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by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-24
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This preprint studied how perceived social status—prestige versus dominance—relates to dyadic behavior in four rural Colombian communities using peer nominations of prestige, dominance, trust, affinity, fear, and friendship combined with network-structured economic games (altruistic giving, exploitation, and costly punishment) in 496 individuals. Using a multiplex network model across 865,944 observations and 76,427 ties, the authors found that more-prestigious individuals were more trusted, had more friends, received more cooperative transfers, and were less often punished or exploited, whereas more-dominant individuals were more feared and distrusted and became preferential targets of exploitation and costly punishment despite receiving more cooperative transfers and having more friends. The paper is limited by its preprint status and provides a first large-scale test of dyad-level dominance leveling rather than evidence from peer-reviewed research. Relevance to endometriosis: The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.
Abstract
Social status regulates influence and well-being in most social-animals. In humans, social status can be attained via two distinct routes: prestige (freely-conferred deference, typically tracking the ability of individuals to confer benefits) and dominance (fear-based deference, typically tracking the ability of individuals to inflict costs). While prestige and dominance are well-studied from a psychological perspective, their influence on dyadic behavior, including social leveling, remains under-explored---especially in small-scale communities. Here, we present data from four Colombian communities (N_ind=496), where we collected peer nominations of prestige, dominance, trust, affinity, fear, and friendship, and ran network-structured economic games measuring altruistic giving, exploitation, and costly punishment. Applying a multiplex network model to these data (N_obs=865,944; N_ties=76,427), we analyze how perceptions of status relate to dyadic game behavior. More-prestigious individuals were more trusted, had more friends, received more cooperative transfers, and were less frequently punished or exploited. More-dominant individuals experienced discrepant outcomes: they too had more friends and received more cooperative transfers, but they were also more feared and distrusted, and were preferential targets of exploitation and costly punishment. In short, prestige conferred clear social and economic advantages, while dominance carried net costs. Our work provides the first large-scale test of dyad-level dominance leveling in real-world networks, and yields support for the idea that dominance in human communities is a precarious strategy. Although dominant individuals may be targets of friendship and cooperation, perhaps due to a linkage between dominance and local authority, they are more heavily leveled and face difficulty in obtaining positive, community-wide standing.
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This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.
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Social status regulates influence and well-being in most social-animals. In humans, social status can be attained via two distinct routes: prestige (freely-conferred deference, typically tracking the ability of individuals to confer benefits) and dominance (fear-based deference, typically tracking the ability of individuals to inflict costs). While prestige and dominance are well-studied from a psychological perspective, their influence on dyadic behavior, including social leveling, remains under-explored---especially in small-scale communities. Here, we present data from four Colombian communities (N_ind=496), where we collected peer nominations of prestige, dominance, trust, affinity, fear, and friendship, and ran network-structured economic games measuring altruistic giving, exploitation, and costly punishment. Applying a multiplex network model to these data (N_obs=865,944; N_ties=76,427), we analyze how perceptions of status relate to dyadic game behavior. More-prestigious individuals were more trusted, had more friends, received more cooperative transfers, and were less frequently punished or exploited. More-dominant individuals experienced discrepant outcomes: they too had more friends and received more cooperative transfers, but they were also more feared and distrusted, and were preferential targets of exploitation and costly punishment. In short, prestige conferred clear social and economic advantages, while dominance carried net costs. Our work provides the first large-scale test of dyad-level dominance leveling in real-world networks, and yields support for the idea that dominance in human communities is a precarious strategy. Although dominant individuals may be targets of friendship and cooperation, perhaps due to a linkage between dominance and local authority, they are more heavily leveled and face difficulty in obtaining positive, community-wide standing.
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2T64N
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Cooperation, inequality, Social capital, social hierarchy, social networks
Published: 2025-08-22 08:43
Last Updated: 2025-08-22 08:43
CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data and Code Availability Statement:
Data and code are available at: https://github.com/ctross/prestige_and_dominance
Language:
English
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