Abstract

Individuals differ in their social influence and decision-making authority (i.e., in social status) and these differences govern their access to the resources available to their group. Existing work has demonstrated two broad routes to attaining social status: through prestige, the perceived ability and willingness to confer benefits to others, and dominance, the ability and willingness to inflict harm. I will present a study that examines whether distinct social relationships and cooperative behaviours map onto prestige and dominance. To do this, we collected social network, peer-report and network-structured economic game data from all adults in two villages in rural Colombia. We analysed these data using a multiplex generalisation of the social relations model. Our main results showed that prestigious individuals received more allocations during economic games, were more trusted and had more friends within their communities. We further found that dominant individuals were more ostracized by their communities—but also had more friends—and were targets of punishment and nominated both as being trustworthy and untrustworthy. I will outline that our detailed data provides nuanced—and, at face-value, counter-intuitive—results and provides important empirical evidence that, while dominant individuals may be ostracised by many members of their communities, they are able to maintain their social standing by conferring benefits to their friend. Taken together, our study highlights the social complexity associated with status dynamics in real-world settings. I will end my talk by briefly outlining my ongoing and future research plans, with special focus on the ENDOW project, a longitudinal comparative project examining the effect of social support networks on material wealth inequality across 58 small-scale subsistence societies.

Practical information