individual differences. 

In support of this theory, people with power exhibit numerous signs of a more active approach system, and people without power show many signs of an active inhibition system. As discussed at the beginning of the chapter, people with power feel more positive and less negative emotions; the reverse is true for people who lack power (Keltner et al., 2003). When people think about a time in which they had power, they show more left-frontal brain activity, which is associated with approach motivation (Boksem et al., 2012). People with power also focus on more positive and rewarding aspects of their environment, which produces greater optimism in their evaluations of their social relationships (Livingstone et al., 2021), the systems of power in which they are embedded (ten Brinke & Keltner, 2022), and the likelihood of positive future events occurring (at least for men; Goldstein & Hays, 2011; for counter evidence, see (Lin & Schmid, 2022; Mooijman et al., 2019; Mooijman et al., 2015). For example, in Moon and Chen (2014), participants were placed into either a boss (high-power) or employee (low-power) role in the laboratory, and told they would be working in dyads on “brain-teaser” problems. In the boss role, participants were told they would control the dyads’ work and divide up rewards at the end, they sat in a cushioned chair that sat higher up, and wrote about a previous time in which they occupied a powerful role; in the employee role, participants were told of their boss’s control over them and sat in a lower desk chair, and wrote about a previous time in which they occupied a low-power role. When participants were then asked about the time available to them in their life, those in the boss condition agreed more strongly with items such as “I feel like most of my life lies ahead of me,” “I feel like there is plenty of time left in my life to make new plans,” and “I have a lot of time in which to get things done,” as compared to those in the employee condition (Moon & Chen, 2014). 

Power also leads to more positive views of the self: Powerholders are more confident in their decisions (Fischer et al., 2011), moral clarity (Wiltermuth & Flynn, 2013), judgment and leadership skills (Park et al., 2011), general knowledge (Fast, Sivanathan, et al., 2012), task efficiency (Weick & Guinote, 2010), and contributions to group tasks (Lammers & Burgmer, 2019). Powerholders even overestimate their own physical height: in one set of studies, researchers manipulated power by asking participants to recall a time in which they had high or low power, or placed participants into supervisory or subordinate position in a laboratory dyad; those in the high-power conditions judged a physical object as being shorter relative to them and selected a taller avatar as “best representing them” in a videogame, as compared to those in the low-power condition (Duguid & Goncalo, 2012). High-power participants also estimated that their own physical height was greater than it actually was, whereas low-power participants estimated their height accurately. In stark contrast, people who lack power are more sensitive and attentive to threats. They view stressful tasks as more threatening, as exhibited by their heightened cardiovascular reactivity (Scheepers et al., 2012). They overestimate others’ physical formidability (Yap et al., 2013), and expect to feel worse following a bad outcome than do people with power (Inesi, 2010). 

People with power, given their relative lack of dependence on others, also pay less attention to others, perceive them less accurately, and judge them in more stereotypical ways. For example, people assigned to a powerful condition engage in less social comparison (Johnson & Lammers, 2012), ignore others’ ideas and advice more, even from those with task expertise (Hildreth & Anderson, 2016; Tost et al., 2012), and take others’ perspectives less (Blader et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2021) than do people assigned to a less powerful condition. Accordingly, those with power are less accurate at reading others (Blader et al., 2016), less aware of how others perceive them (Kenny et al., 2010), and less astute at perceiving people’s relationships with each other (Landis et al., 2018). For example, in one laboratory study, participants worked in dyads on a creativity task and were assigned to be the supervisor or employee; afterward, they each separately watched videos about conflicts between roommates and answered questions such as who was at fault and whether the roommates would remain together, and they also guessed the responses of their dyad partner (Love & Davis, 2014). Those who had occupied the more powerful role were less accurate in guessing their partner’s responses than those who had occupied the less powerful role. Powerholders tend to rely more heavily on stereotypes (Guinote et al., 2010, p. 201) and fall prey to heuristics and biases such as the fundamental attribution error when viewing others (Jouffre & Croizet, 2016).  Their use of stereotypes when judging others can stem from their inability to attend more closely to individuals subordinate to them (e.g., if they are cognitively overloaded in their powerful role) or their unwillingness to do so (e.g., if holding negative stereotypes about subordinates helps maintain their own power; Fiske, 1993; Goodwin et al., 2000). As a result of high-ranking individuals’ relative obliviousness in reading their social environment, when people seek to learn a team’s social norms, they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking individuals and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Dannals et al., 2020).  

Approach-inhibition theory also proposed that power leads people to construe others as a means to their own ends, or as mere tools that help them satisfy their needs and desires. Indeed, the possession of power leads people to treat others more poorly and disrespectfully. For example, powerholders exploit others more (Cislak et al., 2018), express anger at others more (Petkanopoulou et al., 2019), treat others more unfairly (Blader & Chen, 2012), engage in more abusive and uncivil behavior (Foulk et al., 2018; Wee et al., 2017), and express less gratitude toward others when they receive help (Anicich et al., 2021). In a study of professional and managerial employees enrolled in an executive MBA program, researchers primed participants every morning over the course of two weeks with either high-power cognitive primes or neutral primes (Foulk et al., 2018). As an example, in one prime participants were shown 10 word fragments with several characters missing (i.e., “pow_r”) and asked to complete each fragment with the first word that came to mind; in the high-power condition, seven of the word fragments were words associated with power (e.g., “boss,” “authority,” “executive”), and in the control condition, all words were designed to be neutral in nature (e.g., “guitar,” “island,” “drawer”). Participants primed with high-power primes reported behaving more abusively toward coworkers, including yelling at, swearing at, and ridiculing them (Foulk et al., 2018) 

