Fall from Grace: The Role of Dominance and Prestige in the Punishment of High-Status Actors

Abstract

When actors transgress social norms, their social status colors the severity with which observers punish them. While some argue society judges high-status transgressors more harshly than they judge their low-status counterparts, others contend high-status transgressors receive the more lenient treatment in ambiguous transgressions. We reconcile this theoretical inconsistency, for we propose the ability of social status to color third party judgements of transgression and behavior towards the transgressor crucially depends on the status strategy with which high-status actors operate. Drawing on evolutionary theories of dominance and prestige as two viable means of preserving status within social hierarchies, we contend third parties penalize actors who exert and maintain their status via dominance more vehemently than they penalize actors who wield status via prestige. Across multiple studies that spanned archival field data, controlled lab experiments, and employed different instantiations of dominance, prestige, and misconduct, we consistently demonstrate others punish dominant high-status actors more gravely than prestige based high-status actors. Furthermore, we find intentionality attributions and lack of moral credentials explain harsher punishment meted out to dominant compared to prestige based highstatus actors. Collectively, these findings provide both a parsimonious reconciliation of inconsistency in the extant literature and a theoretical understanding of how nuanced status strategies of high-status actors differentially affects judgement, decisions and behaviors of third party others.

Taking charge and stepping in: Individuals who punish are rewarded with prestige and dominance

“…Consistent with this logic, studies indicate that prestigious individuals and their behaviours are more likely to be perceived by observers as fair, morally just and humble (Cheng et al, 2010;Effron & Miller, 2012;Price & Van Vugt, 2014;Weidman, Cheng, & Tracy, 2018). Even when revealed to have made transgressions, prestigious people are penalized less harshly than those with dominance-based rank (Fragale, Rosen, Xu, & Merideth, 2009;Kakkar, Sivanathan, & Gobel, 2020). This greater trust and loyalty that prestigious individuals receive can foster the perceived legitimacy of, and support for, any punitive action that they carry out (Baldassarri & Grossman, 2011).…”

Gender and Crime: Convenience for Pink-Collar Offenders

“…Their findings challenge gender-stereotypic perspectives, showing that women persist more with male naysayers than with female naysayers, but do so in a stereotypically low-status (more indirect than direct) manner. Status here is an individual's social rank within a formal or informal hierarch, or a person's relative standing along a valued dimension (Kakkar, Sivanathan, and Gobel 2020). Persistence here is the willingness to continue seeking compromise from a naysaying counterpart.…”

“…Status is the first convenience theme in Figure 1 in terms of the opportunity-commit-status perspective. Status here is an individual's social rank within a formal or informal hierarchy, or a person's relative standing along a valued social dimension (Kakkar, Sivanathan, and Gobel 2020). Status is an actor's relative position in a social hierarchy.…”

The Addition of Images to eWOM in the Travel Industry: An Examination of Hotels, Cruise Ships and Fast Food Reviews

“…Furthermore, data gathered from MTurk has been published in leading scholarly journals in marketing, such as Journal of Marketing (e.g., [62,63]) and Journal of Marketing Research (e.g., [64,65]); tourism, such as Tourism Management (e.g., [66,67]) and Journal of Travel Research (e.g., [68,69]). Likewise, top management journals such as Academy of Management Journal (e.g., [70,71] and Journal of Management (e.g., [72]) have also reported MTurk data.…”