Maintenance Of Social Hierarchy Research Articles

Characterization of social hierarchy formation and maintenance in same-sex, group-housed male and female C57BL/6 J mice

Social hierarchies are a prevalent feature of all animal groups, and an individual's rank within the group can significantly affect their overall health, typically at the greatest expense of the lowest-ranked individuals, or omegas. These subjects have been shown to exhibit various stress-related phenotypes, such as increased hypothalamic-pituitary axis activity and increased amygdalar corticotropin-releasing factor levels compared to higher-ranked subjects. However, these findings have been primarily characterized in males and in models requiring exhibition of severe aggression. The goals of the current study, therefore, were to characterize the formation and maintenance of social hierarchies using the tube test and palatable liquid competition in same-sex groups of male and female C57BL/6 J mice. We also aimed to examine the effects of tube test-determined social rank on plasma and hypothalamic oxytocin and vasopressin levels, peptides with established roles in social behaviors and the stress response. Lastly, we assessed the effects of environmental enrichment and length of testing on the measures outlined above. Overall, we demonstrated that males and females develop social hierarchies and that these hierarchies can be determined using the tube test. While we were unable to establish a consistent connection between peptide levels and social rank, we observed transient changes in these peptides reflecting complex interactions between social rank, sex, environment, and length of testing. We also found that many male and female omegas began to exhibit passive coping behavior after repeated tube test losses, demonstrating the potential of this assay to serve as a model of chronic, mild psychosocial stress.

Motivated inquiry: ideology shapes responses to the Christian Porter rape allegation

ABSTRACT Objective After learning of the rape allegation against the Attorney-General, Australians were divided in their support for an inquiry. We hypothesised that motivated reasoning on this issue would be associated with ideological preferences. We therefore examined whether perceptions of arguments about the inquiry could be explained by participants’ political orientation, preference for hierarchy (SDO), and motivation to justify the gender status quo (GSJ). Method Three months after the allegation was made public, we recruited a gender-balanced sample of 554 Australians to complete an online survey. Results Participants believed that an article arguing for an inquiry was stronger than an article arguing against an inquiry. However, this effect was weaker among those on the right of the political spectrum and those high on SDO. Political orientation was also associated with differing evaluations of the article’s authors: left-leaning participants found the pro-inquiry author more credible, but right-leaning participants did not. GSJ was not associated with differing evaluations of the articles or their authors. Conclusions These findings suggest that ideological preferences are associated with motivated reasoning when evaluating partisan allegations of sexual misconduct. Evaluations of such allegations appear to vary according to people’s political attitudes and preferences for social equality or hierarchy. KEY POINTS What is already known about this topic: (1) In early 2021, Australians were deeply divided in their support for an inquiry into the rape allegation against Christian Porter. (2) Individuals tend to respond to political sexual misconduct allegations with a partisan bias. (3) Gender system justification (GSJ) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are associated with the denial of injustice towards women, and the maintenance of social hierarchies, respectively. What this topic adds: (1) Ideological preferences can help to explain how people evaluate arguments about the inquiry. (2) Participants on the political left and those low on SDO evaluated a pro-inquiry article as significantly stronger than the anti-inquiry article, but this effect was reduced amongst those on the right and those high on SDO. (3) These findings provide evidence that political orientation and SDO are associated with motivated reasoning when evaluating partisan allegations of sexual misconduct.

Introduction: Feeding Bodies, Nurturing Identities: The Politics of Diet in Late Colonial and Early Post-Colonial India

This introductory essay provides an overview of the main subfields of research into the histories of foodstuffs, diet and nutrition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asia, thus situating the contributions to this themed special section in wider historiographical debates and controversies. It argues that the bulk of existing research has focused either on the conflictual role of food and diet in the colonial encounter, or on the emergence of nutritional sciences in India (and in the countries providing food aid to India) during the post-colonial phase in response to the protracted recurrence of food scarcity in the subcontinent. It subsequently identifies a research lacuna by pointing to the conspicuous absence of historical studies on Dalits and food in spite of the topic’s obvious relevance for the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies. The article ends with short previews of the individual essays assembled in this collection.

