Legitimization and delegitimization of social hierarchy

Although status and wealth are related facets of social stratification, their association is only moderate. In this article, we demonstrate that justification of wealth versus status can be independent processes. To this end, we introduce a novel, nondeclarative measure of system justification. The measure is based on within-individual correlations between the judgments of how a group ‘‘is doing’’ and how it ‘‘should be doing.’’ Two studies demonstrated that the between-group differentiation in terms of material wealth was delegitimized—the more a group was perceived as wealthy, the less it was desired to be wealthy. However, the between-group differentiation in terms of status was generally legitimized—the more a group was perceived as influential, the more it was desired to be influential. We conclude by discussing the role of sociopolitical context in active legitimization and delegitimization of different aspects of the system

Power, hierarchy and social preferences

I ran an experiment in order to evaluate the relationship, if any, between power, or the search for power, and the degree of altruism. In particular I experimentally tested whether an organization structured in a strictly hierarchical way was able to reduce the degree of altruism of a group of experimental subjects. The subjects were divided into groups and played a series of dictator and ultimatum games with the members of other groups; for each experimental euro that they earned, the experimenter assigned half of it to the group. Two different settings were analyzed according to how this group surplus was distributed among group members. In the control setting (treatment A) the group surplus was distributed equally among group members, while in the power setting (treatment B) there was a ranking of the earnings in the group, and the subject who earned the higher sum was given the power to decide the distribution scheme of the group different from her own. It was found that the introduction of a hierarchical structure generated a significant decrease in the rate of altruism, measured in terms of the allocation given to the receiver in the dictator game. In this case the tournament among group members for leadership and the competition for power was a very strong means to induce behaviour more in line with the classical assumption of economics. A remarkable gender effect emerges, suggesting that women seem less attracted and trapped by competition for power.Altruism, Dictator game, Ultimatum game, Hierarchy

The Social Climbing Game

The structure of a society depends, to some extent, on the incentives of the individuals they are composed of. We study a stylized model of this interplay, that suggests that the more individuals aim at climbing the social hierarchy, the more society's hierarchy gets strong. Such a dependence is sharp, in the sense that a persistent hierarchical order emerges abruptly when the preference for social status gets larger than a threshold. This phase transition has its origin in the fact that the presence of a well defined hierarchy allows agents to climb it, thus reinforcing it, whereas in a "disordered" society it is harder for agents to find out whom they should connect to in order to become more central. Interestingly, a social order emerges when agents strive harder to climb society and it results in a state of reduced social mobility, as a consequence of ergodicity breaking, where climbing is more difficult.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Zipf's law, Hierarchical Structure, and Shuffling-Cards Model for Urban Development

A new angle of view is proposed to find the simple rules dominating complex systems and regular patterns behind random phenomena such as cities. Hierarchy of cities reflects the ubiquitous structure frequently observed in the natural world and social institutions. Where there is a hierarchy with cascade structure, there is a rank-size distribution following Zipf's law, and vice versa. The hierarchical structure can be described with a set of exponential functions that are identical in form to Horton-Strahler's laws on rivers and Gutenberg-Richter's laws on earthquake energy. From the exponential models, we can derive four power laws such as Zipf's law indicative of fractals and scaling symmetry. Research on the hierarchy is revealing for us to understand how complex systems are self-organized. A card-shuffling model is built to interpret the relation between Zipf's law and hierarchy of cities. This model can be expanded to explain the general empirical power-law distributions across the individual physical and social sciences, which are hard to be comprehended within the specific scientific domains.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure

The social gradient in health: the effect of absolute and relative income on the individual's health

Abstract This study investigates the effect of absolute income and relative income on health in the light of medical evidence indicating that the individual’s position in the social hierarchy undermines his or her mental and physical health. It uses an instrumental variable estimation methodology that controls for the ‘endogeneity’ problem to statistically identify the social gradient in physical and mental health. The paper shows that individuals’ own income has a positive, but modest effect on health. Absolute income appears to affect only the objective measures of health. Importantly, relative income- as a proxy for social status and position in the social hierarchy - has a significant effect on all measurements of health, with individuals higher in the social ladder enjoying better health. Finally, the results shown that individuals from families that were well-off financially (when at the age of 14) having better physical and mental health.European Commissio

Crossing the race divide : interracial sex in antebellum Savannah

This article explores the social significance of inter-racial sexual contact in an antebellum Southern city. How did inter-racial sex challenge the established social hierarchy in Savannah? Was it a controversial issue, viewed as a threat to the social order, or was it accepted as an inevitable evil resulting from a mixed population residing in close proximity

Self-organizing social hierarchy and villages in a challenging society

We show by Monte Calro (MC) simulation that the hierarchy and villages emerge simultaneously in a challenging society when the population density exceeds a critical value. Our results indicate that among controlling processes of diffusion and fighting of individuals and relaxation of wealth, the trend of individuals challeninging to stronger neighbors plays the pivotal role in the self-organization of the hierarchy and villages