Status-seeking Behavior Research Articles

Socioeconomic Status & Health Seeking Behavior of Rural People: A Cross Sectional Study in Fatikchhari, Chittagong

The objective of the study was to assess socioeconomic status & health seeking behavior of the selected rural community people. A cross-sectional study was conducted to collect data from 221 community people residing in 18 Unions of Fatikchori Upazila. Interviewer assisted survey questionnaire was used. Uni-variate and bi-variate analysis were conducted using SPSS for windows version 20. Of 221 patients’ majority were female (54%). The mean age of participant was 40 ± 11 (SD); around 60 % respondents seek health care from village doctors and nearby local health center. However, one-third number of population (35%) visited formal healthcare providers, such as registered Doctors, Physiotherapists, Dentists and Nurses having government approved professional degrees. The highest number of respondents seeks health care for fever (23%) followed by maternal and child related condition (22%) and pain, paralysis and arthritis related issues (22%). This study identified that number of factors affecting health seeking behavior including socio-demography, knowledge and perception towards healthcare etc. Awareness raising activities, education for health behavior change & pro-people healthcare delivery interventions may be instituted.

Happy or liberal? Making sense of behavior in transport policy design

Appropriate microeconomic foundations of mobility are decisive for successful policy design in transportation and, in particular, for the challenge of climate change mitigation. Recent research suggests that behavior in transportation cannot be adequately represented by the standard approach of revealed preferences. Moreover, mobility choices are influenced by factors widely regarded as normatively irrelevant. Here we draw on insights from behavioral economics, psychology and welfare theory to examine how transport users make mobility decisions and when it is desirable to modify them through policy interventions. First, we explore systematically which preferences, heuristics and decision processes are relevant for mobility-specific behavior, such as mode choice. We highlight the influence of infrastructure on the formation of travel preferences. Second, we argue that the behavioral account of decision-making requires policy-makers to take a position on whether transport policies should be justified by appealing to preference satisfaction or to raising subjective well-being. This distinction matters because of the (i) influence of infrastructure on preference formation, (ii) health benefits from non-motorized mobility, (iii) negative impact of commuting on happiness and (iv) status-seeking behavior of individuals. The orthodox approach of only internalizing externalities is insufficient because it does not allow for the evaluation of these effects. Instead, our analysis suggests that transport demand modeling should consider behavioral effects explicitly.

Income Inequality and Status Seeking

It is well established that income inequality is associated with lower societal well-being, but the psychosocial causes of this relationship are poorly understood. A social-rank hypothesis predicts that members of unequal societies are likely to devote more of their resources to status-seeking behaviors such as acquiring positional goods. We used Google Correlate to find search terms that correlated with our measure of income inequality, and we controlled for income and other socioeconomic factors. We found that of the 40 search terms used more frequently in states with greater income inequality, more than 70% were classified as referring to status goods (e.g., designer brands, expensive jewelry, and luxury clothing). In contrast, 0% of the 40 search terms used more frequently in states with less income inequality were classified as referring to status goods. Finally, we showed how residual-based analysis offers a new methodology for using Google Correlate to provide insights into societal attitudes and motivations while avoiding confounds and high risks of spurious correlations.

Status Seeking through Social Creativity Has Its Limits

The paper uses social identity theory to assess South Korea’s lack of membership in the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform, a group of small states advocating for the global elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies. This paper asks whether South Korea would be a complement to the Friends group and whether joining the group would boost Korea’s international profile and middle power status. It subsequently tries to explain why Korea has yet to join the group. After a short introduction, the paper provides a general explanation of the need for fossil fuel subsidy reform. Section three introduces the concept of social creativity and argues that South Korea is embracing status-seeking behavior. Section four presents the Friends group and assesses South Korea as a complement to that group. Section five looks at the international prospects of subsidy reform from an institutional perspective and asks whether the Friends group or South Korea can potentially influence movement in subsidy reform. Section six argues that although South Korea seems an ideal fit to join the Friends group, South Korea has not joined for a number of reasons, including domestic economic constraints, considerations in bilateral relations and Korean preferences for certain institutional structures. Lastly, the paper concludes that status-seeking behavior has its limits, and although the Friends group would add little benefit to South Korea’s international profile, South Korea’s lack of membership in the group is a missed opportunity to further subsidy reform.