Everyday Catastrophes: Gender, Labour and Power in Beckett's Theatre

In an era of public consciousness about gendered inequalities in the world of work, as well as recent revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in theatre and film production, Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) bears striking resonances. This article will suggest that, through the figure of its Assistant, the play stages the gendered nature of the labour of making art, and, in her actions, shows the kind of complicit disgust familiar to many who work in the entertainment industry, especially women. In unpacking this idea, I conceptualise the distinction between the everyday and ‘the event’, as in, between modes of quotidian labour and the attention-grabbing moment of art, between the invisible foundations of representation and the spectacle of that representation. It is my thesis that this play stages exactly this tension and that deploying a discourse of maintenance art allows the play to be read in the context of the labour of theatre-making. Highlighting the Assistant's labour becomes a way of making visible the structures of authority that are invested in maintaining gender boundaries and showing how art is too often complicit in the maintenance of social hierarchies.

My own flesh and blood: stratified parental compassion and law in Korean slavery

ABSTRACTThis article examines the relationship between human emotions and slavery in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) by examining legislative processes as well as private practices concerning the status of the offspring of a yangban man and his slave-status concubine. The legislative discussions and decisions on the topic at the royal court often subscribed to the notion that these children were also the yangban’s ‘flesh and blood’ and called for compassion, a Confucian emotional norm expected of parents. When yangban fathers manumitted their slave-status children, they recorded their feelings in the same affective language expressed in the legal discourses. Yet, because slaves were among the yangban’s most valuable possessions and yangban elites regarded the maintenance of social hierarchy as the key for social order, legal paths for manumission were narrowly defined and emotional norms did not always dictate parents’ actions. By investigating the larger legal framework related to slave-status children of yangban elites alongside specific cases, this study seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the historical impact and practices of emotional politics in relation to slavery. It finds that the yangban fathers’ very primordial human emotion towards their own children was stratified by social and economic conditions and selectively applied.

Increased brain glucocorticoid actions following social defeat in rats facilitates the long-term establishment of social subordination

Social rank is frequently established through aggressive encounters between new conspecifics. Despite increasing evidence suggesting that social rank is critical for the well-being of both humans and animals, knowledge about the factors influencing social rank remain scarce. Stress was previously shown to affect the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchies in rats. Likewise, increasing systemic corticosterone levels post-encounter in the emerging subordinate rat facilitates the long-term establishment of social subordination. Here, we investigated whether central corticosterone actions are sufficient to mediate this effect. Our data shows that, indeed, an intracerebroventricular corticosterone injection given to the emerging subordinate rat facilitates the long-term maintenance of the subordinate rank. Next, we attempted to identify a particular brain region in which enhancement of corticosterone actions could be sufficient to exert the facilitation of a long-term maintenance in the emerging subordinate brain. However, post-encounter administration of corticosterone into the basolateral amygdala, medial amygdala, lateral septum and the nucleus accumbens, brain regions selected for their implication in social rank establishment and emotional modulation of memory, did not affect long-term social subordination. Our study highlights the involvement of intracerebral corticosterone actions on the facilitation of long-lasting subordinate behavior, likely by having a modulatory role in the neurobehavioral plasticity engaged in the shaping of social subordination.

Dress, Ideology, and Control: The Regulation of Clothing in Early Modern English Utopian Texts, 1516–1656

ABSTRACT This article analyzes English utopian texts written by the educated elite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to identify attitudes toward, or social dreaming about, clothing, fashion, and society in early modern England. From Thomas More's Utopia to Sir Balthazar Gerbier's “Loix,” clothes are repeatedly deployed in governance to enforce legal, political, religious, gender, and social hierarchies and to impose social controls. These texts reveal their authors' largely unexamined attitudes toward dress and the great importance placed by them on the codification of clothing as a primary tool for societal control and the maintenance of social hierarchies.

Does MCH play a role on establishment or maintenance of social hierarchy in Nile tilapia?