People with power also engage in more approach-oriented behavior, whereas people with less power exhibit more behavioral inhibition. People who feel more powerful or who are placed in powerful roles are more action-oriented (Huang et al., 2011; Landis et al., 2018), behave more assertively (Kilduff & Galinsky, 2013; Mahadevan et al., 2020; Weick et al., 2017), and are more likely to speak first in an interaction (Schaerer, Schweinsberg, et al., 2018) and talk more (Tost et al., 2013). In one study of current and prospective humanitarian aid workers during a three-day, immersive simulated humanitarian crisis, those with a higher generalized sense of power (i.e., those who perceived themselves as powerful in their relationships with others) behaved more assertively and dominantly during the simulation. In contrast, people with lower power avoid behaving in ways that might risk their relationships with others. For example, they refrain from correcting others’ work even when there are errors (Pai et al., 2021), avoid confronting others who behave uncivilly (Hershcovis et al., 2017) or who perform poorly in their work (Ferguson et al., 2010), and make more timid demands in negotiations (Schaerer, Schweinsberg, et al., 2018).  

Because powerful individuals are less restricted by social constraints and freer to act as they wish, they behave more consistently with their inner personality traits and values. For example, pairs of participants in a laboratory study took turns discussing an emotional event in their lives, then reported their own emotions during the interaction, and estimated their partner’s emotions (Côté et al., 2011). Participants with higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which has been used as an index of prosocial orientation, exhibited more empathy toward their partner when they had a higher sense of power than when they had a lower sense of power (Côté et al., 2011). A higher sense of power thus seemed to “allow” those individuals’ prosocial tendencies to manifest in more empathic behavior. Powerful individuals also show more consistency in their behavior across contexts (Kraus et al., 2011), indicating the relatively stronger force of their personality. People with power also act more in accordance with their internal momentary states. When they are treated well or poorly by others, they respond with like behavior (Lian et al., 2014; van Dijke et al., 2018; Yao & Moskowitz, 2015), whereas people without power cannot. Powerful people enjoy a greater sense of authenticity, which contributes to a heightened subjective well-being (Kifer et al., 2013; Kraus et al., 2011). In contrast, low-power individuals, who are more dependent on their relationships with others, conform more to others’ expectations and behavior (Audia et al., 2022; Jia et al., 2018, p. 201; Pitesa & Thau, 2013), and emphasize what they share in common with others (Swencionis & Fiske, 2016; Westphal & Shani, 2016). They are less focused on how they feel (Pitesa & Thau, 2013) and are more reluctant to express their true feelings (Cook et al., 2011).  

The freedom that comes with the possession of power also leads people to behave in socially inappropriate and sometimes unethical ways. For example, people with a more powerful position in their work organization are more likely to misrepresent their performance in a laboratory task (Kim & Guinote, 2022). People ranked higher in a community of competitors are more willing to sabotage their rivals, cheat, and lie to maintain their position than are those ranked lower (Vriend et al., 2016). People cognitively primed with power are less sensitive to moral norms (Gawronski & Brannon, 2020), which suggests they pay less attention to moral considerations and more attention to their own goals and desires when deciding how to behave. Notably, the effects of power on unethical behavior do not go unnoticed: People believe that powerful individuals behave more unethically than others (Hu et al., 2016). 

Social Distance Theory 

After publication of approach-inhibition theory, much of the research on the effects of power built on its propositions, or at least obtained evidence consistent with them. However, findings also began to emerge not easily explained by approach-inhibition theory. For example, people with power engage in more abstract information processing (e.g., (Magee et al., 2010; Smith & Trope, 2006) and seek more distance from others (e.g., Inesi et al., 2012; Lammers et al., 2012). People without power, by contrast, engage in more concrete cognitive processing and seek more affiliation with others. 

To help explain these findings, Magee and Smith (2013) proposed the social distance theory of power, which offered two major principles: First, because powerholders are by definition less dependent on others to satisfy their desires and achieve their goals, they are less motivated to affiliate with others and feel more distant from them; in contrast, because people with low power are more dependent on others, they desire more closeness with others. Second, because psychological distance and construal level are positively related (Trope & Liberman, 2010), powerholders’ greater sense of social distance causes them to engage in more abstract mental representation (i.e., at a higher level of construal) than individuals who lack power. In other words, possessing power leads individuals to mentally represent stimuli (e.g., objects, events, people, goals, actions) at a high level, which involves more of a schematic representation that emphasizes central and superordinate features; lacking power leads individuals to represent stimuli at a low level, which involves a relatively unstructured representation that emphasizes the target’s peripheral and subordinate features (Smith & Trope, 2006). In brief, having power causes individuals to focus on the forest, and lacking power causes people to focus on the trees.  

The first principle, that powerholders feel more distant from others, echoes Kipnis’s (1976) metamorphic model, which proposed that people in power prefer and seek more distance from others. However, social distance theory went further, proposing that lacking power also boosts the affiliation motive (above possessing moderate power). It also posited a different mechanism than that offered by Kipnis: While the metamorphic model argued that powerholders seek distance from others because they think poorly of them, social distance theory proposed that powerholders feel distant from others because they do not depend on others for their own goal accomplishment or need satisfaction.  