Income inequality, status seeking, and savings rates in Canada

This paper uses Canadian provincial-level data and a variant of James uesenberry’s relative income hypothesis proposed by Frank et al. (2010) to examine the relationship between income inequality and savings rates. The theory predicts that increased expenditure of top income earners leads those just below them in the income scale to spend more as well, then the next group also spends more, and so on. This phenomenon is due to people’s status seeking behaviour. Hence, increased income inequality will trigger increases in consumption by individuals in all income groups, which in turn leads to declining personal savings rates. The empirical analysis based on this theory led to some interesting findings. First, at the national level, increased income inequality has a significant negative effect on personal savings rates. At the provincial level, the relationship also emerges in eight of ten provinces. Second, both the national and provincial results imply that growth in per capita income that worsens income inequality impacts negatively on personal savings rates. I interpret the results as evidence that social factors such as status-seeking generate consumption interdependence and are significant determinants of consumption and savings decisions of Canadians.

Honestly, why are you donating money to charity? An experimental study about self-awareness in status-seeking behavior

This study investigates experimentally whether people in retrospective are self-aware that they engage in status-seeking behavior. Subjects participated in a real-effort task where effort translated into a donation to a charity. Within-subjects we varied the visibility of their performance (private/public feedback). On average, subjects exerted more effort in the public treatment. After the real-effort task, subjects were asked to state their retrospective beliefs about their performance in public given feedback about their performance in private, and about the performance of other subjects in public given the average performance in private. Between-subjects, we varied the compensation that participants would receive for providing accurate performance estimates. Our results show a lack of self-awareness about status-seeking behavior that is robust to increased belief compensation. We also found that subjects expected others to be as status-seeking as they are themselves or even less.

Don’t take away my status! – Evidence from the restructuring of a virtual reward system

In a natural experiment on a popular German Question & Answer community we investigate how user status demotion affects user activity levels in online communities. The virtual reward system on this platform is designed to activate the status seeking behavior of its members. The members’ status within the community is represented by the member’s rank. In the experiment the platform operator restructured the virtual reward system, in the process reducing or abolishing the incentives for selected activities on the platform. After restructuring nearly all users saw their status demoted, with almost three quarters having lost one rank, and more than a quarter having lost two or more ranks. We identify the impact of status demotion by comparing how the members in these two groups respond to the restructuring. We find that users who lost two or more ranks reduce their post-event activities for which the incentives were reduced or abolished by 18% more than those who lost only one rank, and by 9% more than the latter for activities which were unaffected by the event.

Testosterone, Neural Circuits, and Male Depression

Although alterations in plasma testosterone concentration and the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis are associated with psychiatric disorders and symptoms including mood disorders, psychosis, anger, and aggression, their underlying biological mechanisms of action have been researched only to a very limited extent (1). In contrast, numerous studies in healthy control subjects have revealed the modulating role of testosterone in social and economic interactions and in status-seeking behavior. However, most of these studies were correlational in nature; that is, they provided evidence for associations between physiologic testosterone plasma levels and human behavior or underlying brain function.

Newsvendor model for a dyadic supply chain with Nash bargaining fairness concerns

The paper investigates newsvendor problem for a dyadic supply chain in which both the supplier and the retailer have the preference of status-seeking with fairness concerns. Nash bargaining solution is introduced as the fairness reference point and equilibrium results are derived. The effects of fairness-concerned status-seeking behaviors on optimal decisions as well as channel efficiency are further analyzed. It is shown that the channel efficiency will decrease because of such behavioral preference. The retailer’s share will be larger when the supplier concerns fairness less, and the supplier’s sensitivity to fairness plays a relatively more important role for the channel efficiency. Additionally, another interesting managerial insight is concluded that fairness concerns will not change the status of channel coordination in certain conditions. More specifically, those contracts able (unable) to coordinate fairness-neutral supply chain, based on affine transformations with scale factors within certain ranges, still succeed (fail) to coordinate the fairness-concerned. Furthermore, several insights on bargaining powers are given as well.