Body coloration has a fundamental role in animal communication by signaling sex, age, reproductive behavior, aggression, etc. Nile-tilapia exhibits dominance hierarchy and the dominants are paler than subordinates. During social interactions in these animals, these color changes occur rapidly, and normally the subordinates become dark. In teleosteans, from the great number of hormones and neurotransmitters involved in color changes, melanocyte hormone stimulates (α-MSH) and melanin concentrates hormone (MCH) are the most remarkable. The aim of this project was to investigate the role of MCH in the establishment of hierarchical dominance of the Nile-tilapia. We analyzed the effect of background coloration in the dominance hierarchy. It was then compared to the melanophore sensibility of dominants and subordinates' fishes to MCH; finally, it was checked if the social rank affects the number of these pigment cells in dominants and subordinated fishes.Fishes which have a social hierarchy established and adjusted individually to the background exhibits paler body coloration when a visual contact was possible, independently of previous social rank and background color. Probably, even recognizing each other, fishes could be defending their new territory. Melanophores of the subordinate fishes were more sensible to MCH than dominants. It suggests that dominants fishes, which are paler than subordinates, could be under a chronic effect of MCH, which could be due a desensitization of melanophores to this hormone. The opposite effect seems to be occurring on subordinate fishes. It was not observed a significant change in the number of melanophores when the fishes were exposed to a prolonged period of agonistic interaction. It is possible that the exposure time for this interaction might not have been sufficient to have any change in the number of these cells of dominants and subordinate fishes.

The Roles of Dopamine D2 Receptor in the Social Hierarchy of Rodents and Primates

Dopamine (DA) plays significant roles in regulation of social behavior. In social groups of humans and other animals, social hierarchy exists, which is determined by several behavioral characteristics such as aggression and impulsivity as well as social affiliations. In this study, we investigated the effects of pharmacological blockade of DA D2 receptor on social hierarchy of Japanese macaque and mouse social groups. We found acute administration of the D2 antagonist, sulpiride, in socially housed Japanese macaques attenuated social dominance when the drug was given to high social class macaques. A similar attenuation of social dominance was observed in high social class mice with D2 antagonist administration. In contrast, D2 antagonist administration in low social class macaque resulted in more stable social hierarchy of the group, whereas such effect was not observed in mouse social group. These results suggest that D2 receptor signaling may play important roles in establishment and maintenance of social hierarchy in social groups of several species of animals.

Antecedents to Inequality: Exploring Links between Ideology and Maintenance of Social Hierarchy

Inter- and intra-group inequality is common to the point of ubiquity in our world. This symposium will explore the antecedents to such inequality, namely, the subtle ways in which ideological belief systems legitimize and propagate existing hierarchical relations between social groups. Our first presenter, Dr. Arnold Ho, will discuss a cutting-edge conceptualization of the social dominance orientation scale and how its underlying constructs differentially relate to explicit and implicit indicators of a preference for inter-group inequality. Next, our second and third presenters, Safiya Castel and Taylor Phillips, will discuss how ideology can affect our attention to and support for members of disadvantaged groups. Finally, our fourth and fifth presenters, Dr. Nour Kteily and Sean Fath, will explore how ideology can affect our attitudes toward disadvantaged groups as a whole and perceptions of social inequality more broadly. Theorizing and Measuring Preferences for Intergroup Inequality Using the New SDO7 Scale Presenter: Arnold K. Ho; U. of Michigan Presenter: Jim Sidanius; Harvard U. Presenter: Nour Kteily; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Presenter: Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington; London School of Economics Presenter: Felicia Pratto; U. of Connecticut Presenter: Kristin Henkel; U. of Saint Joseph Presenter: Rob Foels; Stockton U. Presenter: Andrew Stewart; Clark U. Rise of the Social Underdog: Antecedents to Support for Successful Low Status Group Members Presenter: Safiya E Castel; UCLA Presenter: Miguel M. Unzueta; U. of California, Los Angeles Effective to a Fault: Organizational Structure Predicts Attitudes toward Minority Organizations Presenter: Sean Fath; Duke U. Presenter: Devon Proudfoot; Duke U. Presenter: Aaron C. Kay; Duke U. Social Dominance Orientation Drives Motivated Perceptions of Inequality Presenter: Nour Kteily; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Presenter: Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington; London School of Economics Presenter: Arnold K. Ho; U. of Michigan How Blind is Colorblind? Ideologically-Motivated Attention to Diverse Group Members Presenter: L Taylor Phillips; NYU Stern Presenter: Brian S. Lowery; Stanford U. Presenter: Nalini Ambady; Stanford U.

"Race or Ethnic Group?" Politics of Race in Malaysia

This paper investigates the reasons why university students in Malaysia prefer the term race over ethnic groups.The usage of the word race by students and faculty members in the classroom will be examined, along with academic writings and media usages of this term.Further, reasons for the pervasiveness of the term race in Malaysia will be explored.In this paper I argue that the concept of race is used to create a notion that the three major ethnic groups in Malaysia are physically/biologically separate groups, and that their differences will never be changed.Such sedentary ethnic divisions are important for the maintenance of social hierarchy and status quo in Malaysia.