In support of social distance theory, participants in one study were placed into either a “boss” or “subordinate” role in a Dictator game, in which the boss receives a fixed sum of money (e.g., $12) and has is given total discretion as to how they wish divide that sum among the two of them (Waytz et al., 2015). Participants assigned to the boss role reported a lower need to belong than did those assigned to the subordinate role. Similarly, participants in another study who were asked to imagine themselves in a powerful role in a work organization reported a weaker interpersonal orientation (“I would think it is important not to disturb good relations with others in the organization”; Anicich et al., 2021) than those asked to imagine themselves in a less or equally powerful role. People given power also have less interest in networking with others and seek more physical distance from collaborators (Case et al., 2015). In contrast, people with low power report being lonelier than people with power, which indicates a strong and unsatisfied desire for closer interpersonal relationships (Waytz et al., 2015); though see Foulk et al., 2020).  

Furthermore, individuals with power engage in higher-level abstract processing than people without power. When adopting a powerful and expansive posture, people are more successful in identifying “gestalt” images in a series of fragmented pictures (Huang et al., 2011). People with position power (e.g., high-ranking government officials) communicated the events surrounding 9/11 in more abstract terms than did people who had no position power (Magee et al., 2010). Individuals placed in a high-power mindset by recalling two situations in which they had influenced or changed other people according to their own wishes describe others using more adjectives than verbs, indicating a higher-level construal, as compared to individuals placed in low-power or neutral mindsets (Miyamoto & Ji, 2011). In fact, the effects of power on construal level are strong enough that individuals view people as more powerful when they adopt higher-level processing (Kim et al., 2015; Wakslak et al., 2014). 

One hypothesis was portrayed as oppositional to approach-inhibition theory: Namely, approach-inhibition theory argued that the possession of power diminishes self-control and causes more disinhibited behavior, whereas social distance theory proposed that power leads to heightened self-control because higher-level cognitive processing helps individuals focus on their goals and thus maintain self-discipline in the pursuit of those goals. However, it is possible this is only an apparent contradiction. Powerholders might tend to behave in less controlled and more disinhibited ways when they have little reason to do otherwise but behave in more self-controlled ways once they set a goal for themselves and are approach-oriented. Indeed, this argument overlaps with the underlying logic of the situated focus theory of power (Guinote, 2007), discussed next. 

Situated Focus Theory 

Guinote’s (2007) situated focus theory of power concentrated on how power affects cognitive processing specifically. It argued that people who lack power are dependent on others and more subject to social and material threats, and are thus forced to monitor their social environment more vigilantly. Doing so helps them maintain positive relationships with the more powerful people around them and avoid making social missteps (see also Fiske & Dépret, 1996; Keltner et al., 2003). However, the more dispersed cognitive attention of the less powerful also diminishes their task and goal focus, which ultimately harms their task performance and goal accomplishment. That is, rather than focusing solely on the task in front of them, people who lack power must distribute their attention more widely, including to task-irrelevant information and stimuli such as others’ reactions to their behavior. In contrast, people who possess higher power are less dependent on others and less subject to threats, and need not monitor their social environment as closely. This affords them the freedom to focus their attention solely on their tasks and goal pursuits, which helps them perform better and accomplish their goals more successfully. 

The situated focus theory of power proposed several novel hypotheses. For example, it hypothesized that the possession or lack of power affects individuals’ task performance and goal accomplishment; no prior theory of the effects of power had addressed those outcomes. It also hypothesized that the possession of power provides more control and flexibility in cognitive processing. When powerholders need to focus their attention in a concentrated way to perform well on a task or accomplish a goal, they are able to do so, but when they do not need to do so, they will not. In contrast, people who lack power have less flexibility in their attentional focus and are forced to disperse their attention widely, regardless of their task or goals. An implication of this heightened cognitive flexibility means that people who possess power might sometimes attend to and individuate others more than those who lack power, and stereotype them less. For example, if a boss is particularly caring about his subordinates and wants them to succeed, he might pay considerable attention to them and become acquainted with them as individuals.  

In support of the situated focus theory of power, multiple studies have found a link between power and goal focus, as well as task focus. In one laboratory study, participants were asked to recall a time in which they had power (or low power), told they would work on a task that involved ordering supplies for a restaurant, and given a lexical decision task in which they decided as quickly as possible whether strings of letters were words or non-words (Slabu & Guinote, 2010). Those in the high-power condition recognized task-related words (e.g., meat, sugar, sauce, rice) more quickly than they recognized neutral words (e.g., ship, habit, pedal, belief), whereas those in the low-power condition recognized both sets of words equally quickly. Moreover, after all participants ordered supplies in the restaurant task, they were given the same lexical decision task as before, but this time participants in the high- and low-power conditions performed equally (Slabu & Guinote, 2010). This suggests that those in the high-power condition were able to focus their attention on restaurant-related concepts when necessary (i.e., when they were about to order restaurant supplies), but stopped focusing on those concepts when it was unnecessary (i.e., after they ordered restaurant supplies).  

People with a higher generalized sense of power, who see themselves as having more power in their relationships with others, are more motivated to pursue goals with a longer time horizon than are people with a lower sense of power (Schmid, 2020), and they make better progress toward their goals (Foulk & Lanaj, 2022). The enhanced attentional focus that power provides allowed participants assigned to a managerial role to perform better on the Stroop task (Albalooshi et al., 2020; Egan & Hirt, 2015) and on a dichotic listening task that requires ignoring information presented to one ear and writing down words spoken in the other ear (DeWall et al., 2011).  Indeed, people assume that individuals who are more focused on task accomplishment are more powerful (Ames et al., 2010). 