Testosterone Inhibits Trust but Promotes Reciprocity

The steroid hormone testosterone has been associated with behavior intended to obtain or maintain high social status. Although such behavior is typically characterized as aggressive and competitive, it is clear that high social status is achieved and maintained not only through antisocial behavior but also through prosocial behavior. In the present experiment, we investigated the impact of testosterone administration on trust and reciprocity using a double-blind randomized control design. We found that a single dose of 0.5 mg of testosterone decreased trust but increased generosity when repaying trust. These findings suggest that testosterone may mediate different types of status-seeking behavior. It may increase competitive, potentially aggressive, and antisocial behavior when social challenges and threats (i.e., abuse of trust and betrayal) need to be considered; however, it may promote prosocial behavior in the absence of these threats, when high status and good reputation may be best served by prosocial behavior.

Families matter: Social relationships and adolescent HIV testing behaviors in Ndola, Zambia

A cross-sectional survey among 550 randomly selected 16–19-year-olds in Ndola, Zambia, assessed the influence of individual (e.g., HIV knowledge), relational (e.g., discussed HIV testing with family), and environmental factors (e.g., distance) on adolescents’ use of HIV counseling and testing. A multivariable logistic regression analysis comparing respondents who have taken an HIV test to respondents who have not found that at the relational level believing that one’s family would not be upset if the youth has taken an HIV test (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 5.08; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.16–22.35); and having discussed with a family member whether or not to take an HIV test (AOR = 3.51; 95% CI = 1.08–11.47) were significantly related to adolescent testing. At the individual-level, having ever had sex (AOR = 6.43; 95% CI = 2.14–19.30) and being out-of-school (AOR = 2.95; 95% CI = 1.32–6.59) were also strongly associated with HIV testing. Environmental measures were not found to be significantly related to HIV testing. These findings support the need to examine not only individual characteristics but also relational level factors, particularly the role of families, when implementing and evaluating adolescent HIV testing strategies. Programs to increase communication about HIV testing and counseling within families should be tested in a prospective design in order to assess the impact on young people’s decisions to learn their HIV status and subsequent health seeking and protective behaviors.

The Dark Side of Competition for Status

Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one's performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others' work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1747 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

Endogenous fiscal policies, environmental quality, and status-seeking behavior

This paper analyzes endogenous fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model where agents care about social status and environmental quality. The quest for a higher status is assimilated to a preference for capital wealth. The government uses income tax to finance infrastructure and environmental protection. We find that accounting for preferences for social status and environmental quality may lead to an allocation of tax revenue in favor of a cleanup effort to the detriment of infrastructure. Economic growth is not necessarily and negatively affected by this allocation as it is partly explained by an excessive accumulation of capital wealth due to the quest of status. Status seeking can however harm economic growth and environmental quality when its motive is important enough. Finally, we show that economic growth may be consistent with environmental preservation but is not necessarily welfare-improving as in the case of absence of status-seeking behavior.

Charitable giving among females and males: an empirical test of the competitive altruism hypothesis

We conduct a real-effort task experiment where subjects' performance translates into a donation to a charity. In a within-subjects design we vary the visibil- ity of the donation (no/private/public feedback). Confirming previous studies, we find that subjects' performance increases, that is, they donate more to charity, when their relative performance is made public. In line with the competitive altruism hypothe- sis, a biology-based explanation for status-seeking behavior, especially male subjects increase performance in the public setting.

