7 - Status

Summary

Status hierarchy likely exists in all human societies, whether pronounced or more subtle, and even in more egalitarian societies where resources are widely shared and overt status-seeking is actively policed. This chapter reviews models of the evolution of status hierarchy, including models from behavioral ecology as well as from evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. A central concern of these disparate models is the adaptive problem of why any individual should adopt a subordinate status if higher status tends to increase fitness. Solutions to this problem involve the benefits to individuals from avoiding costs of repeated competition over resources or from deferring to prestigious others. Hierarchy can facilitate coordination and collective action that, in humans, enables both the massive scale of our societies and unparalleled levels of exploitation. These explanations are summarized in detail while addressing related questions, including: Do women and men differ in status-seeking? What contributes to variation in status hierarchy across species and across human societies? The goals of this chapter are to highlight consilience and provoke new directions within the evolutionary literature on status hierarchy.