Abstract
Social status is often metaphorically construed in terms of spatial relations such as height, size, and numerosity. This has led to the idea that social status might partially be represented by an analogue magnitude system, responsible for processing the magnitude of various physical and abstract dimensions. Accordingly, processing of social status should obey Weber’s law. We conducted three studies to investigate whether social status comparisons would indicate behavioral outcomes derived from Weber’s law: the distance effect and the size effect. Dependent variable was the latency of status comparisons for a variety of both learned and familiar hierarchies. As predicted and in line with previous findings, we observed a clear distance effect. However, the effect of size variation differed from the size effect hypothesized a priori, and an unexpected interaction between the two effects was observed. In conclusion, we provide a robust confirmation of previous observations of the distance effect in social status comparisons, but the shape of the size effect requires new theorizing.
Highlights
Social status hierarchies are ubiquitous in human social life
Several lines of research from social psychology and cognitive psychology converge to suggest that a special system exists for this type of social cognition, which handles hierarchical rank as magnitude
The rest were recruited from the university campus on a voluntary basis
Summary
Encode, recall, update, and importantly compare individuals and groups regarding who is above whom This informs us about who is likely to have resources and influences, who might prevail in negotiations and conflicts. Often these hierarchies include ourselves, or we must deal with individuals in them. For all these social interactions, human cognition must facilitate social cognitions about hierarchies. Several lines of research from social psychology and cognitive psychology converge to suggest that a special system exists for this type of social cognition, which handles hierarchical rank as magnitude. A key prediction of these accounts is that ranking decisions
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