African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800–1860 by Dea H. Boster (review)

Reviewed by: African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800–1860 by Dea H. Boster Emily Tafford (bio) African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800–1860. By Dea H. Boster. (New York: Routledge, 2013. Pp. 184. $125.00 cloth) Disability studies scholars in recent years have called for a broader conversation between the history of disability and more conventional histories, arguing that, like race, disability should be understood as a social construct and therefore not be confined to specialist medical texts. Despite shifting trends in the history of slavery, the issue of slave disability has remained obscured. Studies of slave experience and resistance—often because of their desire to highlight capability and agency—overlook the presence of slaves with disabilities and their impact upon southern society. Fully aware of her predecessors and contemporaries from multiple disciplines, Boster seeks to reclaim the history of disability in African American slavery and to analyze the [End Page 668] intersections and negotiations of race, disability, and power, which she argues were central to the plantation economy. As part of the Routledge Studies in African American History and Culture series, African American Slavery and Disability strives to incorporate disability history into the well-established discipline of slavery studies, which will potentially expose readers to concepts, stories, and methods that have not yet fully taken hold within its canon. Whilst acknowledging the foundations laid by medical historians such as Sharla M. Fett, Boster aims to avoid the confines of a specialist study and instead attempts to uncover disability not just in its relation to the slave body, but within the institution’s labor expectations, economy, and power dynamics. Using problematic sources such as slave narratives and abolitionist tracts alongside more traditional texts including plantation records and correspondence, Boster is able to point to the complex network of institutions and individuals who negotiated what it meant to be a disabled slave. African American Slavery and Disability is most engaging when it tells the stories of disabled individuals, referring to both their difficult circumstances as challenges to white authority, as well as their ability to manipulate understandings of defective and dysfunctional bodies for their own gain. In chapter four, Boster points to the activities and jobs that disabled slaves did perform, therefore providing a compelling argument that these individuals contributed to the plantation economy, and that slave owners were influenced by a variety of aesthetic and emotional, as well as financial, concerns when determining the value of their disabled chattel. The structure of the book, although useful in demonstrating the significance of the disabled slave to all manner of financial, legal, medical, and cultural aspects of the plantation society, makes the discussion of slave resistance somewhat repetitive, as instances of negotiation and malingering follow the core argument of each chapter rather than being discussed in one chapter. Yet this broad scope ultimately works in Boster’s favor, as it allows the reader to grasp the wider imperative of inculcating all history with disability history. The [End Page 669] focus in the second chapter on the meanings ascribed to race and disability, and the function of disability as metaphor, allows the book to have relevance beyond slavery history and can offer something to researchers who concern themselves with the creation of prescriptive norms and the maintenance of social hierarchies. The conclusion of the book emphasizes the volume of evidence about slave disability, its constructions, contradictions, and the varied black and white perspectives that negotiated the contested concept. The potential to use disability as a category of analysis presents great opportunities in slavery studies and to those concerned with the intersections between other categories such as race, gender, and class. Emily Tafford EMILY TAFFORD studies the history of human displays in American world’s fairs at the University of Liverpool. Her PhD thesis will be titled “Race and Disability in the Human Display: World’s Fairs in Western America, 1894–1916.” Copyright © 2014 Kentucky Historical Society

Hierarchies, Power Inequalities, and Organizational Corruption

This article uses social dominance theory (SDT) to explore the dynamic and systemic nature of the initiation and maintenance of organizational corruption. Rooted in the definition of organizational corruption as misuse of power or position for personal or organizational gain, this work suggests that organizational corruption is driven by the individual and institutional tendency to structure societies as group-based social hierarchies. SDT describes a series of factors and processes across multiple levels of analysis that systemically contribute to the initiation and maintenance of social hierarchies and associated power inequalities, favoritism, and discrimination. I posit that the same factors and processes also contribute to individuals’ lower awareness of the misuse of power and position within the social hierarchies, leading to the initiation and maintenance of organizational corruption. Specifically, individuals high in social dominance orientation, believing that they belong to superior groups, are likely to be less aware of corruption because of their feeling of entitlement to greater power and their desire to maintain dominance even if that requires exploiting others. Members of subordinate groups are also likely to have lower awareness of corruption if they show more favoritism toward dominant group members to enhance their sense of worth and preserve social order. Institutions contribute to lower awareness of corruption by developing and enforcing structures, norms, and practices that promote informational ambiguity and maximize focus on dominance and promotion. Dynamic coordination among individuals and institutions is ensured through the processes of person-environment fit and legitimizing beliefs, ideologies, or rationalizations.