Variations in Health, Illness and Health Care-Seeking Behaviour of Those in the Upper Social Hierarchies in a Caribbean Society

Background: Little research exists in the Caribbean, and in particular Jamaica, on the upper class, and no study emerged from a search of the literature examining health, illness, and health care-seeking behaviour of this group. Aims: To provide pertinent information on the upper class in regards to their general health status, illnesses, typology of illnesses, health care seeking behaviours and factors which determine their (1) moderate-to-very good health status, (2) illness, and (3) health care seeking behaviour in order to make available to policy specialists and public health practitioners information on this group, to be used as a guide in their decision making policies. Methods and materials: A sample of 2,734 respondents from the wealthiest 20% and second wealthy social hierarchies was extracted from a cross-sectional survey of 6,783 respondents. An administered questionnaire was used to collect the data, which were stored and analyzed using SPSS for Windows 16.0 (SPSS Inc; Chicago, IL, USA). The questionnaire was modelled on the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household survey. Results: The majority of the sample stated at least good health status (83.3%), with 0.5% indicating very poor health status, and 15.3% who indicated an illness in the last 4-week period. Four variables emerged as statistically correlated with moderate-to-very good health status of those in the upper class (i.e. second wealthy and wealthiest 20%) - Model fit χ2 = 57.54, P < 0.0001. The model explained 33.2% of the variance in moderate-to-very good health status, and that the model is a good fit for the data. Three variables emerged as statistically correlated with self-reported illness - Model fit χ2 = 1087.7, P < 0.0001. The significant variables (i.e. health care-seeking behaviour, good health status, and marital status) accounted for 72.4% of the variability in self-reported illness. Three variables emerged as statistically significant correlates of health care-seekers - Model fit χ2 = 995.45, P < 0.0001. The statistically significant correlates (i.e. good health status, self-reported illness, marital status) accounted for 76.4% of the variance in health care-seeking behaviour of the upper class. Conclusion: Rural residents continue to have lower moderate-to-very good health status when compared to the general population, and the second wealthy and the wealthiest 20% in Jamaica. Although only 4 percent of the upper social hierarchy utilize the public health care system, there is still a demand for public health services for this group, and it must be taken into account as a part of the general planning for the health care system of the country.

Treatment seeking behaviour of rural adolescent girls-a community based cross-sectional study

Background and Objectives: The transition from childhood to adulthood occurs during adolescence period which is characterized by major biological changes like physical growth, sexual maturation and psycho-social development. During this phase of growth the girls first experience menstruation and related problems which is marked by feelings of anxiety and eagerness to know about this natural phenomenon. Present study was undertaken to determine health status of adolescent girls by studying morbidity patterns amongst them and to know treatment seeking behaviour of adolescent girls. Methods: This one year community based cross-sectional study was done at village Peeranwadi, PHC Kinaye, Belgaum. Four Hundred (400) adolescent girls were selected randomly from each block. Study was approved by Institutional Ethics Committee, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Belgaum. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Information on socio-demographic variables, history regarding illness one month prior and treatment seeking behavior were recorded. Haemoglobin estimation was done by cyanmethaemoglobin method. Results: Majority (82.25%) had age between 10 to 14 years and mean age of study population was 12.9±2.06 years and 98.5% were literates. Of 400 adolescent girls, 51% had attained menarche. The mean height, weight and BMI was less among 10 to 14 years compared to 15 to 19 years (p=0.000). In this study 15 (3.75%) were married and of them 60% were pregnant and all had registered for antenatal care. Most common morbidity reported in last one month was GI infections (14.75%), fever (12.75%) and dysmenorrhoea (12%). Prevalence of anaemia was 75% and 49.75% had mild, 20.75% had moderate and 4.5% had severe anaemia. 61.25% had taken treatment of which 74.69% visited health facility for treatment, 19.21% took home remedy and 6.12% did not take any treatment. The place of treatment was decided by themselves in 20.81% whereas 78.78% family members were decision makers. Conclusion and interpretation: In this study almost 75% of the girls were anaemic. Their status of anaemia is likely to worsen during pregnancy leading to complications including post partum haemorrhage. Although their literacy status and health seeking behaviour was on the better side, it needs to be still improved.

