Emotions and Status Hierarchies

Abstract

Emotions define and are defined by status hierarchies. This chapter examines human emotions in relation to hierarchy navigation. Because emotional adaptations evolve in response to selective pressures, I first present evidence supporting the ubiquity of hierarchies and the fitness-relevance of status in the ancestral past. Next, I provide a sketch of the recurrent adaptive challenges likely posed by life within hierarchically organized groups to circumscribe the hierarchy-navigation tasks emotional adaptations are expected to address. I then highlight several emotions—pride, shame, envy, admiration, respect, contempt, anger, and fear—that appear to facilitate hierarchy navigation, review the evidence for their functional design, and explore ways in which relative differences in status may modulate recurring emotional experiences. Finally, I discuss how understanding the interplay between emotions and hierarchy navigation can inform our understanding of broad individual differences.

Status-impact assessment: is accuracy linked with status motivations?

“…To successfully navigate hierarchies, individuals must coordinate behaviours and advertise characteristics that would increase their status while simultaneously avoiding those that would harm their status (Durkee et al, 2019;Sznycer, 2019). People also need to be able to estimate the relative status of self and others with probabilistic accuracy (Desmichel & Rucker, 2022;Durkee, 2021;Yu & Kilduff, 2020). Thus, the human mind may contain mechanisms that function to assess and store the expected status impacts of different acts, events and characteristicsjust as there are evolved mechanisms designed to assess relative formidability (Durkee et al, 2018;Sell et al, 2009) and attractiveness (Andrews et al, 2017;Sell et al, 2017), likelihood of pathogen risk (Tybur & Lieberman, 2016), others' relationship quality (Bryant et al, 2016(Bryant et al, , 2018, personality differences (Buss, 2011;Lukaszewski et al, 2020) and many more dimensions of fitnessrelevant information.…”

“…Thus, the human mind may contain mechanisms that function to assess and store the expected status impacts of different acts, events and characteristicsjust as there are evolved mechanisms designed to assess relative formidability (Durkee et al, 2018;Sell et al, 2009) and attractiveness (Andrews et al, 2017;Sell et al, 2017), likelihood of pathogen risk (Tybur & Lieberman, 2016), others' relationship quality (Bryant et al, 2016(Bryant et al, , 2018, personality differences (Buss, 2011;Lukaszewski et al, 2020) and many more dimensions of fitnessrelevant information. These status-impact assessments could be referenced by other mechanisms, such as emotions, to guide tactics and behavioural strategies that facilitate hierarchy navigation (Durkee, 2021;Kyl-Heku & Buss, 1996;Lund et al, 2007).…”