Breeding-context-dependent relationships between song and cFOS labeling within social behavior brain regions in male European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris)

Male European starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris) sing throughout the year, but the social factors that motivate singing behavior differ depending upon the context in which song is produced. In a non-breeding context (when testosterone concentrations are low), starlings form large, mixed-sex flocks and song is involved in flock cohesion and perhaps maintenance of social hierarchies. In contrast, in a breeding context (when testosterone concentrations are high), male song plays a direct role in mate attraction. How the nervous system ensures that song production occurs in an appropriate context in response to appropriate stimuli is not well understood. The song control system regulates song production, learning, and, to some extent, perception; however, these nuclei do not appear to regulate the social context in which song is produced. A network of steroid hormone sensitive nuclei of the basal forebrain and midbrain regulates social behavior. The present study used the immediate early gene cFOS to explore possible involvement of these regions in context-dependent song production. Numbers of cFOS-labeled cells in the medial bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, anterior hypothalamus, and ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus related positively only to song produced in a breeding context. In contrast, numbers of cFOS-labeled cells in three zones of the lateral septum related positively only to song produced in a non-breeding context. Taken together, these data suggest differential regulation of male starling song by social behavior nuclei depending upon the breeding context in which it is produced.

The effects of the genotype and social stress on cAMP- and substrate-dependent mechanism regulating the hormone-producing function of mouse testes

Several steps of cAMP- and substrate-dependent testosterone production in the testes were studied with laboratory mouse micropopulations of six inbred strains (A/He, CBA/Lac, C57Bl/6J, DD, YT, PP). The strains differed in basal testosterone production in the gonads and in its response to activation of the adenylate cyclase signal transduction pathway at various steps by human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the cholera toxin, forskolin, and dibutyryl-cAMP and in the presence of pregnenolone, an early precursor of testosterone. Establishment of dominant–subordinate relationships in mouse populations substantially affected testosterone production in response to all activators of testicular steroidogenesis. The secretory activity of the testes decreased at the early establishment of social hierarchy in experimental micropopulations, then returned to the initial level, and again decreased in the case of activation with hCG, dibutyryl-cAMP, and pregnenolone. With all activators of steroidogenesis, basal and activated testosterone production changed in the same direction during the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchy, suggesting coordinated changes in all examined steps of testosterone biosynthesis in the testes. The among-strain differences in response to all activators of steroidogenesis remained much the same at various stages of the establishment of social hierarchy. The parameters of cAMP- and substrate-dependent testosterone production averaged over individual stages of the establishment of social hierarchy proved associated. Their genotypic correlations were positive and, in many cases, significant. Subsequent component analysis showed that one principal component accounted for more than 80% of the total among-strain variation, suggesting a coordinated genetic control of the endocrine function of the testes.

Effect of Ultraviolet Radiation on the Performance of Intact Male Turkeys

Ultraviolet (UV) sensitivity in birds has been shown to be intrinsically involved in the selection of mates; UV may, therefore, also play a role in the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchies in intensively housed turkeys. Cereal seeds and straw are known to reflect UV, and turkeys may use these cues for foraging and exploratory behaviors. A series of trials was conducted to see if supplementation of the photoperiod (12 h at various white light intensities) with UV radiation (0.06 to 0.16 W/m2 at floor level) and regular supplies of straw to the litter allow a better recognition of individuals within a flock, enrich the environment by the provision of new pecking material and of radiation across the whole range of avian sensitivity, and, as a consequence, reduce the incidence of injurious pecking in male turkeys that have not been beak-trimmed, detoed, or desnooded. Body weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion efficiency, and leg integrity were generally not significantly affected by UV supplementation and environmental enrichment. In contrast, the provision of UV radiation, simultaneous with a 12-h photoperiod of white light at intensities of <70 lx to 5 wk and of 10 lx to 20 wk, and the regular addition of straw to the litter, significantly reduced the incidence of culling because of injurious pecking. However, complex interactions among UV supplementation, white light intensity, and material environmental enrichment precluded a simple recommendation to solve the problem of injurious pecking.