The possession of power also facilitates better task performance (Flynn & Amanatullah, 2012; Paik et al., 2022). In one study, participants assigned to a leader position within a laboratory dyad performed better on puzzle task that involved navigating through a maze while their partner provided navigation instructions; they also exhibited more adaptive physiological reactions to the stressful context, including greater increases in testosterone, heart rate, and cardiac output (Akinola & Mendes, 2014). Indeed, people placed in a high-power role perform better on variety of tasks, including anagrams (DeWall et al., 2011), creativity tasks (Hildreth & Anderson, 2016), and negotiations (Kang et al., 2015). In one study, participants were asked to write about how they would feel in a powerful or less powerful role, and then completed the Trier Social Stress Task, in which they give a presentation to individuals who exhibited flat and affectless facial expressions; independent observers then coded the quality of their presentation and whether they would hire the participant (Schmid & Schmid Mast, 2013). Participants who had earlier been placed in the powerful role performed better at the task than did those placed in the less powerful role. Similarly, participants in another study who rated themselves higher in their generalized sense of power were perceived by observers as being more hirable by managers who watched their interview pitch, as compared to participants with a lower generalized sense of power (Tu et al., 2022). 

Similar to social distance theory, one hypothesis was portrayed as oppositional to the approach-inhibition theory. Namely, situated focus theory hypothesized that the possession of power leads to greater behavioral variability across social contexts because powerholders focus on the different goals relevant in different situations and adapt their behavior accordingly. In contrast, the lack of power leads to more consistent behavior across social contexts because the powerless are unable to adapt their behavior to changing situational demands. Approach-inhibition theory, in contrast, proposed that the possession of power leads to more consistent behavior across contexts because powerholders’ behavior is driven more by their internal traits and motives, which are more invariant across situations. 

One possibility is that the two theories indeed offer opposing hypotheses. Another possibility is that the two theories simply need conceptual integration. For example, the possession of power might either lead to more or less variable behavior across contexts, depending on the features of those contexts. If different situations evoke different goals, then powerholders show more variability in their behavior, but if different situations involve different social pressures, norms, and expectations, then the powerless might show more behavioral variability. 

Agency-Communion Theory 

Finally, Rucker and colleagues’ (2012) agency-communion theory of power built from the circumplex models of behavior mentioned earlier – models anchored by the vertical axis of agency and the horizontal axis of communion (e.g., Bakan, 1966). Their theory argued that possessing power fosters a more agentic orientation, which involves asserting oneself and striving to influence and control others and one’s environment. Lacking power was thought to produce a more communal orientation, but “communion” was defined differently than in prior circumplex-based models. Namely, while prior models construed communion (also called love or warmth) as the desire to relate to, cooperate with, and help others (Bakan, 1966; Foa & Foa, 1974; Fiske et al., 2002; Horowitz et al., 2006; Wiggins, 1979), agency-communion theory construed communion “as divorced from any valenced motive toward others. That is, a communal orientation refers to a person's tendency to consider others while thinking or engaged in decision-making, irrespective of their intentions toward others (i.e., bad versus good)” (Rucker et al., 2012, p. 356). 

Like earlier theories of power, agency-communion theory argued that possessing power means being less dependent on others and freer to behave as one wishes, which leads to a more agentic orientation; lacking power means being more dependent on others to achieve one’s goals, which encourages a communal orientation that involves focusing one’s attention more on others. However, it also proposed several novel hypotheses by further fleshing out some of the implications of possessing either an agentic or communal orientation. For example, the agentic orientation that comes with possessing power leads people to put greater weight and value on the self and to be more self-focused, whereas the communal orientation that comes with lacking power leads people to value others more and become more selfless (Rucker et al., 2012). These novel hypotheses are important in part because no prior theory of power explicitly addressed the impact of power on self-focus, or on selfish vs. selfless orientations. 

In support of agency-communion theory, several studies have found that the possession of power increases people’s focus on the self. Participants asked to recall a time in which they possessed power reported paying more attention to the self (e.g., endorsing items more strongly, such as “Right now, I am conscious of my inner feelings”; “Right now, I am aware of my innermost thoughts”; Pitesa & Thau, 2013). They also anchor more on their own states and traits when making judgments of other people; for example, they judge others’ emotional expressions, personality traits, and values as more similar to their own than do people made to feel powerless (Overbeck & Droutman, 2013). Participants who were told they would be supervising another participant relied on the ostensible sound of their own heartbeat (which was experimentally manipulated) when they rated the attractiveness of individuals in photographs, whereas those told they would be working under another participant relied on the ostensible sound of other people’s heartbeats when doing so (Jouffre, 2015).  

Further, the possession of power leads to more selfishness. People made to feel powerful via the recall task described above spent more on gifts for themselves than people made to feel powerless, who instead spend more on gifts for others (Rucker et al., 2011). Participants recalling a time in which they had power also made more self-serving investment decisions that were morally questionable (Pitesa & Thau, 2013). A higher sense of power boosted self-beneficial unethical behavior such as lying (Dubois et al., 2015), whereas a lower sense of power boosted helping behavior (Sun et al., 2021). 