When Opposites Hurt: Similarity in Control in Leader-Follower Dyads as a Predictor of Job Performance Evaluations

Status-seeking behaviors are linked to executive career progression, but do leaders appreciate being surrounded by followers eager to move up in the organizational hierarchy? Building on the self-enhancement theory, we propose that leaders with high self-assessed getting-ahead behaviors give better performance evaluations to subordinates who also have willingness to get ahead behaviors. In contrast, leaders with low self-assessed getting-ahead behaviors are quite reserved about the performance of subordinates high in the getting-ahead dimension. We also propose that overall, ambitious leaders evaluate more positively their followers’ performance than leaders with more modest desire to get ahead. We suggest that this effect is magnified when the status differential between the leader and the follower is reduced due to differences in age or hierarchical level (i.e., a younger leader or too few hierarchical levels between the leader and the subordinate). The results obtained by using polynomial regression and response surface techniques to analyze a sample of 138 leader-follower dyads supported our hypotheses showing a supervisor’s contextual performance ratings skew rooted in leaders’ desire to get ahead. We conclude by deriving the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Status and relationships in social dilemmas of teams

A social dilemma occurs when it is optimal for each member of a team to act in his own interest but, if all participants do so, everyone is worse-off than if they had done otherwise. Social dilemmas are often observed in operational processes involving teamwork, such as developing new products or implementing total quality programs. The extent to which an employee cooperates with others is driven not only by material incentives but also by social preferences: individuals have an interest in the welfare of others as well as their own. Two known social preferences are status and relationship maintenance. Multiple studies have shown that status seeking leads team members to compete more whereas relationship building leads them to cooperate more. The question remains of whether these two preferences can coexist and complement one another (as when status seeking triggers effort and relationship building encourages cooperation) or whether they are at odds. In this experimental study we demonstrate that these two social preferences hinder one another: status reduces the collaboration benefit from relationships, and increases only individual, but not collaborative, effort. These results suggest that managerial interventions that promote status seeking and relationship building behavior cannot easily be used simultaneously when motivating teams to perform in situations involving social dilemmas.

Cooperation among competitors as status-seeking behavior: Network ties and status differentiation

Summary Status-based affiliation represents a valuable resource in economic exchange. However, affiliation strategies introduce a status ordering paradox: whereas higher status actors seek to maintain status hierarchies, lower status actors strive to affiliate with more prestigious actors. In this paper, using original data on the network of social and professional ties among 72 hotel managers clustered in an Italian hotel district, we develop a theory of status-seeking behavior that involves the exchange of status for valued resources.

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making

Behavioral endocrinological research in humans as well as in animals suggests that testosterone plays a key role in social interactions. Studies in rodents have shown a direct link between testosterone and aggressive behavior(1) and folk wisdom adapts these findings to humans, suggesting that testosterone induces antisocial, egoistic or even aggressive behavior(2). However, many researchers doubt a direct testosterone-aggression link in humans, arguing instead that testosterone is primarily involved in status-related behavior(3,4). As a high status can also be achieved by aggressive and antisocial means it can be difficult to distinguish between anti-social and status seeking behavior. We therefore set up an experimental environment, in which status can only be achieved by prosocial means. In a double-blind and placebo-controlled experiment, we administered a single sublingual dose of 0.5 mg of testosterone (with a hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin carrier) to 121 women and investigated their social interaction behavior in an economic bargaining paradigm. Real monetary incentives are at stake in this paradigm; every player A receives a certain amount of money and has to make an offer to another player B on how to share the money. If B accepts, she gets what was offered and player A keeps the rest. If B refuses the offer, nobody gets anything. A status seeking player A is expected to avoid being rejected by behaving in a prosocial way, i.e. by making higher offers. The results show that if expectations about the hormone are controlled for, testosterone administration leads to a significant increase in fair bargaining offers compared to placebo. The role of expectations is reflected in the fact that subjects who report that they believe to have received testosterone make lower offers than those who say they believe that they were treated with a placebo. These findings suggest that the experimental economics approach is sensitive for detecting neurobiological effects as subtle as those achieved by administration of hormones. Moreover, the findings point towards the importance of both psychosocial as well as neuroendocrine factors in determining the influence of testosterone on human social behavior.