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Social hierarchies and social networks in humans

Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans, where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a variety of forms and need not rest on dominance relations. Consequently, humans navigate multiple domains of status,...

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Autores principales: Redhead, Daniel, Power, Eleanor A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8743884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35000451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0440
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author Redhead, Daniel
Power, Eleanor A.
author_facet Redhead, Daniel
Power, Eleanor A.
author_sort Redhead, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans, where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a variety of forms and need not rest on dominance relations. Consequently, humans navigate multiple domains of status, i.e. relative standing. Importantly, while these hierarchies may be constructed from dyadic interactions, they are often more fundamentally guided by subjective peer evaluations and group perceptions. Researchers have typically focused on the distinct elements that shape individuals’ relative standing, with some emphasizing individual-level attributes and others outlining emergent macro-level structural outcomes. Here, we synthesize work across the social sciences to suggest that the dynamic interplay between individual-level and meso-level properties of the social networks in which individuals are embedded are crucial for understanding the diverse processes of status differentiation across groups. More specifically, we observe that humans not only navigate multiple social hierarchies at any given time but also simultaneously operate within multiple, overlapping social networks. There are important dynamic feedbacks between social hierarchies and the characteristics of social networks, as the types of social relationships, their structural properties, and the relative position of individuals within them both influence and are influenced by status differentiation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.
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spelling pubmed-87438842022-02-15 Social hierarchies and social networks in humans Redhead, Daniel Power, Eleanor A. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Part III: Hierarchical Structure of Dominance Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans, where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a variety of forms and need not rest on dominance relations. Consequently, humans navigate multiple domains of status, i.e. relative standing. Importantly, while these hierarchies may be constructed from dyadic interactions, they are often more fundamentally guided by subjective peer evaluations and group perceptions. Researchers have typically focused on the distinct elements that shape individuals’ relative standing, with some emphasizing individual-level attributes and others outlining emergent macro-level structural outcomes. Here, we synthesize work across the social sciences to suggest that the dynamic interplay between individual-level and meso-level properties of the social networks in which individuals are embedded are crucial for understanding the diverse processes of status differentiation across groups. More specifically, we observe that humans not only navigate multiple social hierarchies at any given time but also simultaneously operate within multiple, overlapping social networks. There are important dynamic feedbacks between social hierarchies and the characteristics of social networks, as the types of social relationships, their structural properties, and the relative position of individuals within them both influence and are influenced by status differentiation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’. The Royal Society 2022-02-28 2022-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8743884/ /pubmed/35000451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0440 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Part III: Hierarchical Structure of Dominance
Redhead, Daniel
Power, Eleanor A.
Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title_full Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title_fullStr Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title_full_unstemmed Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title_short Social hierarchies and social networks in humans
title_sort social hierarchies and social networks in humans
topic Part III: Hierarchical Structure of Dominance
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8743884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35000451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0440
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