Moderators 

Power can sometimes produce very different effects from those described above. Possessing power can cause people to be anxious, affiliative, and altruistic, and lacking power can lead to assertiveness, distance, and selfishness. When does power produce these surprising effects and why? This section reviews some of the contextual and individual-difference factors that can mitigate or even reverse the effects of power. Generally speaking, these factors alter the impact of power because they moderate (a) individuals’ feelings of threat (for example, by making powerful positions more stressful rather than less), (b) individuals’ sense of autonomy in their position (for example, by providing a sense of freedom to those with low power), or (c) the goals individuals pursue in their position (for example, whether powerholders have prosocial or selfish aims). 

Features of the Hierarchy: Stability, Legitimacy, and Accountability

Although hierarchies tend to be stable across social relationships and groups, their stability can vary. In some contexts, power can be easily lost or gained; in other contexts, it cannot. When hierarchies are unstable, those at the top feel threatened by the possibility of losing their position. For example, managers who reported possessing higher power in their work organization, but who also reported their power as being more unstable, were more concerned about power loss than managers with more perceived stability in their power (Mooijman et al., 2019). This finding has been observed among alpha male baboons, who showed elevated glucocorticoid concentrations when their hierarchies were unstable (Gesquiere et al., 2011), and among humans in powerful positions, whose heart rates spike when they face ouster (Jordan et al., 2011). Indeed, the more powerholders care about their power, the more threatened they feel by its potential loss (Mead & Maner, 2012). Powerholders in unstable hierarchies thus engage in a variety of behaviors to remain on top. They hoard valuable information, ostracize talented subordinates who might challenge their position (Maner & Mead, 2010), take more risks (Jordan et al., 2011), and grow mistrusting of others (Mooijman et al., 2019). In contrast, people with less power who have the opportunity to rise in the ranks feel more hopeful regarding their social mobility (George et al., 2011) and work harder to perform better (Sligte et al., 2011). 

The perceived legitimacy of a hierarchy can also moderate the effects of power, for reasons that overlap with those just mentioned (Jouffre & Croizet, 2016; Wellman et al., 2016). When differences in power are viewed as illegitimate, powerholders fear for the stability of their position and feel constrained in their behavior, whereas those with less power feel emboldened to challenge the status quo (e.g., Lammers et al., 2012; Willis et al., 2010; Ratcliff & Vescio, 2017). People who possess illegitimate power thus exhibit very different behavior from those who possess legitimate power: They seek more closeness to others rather than less (Lammers et al., 2012), conform to others’ ideas and opinions more (Hays & Goldstein, 2015), are more willing to relinquish their position (Ratcliff & Vescio, 2017), and are more generous (Hays & Blader, 2016). They are also more sensitive to threats – for example, people placed in a high-power role detected others’ facial expressions of anger faster and more accurately when their power was illegitimate than when it was legitimate (Stamkou et al., 2016). Conversely, people who have low power in an illegitimate hierarchy focus more on their goals, persist longer on tasks, and generate more ways to accomplish their aims than those who have low power in a legitimate hierarchy (Willis et al., 2010). 

Finally, accountability matters, in that the possession of power can lead to very different effects when powerholders are held accountable for their decisions and actions (Pitesa & Thau, 2013). For example, people placed in a powerful role become more generous when their behavior is accountable than when it is not (Oc et al., 2019). 

Individual Differences That Moderate the Sense of Threat

In addition to features of the hierarchy, individual differences can also change the way power affects people, in part by changing the degree to which people feel their power or ego is under threat (Fast, Halevy, et al., 2012). For example, people who possess power but view themselves as incompetent feel threatened and are thus particularly aggressive and abusive towards subordinates (Cho & Fast, 2012). For example, employees who perceived themselves as possessing power via their role, but who also rated themselves as having low competence, reported behaving more aggressively towards others than did employees who perceived themselves as having power and being competent (Fast & Chen, 2009). People who possess power but have low status in the eyes of others (i.e., they are less respected) also tend to feel threatened and thus tend to demean others more (Anicich et al., 2016; Fast, Halevy, et al., 2012). Because self-esteem serves as a psychological buffer against threats to the ego, people with high self-esteem placed into low-power roles perform well on cognitive distractor tasks (Albalooshi et al., 2020), though lacking power typically diminishes performance on such tasks (DeWall et al., 2011). Conversely, because neuroticism is related to a heightened sense of threat, individuals higher in neuroticism feel more stress in powerful roles (Foulk & Lanaj, 2022), even though possessing power normally dampens stress (Sherman et al., 2012). 

Other Vs. Selfish Orientation

The way people respond to power also depends strongly on whether they possess other-oriented or selfish values. As discussed above, power liberates. By allowing people to behave as they wish, power, ironically, can sometimes contribute to more selfless and generous behavior rather than less – namely, when the person who possesses it is other-oriented (Guinote et al., 2012). For example, leaders who believe they should use their position to serve their group’s interests rather than their own distribute resources more generously when they have more power than when they have less (Rus et al., 2010). People with a stronger moral identity become more generous and take others’ perspectives more when they are given power than when they lack it (DeCelles et al., 2012; Sun et al., 2021). Individuals who are more empathic become fairer in negotiations when they possess power than when they do not (Blader & Chen, 2012). In fact, leaders with a more interdependent focus are even willing to relinquish their power when they believe another leader might serve the group more effectively (Ratcliff & Vescio, 2013). 

