By Monica Wacker and Lance Braud
High status promotes higher fitness than low status,
and evidence supports a strong relation between
social rank and fitness or well-being (e.g., Barkow,
1975; Cowlishaw & Dunbar,1991; Hill, 1984).
Evolutionary account: emotions are fitnessmaximizing affective mechanisms that coordinate
cognitive, motivational, physiological, behavioral,
and subjective responses to recurrent environmental
events of evolutionary significance (Cosmides & Tooby,
2000; Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009)
To understand the ultimate mechanisms behind
social status as a fitness-maximizing trait, we
have to first understand its components.
Research has identified pride as a primary
component of attaining social status.
These studies examine the proximate traits of
pride based on predications that pride actually
has two distinct constructs.
(Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng, in press)
Pride may be a major part of the affective suite of mechanisms that:
Motivates status-seeking efforts, providing psychological
reinforcement to sustain attained status and also the substrate for
signaling status achievements or self-perceived status.
Numerous studies demonstrate conceptual links between pride and
status.
For American subjects, pride motivates achievement and perseverance
at difficult or tedious tasks; consequent achievements are then
rewarded with social approval, acceptance, and high status. (Verbeke, Belschak, &
Bagozzi, 2004;Williams & DeSteno, 2008)
(Tracy & Robins, 2007)
Pride is composed of two distinct and
independent facets that are associated with
highly divergent personality traits:
Hubristic pride- the ‘antisocial’ branch, fueled by
arrogance and conceit, also associated with
narcissism.
Authentic pride- the ‘extraverted’ faucet, marked
by feelings of accomplishment, confidence, and
success.
Henrich and Gil-White (2001)
There are two distinct paths to attaining status in humans:
dominance and prestige.
This theory is advantageous because it can explain why
attractive qualities like expertise and success promote high
status.
Accounts for cultural differences that lead to high status.
It explains the attitudes from subordinates toward high-status
individuals.
The dominance-prestige theory provides a framework for
understanding the distal forces that shape preferences for social
models and processes of social influence.
The use of intimidation and coercion to attain a
social status based largely on the effective
induction of fear. For animals, social rank is
determined on the basis of agonistic encounters.
Status granted to individuals who are recognized
and respected for their skills, success or
knowledge.
Hubristic pride and authentic pride evolved to
promote two distinct forms of social status:
dominance and prestige.
These studies test whether predictions made by
the dominance-prestige theory do indeed
show that dominance and prestige result from
different components of traits and abilities.
Participants
n = 191, 70% female, undergraduates
Participants filled out the following measures:
❑ Hubristic Scale
❑ Authentic Pride-Proneness Scale
❑ Big Five Aspects Scale
❑ Aggression Questionnaire
❑ Inclusionary Status Scale
❑ Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
❑ Narcissistic Personality Inventory
❑ GPA
Hubristic pride was positively correlated with
dominance (r=.48)
Authentic pride was positively correlated with
prestige (r=.51)
Both associated with:
• Narcissistic self-aggrandizement
• Conscientiousness
Individuals high in dominance are:
Socially disliked
Acquire influence by
• aggression
• assertiveness
• intimidation
• emotional volatility
Individuals high in prestige tend to be:
Socially accepted
 High genuine self-esteem
 Emotional stability
 Open to new experiences
 High achieving

▼ Participants
n=91, 100% male, university varsity athletic
teams
Participants completed measures similar to study
1 with the addition of:
• Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales
Participants then peer-reviewed teammates using:
• Dominance scale
• Prestige scale
• Self-Attributes Questionnaire
• intellectual ability
• altruism
• cooperativeness
• helpfulness
• ethicality
• morality
• "advisorliness"
Similar to the self-reports in study 1, peer
assessments showed:
• Hubristic pride was positively correlated
with dominance
• Authentic pride was positively correlated
with prestige
• No correlation between the traits associated
with hubristic and authentic pride
• This research establishes a tentative link between
the evolutionary foundations of human status and
the psychology of pride.
• Hubristic and authentic pride each have their own
personality profiles
• Individuals rated high in hubristic pride were also
viewed as dominant
• Individuals rated high in authentic pride are viewed
as prestigious
The results of this study demonstrate empirical support
for Henrich and Gil-White's (2001) conceptualization of
group hierarchies by showing that dominance and
prestige are distinct status-attainment behavioral
strategies that can be reliably assessed from group
members.
The findings show compelling evidence that:
• Dominance and prestige represent divergent
ways of status attainment and maintenance in
naturalistic groups.
• The attainment of dominance versus prestige is
associated with distinct sets of emotions and
traits, and the two pride dispositions are key
components of these broader suites;
• Personality traits, social skills, and abilities are
strongly related to who attains social status and
which form of status is attained.
The use of correlational research disables the
establishment of causality.
Selective samples of only North
Americans(study1) and all males (study 2)
Difficulty in operationalizing variables
What are the consequences of narcissism and selfesteem for status attainment across both genders
and in other societies
Future studies should also aim to directly test the
causal model suggested by their theoretical
account.