Being other-oriented in a powerful role typically means feeling a sense of responsibility to others. When powerholders feel responsible for others’ welfare, they become more sensitive to others rather than less (Cornelis et al., 2013; Schmid Mast et al., 2009; Torelli & Shavitt, 2011), confront others’ uncivil behavior (Hershcovis et al., 2017), take on unpleasant tasks rather than delegating them (Williams et al., 2022), and seek more input from subordinates (Morrison et al., 2015). Feeling responsible in a high-power position is itself an act of self-sacrifice because when people view power as a responsibility rather than as an opportunity for self-gain, their power becomes less appealing (Scheepers et al., 2012), more stressful (Scholl et al., 2018), and more emotionally exhausting (Lin et al., 2019). 

Conversely, power contributes to particularly toxic behavior among more selfishly oriented people. For example, disagreeable people and those with a more individualistic orientation become abusive when given power (Foulk et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2012). Those who are less other-oriented respond to power by being exploitive (Malhotra & Gino, 2011), unethical (Rucker & Galinsky, 2016), and revenge-seeking (Karremans & Smith, 2010). People who view power primarily as a way to satisfy personal wants become more tolerant of corrupt behavior among the elite when they themselves have power (Wang & Sun, 2016). Narcissistic leaders tend to use their followers’ good behavior as moral justification for engaging in unethical acts (Ahmad et al., 2021; though see Benson et al., 2016). 

Cultures also have different concepts of power, with some viewing power more as an opportunity for self-gratification and other viewing it as a responsibility to the collective (Park et al., 2013; Torelli & Shavitt, 2010). This means people from different cultures respond to power in different ways. For example, Americans use power for self-interested reasons far more often than Indians do (Savani et al., 2011), and leaders in China punish subordinates for selfish behavior more than do leaders in the United States (Kuwabara et al., 2016). 

Demographic Characteristics 

Far more work is needed on whether and how demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age, or socioeconomic status moderate people’s responses to power. Demographic characteristics shape people’s values (Prince-Gibson & Schwartz, 1998), personality traits (Feingold, 1994), and orientations toward power specifically (Sidanius, Liu, et al., 1994), which suggests they likely moderate the way people respond to power. Furthermore, demographic characteristics affect the way people in power are treated by others; for example, women and people of color are more constrained and held under closer scrutiny when they hold power than are men and White people (Morgenroth et al., 2020; Vial & Napier, 2017). Women in power also report lower gender identification than men do (Vial & Napier, 2017), and possessing power boosts men’s confidence in negotiation contexts, but not women’s (Goldstein & Hays, 2011). These latter findings are consistent with the finding that people hold an implicit association between being male and White and being powerful (Haines & Kray, 2005), which is one reason possessing power is more challenging for people in historically disadvantaged groups. 

THE EFFECTS OF HIERARCHY ON THE COLLECTIVE 

Once a hierarchy has formed within a relationship or group, how does it affect the functioning and welfare of the collective? For example, how does it impact the health and quality of interpersonal relationships within the group or its success in pursuing its collective goals? 

Meta-Analyses 

Two independent meta-analyses, one qualitative and one quantitative, examined the effects of steeper (vs. flatter) hierarchies on collective functioning and success (Anderson & Brown, 2010; Greer et al., 2018). Steeper hierarchies involve larger disparities across individuals, such that some people have much more power, status, or influence than do others. In contrast, flatter hierarchies involve more equality in individuals’ power, status, or influence, such that the differences across individuals is smaller. To avoid duplicating the two meta-analyses, this section will summarize their findings and then turn to research not included in their analyses or conducted after they were published. It will thus assess whether their conclusions have been corroborated. 

Although the meta-analyses used very different methods, they found very similar results. They both found that steeper hierarchies are consistently detrimental to individuals’ well-being as compared to flatter hierarchies, predicting lower individual satisfaction, group-based self-esteem, motivation, engagement and commitment to the collective, and higher levels of anxiety and stress. The reviews also found steeper hierarchies to consistently harm interpersonal relationships by diminishing trust and feelings of loyalty, dampening collaboration, stoking interpersonal conflict, and driving people to seek exit from the relationship or group. 

In terms of performance, both reviews also found that steeper hierarchies lead to collective failure more often than to collective success, largely because of the conflict they instigate between people, but that the effects of hierarchy on performance are more mixed. Hierarchies are particularly bad for collective performance in conditions where interpersonal conflict is more likely to emerge, such as when membership is unstable, a more fluid hierarchical structure forces people to repeatedly renegotiate their rank, or people’s skills are more differentiated and they are more likely to disagree on ideas, solutions, and strategies (Greer et al., 2018). But hierarchies can at times boost performance, such as when a dyad or group works on a simple task that does not require as much coordination among individuals, high-level thinking, or complex problem-solving (Anderson & Brown, 2010).  

Other Research  

In terms of the quality and health of interpersonal relationships, other studies have continued to find hierarchies to be consistently harmful. The larger the difference in power or status between people, the less they trust each other (Inesi et al., 2012), the more they undermine each other (Kim & Wiesenfeld, 2017), and the more they objectify each other, or see each other as mere instruments for their own personal goal accomplishment (Schaerer et al., 2018). Furthermore, when people fight with each other over their hierarchical rank – or engage in what is sometimes called status conflict – they perform worse as a collective. They fail to coordinate their efforts (Kwaadsteniet & Dijk, 2010), become gridlocked on important decisions (Hildreth & Anderson, 2016; Wiltermuth et al., 2018), and produce lackluster ideas (Lee et al., 2018). For example, teams of students in an MBA program who reported experiencing more status conflict received lower grades on their team project (Bendersky & Hays, 2012). As a testament to the damage of hierarchical differences, people seeking social harmony downplay their high status to others to minimize status differences (Arnett & Sidanius, 2018). 

Studies also continue to find that steeper hierarchies tend to damage performance on balance, but these findings also continue to be mixed – similar to what was found in the meta-analyses. Teams with steeper hierarchies achieve less synergy (i.e., fail to produce a combined performance greater than the sum of their individual members’ performances) and perform more poorly in desert survival tasks (Manago et al., 2019), achieve worse gains in economic games (Arora & Tedeschi, 2019), and produce uncreative solutions to problems (Tang et al., 2020). In deeper explorations of why steeper hierarchies harm performance, studies have found they produce a competitive climate that leads to information hoarding among members, even when sharing information would benefit everyone (Hays et al., 2021). This might be why members of NBA teams with steeper status hierarchies are injured more often (Christie & Barling, 2010), if their internal competition promotes excessive risk-taking. Hierarchies also dampen the use of routines critical to team performance (Loch et al., 2013). 

Some studies have found no effect of hierarchy steepness on collective functioning and performance – in information technology teams (Hu et al., 2018), married couples (Cundiff et al., 2015), and negotiating dyads (Wiltermuth et al., 2018). And some studies have found positive effects of hierarchy. In particular, positive effects tend to emerge in studies of dominance complementarity within dyads, which is when one dyad member exhibits more dominant behaviors, such as an expansive posture that takes up more physical space, and the other exhibits more submissive behaviors, such as a constricted posture with legs and arms pulled in closer to the body (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). For example, dominance complementarity predicts more interpersonal comfort and higher relationship satisfaction (Dryer & Horowitz, 1997), and better joint performance in jigsaw puzzle tasks (Estroff & Nowicki, 1992), coordination tasks (Kwaadsteniet & Dijk, 2010), and negotiations (Wiltermuth et al., 2015; Wiltermuth et al., 2018). 

Positive effects of hierarchy have also been found in studies of work organizations. For example, employees who rated their work organization as more hierarchical (e.g., rated their organization as similar to a pyramid) reported a higher sense of occupational self-efficacy (e.g., “If I am in trouble at my work, I can usually think of something to do”) and occupational certainty (e.g., “To what extent are you certain about the direction in which your career is heading?”; Friesen et al., 2014). When extraverted (i.e., which involves higher levels of dominant behaviors) managers supervise more passive employees, they perform better as a group than when they supervise more proactive employees (Grant et al., 2011). When power struggles are low in teams, autocratic leadership predicts more psychological safety (De Hoogh et al., 2015).  

Summary 

Taken together, these more recent studies corroborate the two earlier meta-analyses in some ways but not others, suggesting that more work is needed to understand when hierarchies harm collective performance and when they help it. For example, consistent with the meta-analyses, hierarchies were found to help group performance on simple tasks, like jigsaw puzzles and coordination tasks (Estroff & Nowicki, 1992; Kwaadsteniet & Dijk, 2010), but hierarchies also boosted performance on more complicated tasks, like negotiations and running a restaurant (Grant et al., 2011; Wiltermuth et al., 2015). Given that research on dominance complementarity tends to find positive effects of hierarchy within dyads, one possibility is that hierarchies are more beneficial to dyadic relationships than they are to groups of three or more people. Another possibility is that hierarchies are more helpful to the collective when they are viewed as legitimate (Friesen et al., 2014) or when there appear to be opportunities for upward mobility (Hays & Bendersky, 2015). Finally, studies of the effects of hierarchy tend to compare steeper hierarchies to flatter hierarchies, rather than compare hierarchies to equality. For example, a prototypical study compared teams whose members differ considerably in status to teams whose members differ less in status. Therefore, research should also examine the effects of total egalitarianism. What happens to the collective welfare when individuals are exactly equal in power, status, or influence?  

In any case, the research does appear to refute strong functionalist assertions that hierarchies form because they enhance collective welfare and performance (e.g., Davis & Moore, 1945). Instead, the effects of hierarchy on balance tend to be negative, rather than positive. Between dominance theory and bounded functionalism, the research findings do not necessarily favor either. Dominance theory does not make explicit suggestions regarding the effects of hierarchy on the collective, and bounded functionalism suggests that hierarchies may or may not enhance collective performance, depending on how effective groups are in placing the right people in high-ranking positions. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 

Human beings are hierarchical. Whenever people develop an interpersonal relationship or form a social group, they inevitably create differences in influence, resources, and deference. Once a hierarchy emerges, it, in turn, has a profound impact on the welfare of the individuals within it. Those at the top of hierarchies are afforded all the ingredients of the “good life,” including autonomy, connection, and a sense of competence, whereas those at the bottom face constraint, isolation, unhappiness, and ill health. 

Contrary to popular belief, people prefer hierarchy over egalitarianism. They view hierarchies as fair, efficient, and functional. They strive to base their hierarchies on differences in instrumental social value—how much value individuals provide to others—but often err in doing so. For example, they give higher rank to individuals who appear to provide more value than others but who actually do not. Nevertheless, once a hierarchy forms, it quickly becomes stable and resistant to change, in part because hierarchies provide those at the top with interpersonal and intrapsychic advantages that help maintain the rank order. 

People who possess high rank, particularly in the form of elevated power, feel disinhibited, independent, and focused: The possession of power stimulates the behavioral approach system and depresses the behavioral inhibition system, leading powerholders to attend to rewards and engage in approach-oriented behavior. Power makes people feel more independent from others and diminishes their desire for affiliation. It also focuses their attention on important goals and facilitates better task performance. 

At the collective level, steeper hierarchies consistently harm people’s well-being and the quality of their interpersonal relationships. Steeper hierarchies also tend to negatively affect collective performance, though this finding is more mixed. Hierarchies are especially harmful when they instigate conflict between people, but they can be helpful when groups work on simple tasks that require less interpersonal coordination. 

In terms of the theories of hierarchy organization, the empirical findings do not support the pure functionalist view that hierarchies emerge because they solve many of the problems inherent in social living. Hierarchies are far from perfect meritocracies, and once formed, steeper hierarchies diminish rather than enhance the well-being and welfare of those within them. The empirical findings also do not provide much support for dominance accounts of hierarchy. It is possible that rank orders are sometimes driven by differences in aggressive dominance, but more research is needed to support that claim. At present, the body of findings points to a bounded functionalist view of social hierarchies: People form hierarchies because they believe hierarchical organizations are functional, and they strive to base hierarchical rank on differences in instrumental social value. However, they very often make mistakes in allocating rank, due in part to limitations in their ability to ascertain instrumental value in others. Therefore, steeper hierarchies tend to have negative effects, but can at times be beneficial. 

The above findings prompt several questions for future research. If hierarchies so frequently have negative effects on the collective, why do people appear to consistently prefer them? Does aggressive dominance help people attain power, and when does it do so? Why are hierarchies so stable and resistant to change after they have formed, even if hierarchical fluidity and mobility across ranks might benefit the collective? What are ways that can create a sense of responsibility among those at the top of the hierarchy, so that they serve the collective’s needs, rather than their own? What are ways to mitigate the effect of possessing low rank on individuals’ well-being and health? Why don’t steeper hierarchies enhance individual well-being or consistently improve collective performance—do they fail so frequently because they create separation and differences between people, or because they become corrupted after they form? Are there conditions that allow steeper hierarchies to improve collective performance? Is there an optimal level of hierarchical steepness that leverages the theoretical benefits of hierarchy (e.g., coordination efforts) and the benefits of equality (e.g., interpersonal cohesion)? 

Other areas of inquiry have been neglected and thus also need further study. For example, the intersection of diversity and social hierarchy has received far too little attention. Do people of different ethnicities respond to rank in similar or different ways? Do men and women navigate hierarchical relationships differently? The same is true for cross-cultural differences in hierarchy. Research in cross-cultural psychology has examined cultural variation in some hierarchical dimensions such as power distance (i.e., the extent to which the less powerful individuals accept and expect that power is distributed unequally; (Hofstede, 2011), but there is still much to learn about cultural specificity and universalism in the ways hierarchies emerge and affect the individuals within them. 

Finally, some recent findings have helped resuscitate classic topics in sociology and show great promise for additional inquiry. For example, “status inconsistency” research focuses on individuals whose status is high in some domains but low in others (Goffman, 1957; Jackson, 1962; Lenski, 1954; Stryker & Macke, 1978). As some recent studies show, people higher in status inconsistency, or those whose rank varies between social contexts, such as work and family, suffer from lower subjective well-being and performance (Anicich et al., 2021; Benson & Giacomin, 2020; Fernandes et al., 2021; Sabey et al., 2020; Sessions et al., 2022). Another classic topic receiving more attention is “middle status conformity,” or the idea that individuals in the middle of the status order conform more than those at the top and bottom; it is thought that high-status actors feel secure enough in their group membership to violate social norms, and low-status actors deviate from norms because they feel socially excluded regardless of what they do (Dittes & Kelley, 1956; Kelley & Shapiro, 1954).  Recent work has replicated this effect and expanded it by showing that people with middle status worry most about status loss, adopt the most conventional ideas, and engage in the most status-enhancing behaviors (Beckwith, 2019; Duguid & Goncalo, 2015; Durand & Kremp, 2016; Hu & Van den Bulte, 2014; although see Prato et al., 2019, for an exception). Yet another classic concept is Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959) “mutual fate control,” which occurs when two parties are dependent on and influence each other. This concept suggested that the total amount of power within a relationship or group can vary and that power is not zero-sum; for example, in some relationships, the two parties might not depend on each other much at all or have much influence over each other, whereas in other relationships, the two parties might be highly interdependent and have a great deal of influence over each other (see Lawler & Yoon, 1996). Building from this idea, more recent studies have found that the total amount of status group members afford each other – how much they show respect and deference towards one another – can vary, and that higher average levels of status are associated with more positive outcomes for the collective (Aubé & Rousseau, 2005; Carmeli et al., 2015; De Cremer, 2002; Flynn & Xu, 2022; Ramarajan et al., 2008). 

These questions highlight how much we still need to learn about hierarchy. While social psychology has made great strides in the past 25 years, it still has a long way to go – which makes it an exciting time to study social hierarchy. 

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ENDNOTES

The Handbook of Social Psychology, 6th edition © 2025 by Situational Press is licensed under Creative Commons- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. This work may be copied and distributed only in unmodified form, for noncommercial purposes, and with attribution.