Hierarchies in the correlated forms of power (resources) and status (prestige) are constants thatorganize human societies. This article reviews relevant social psychological literature andidentifies several converging results concerning power and status. Whether rank is chronicallypossessed or temporarily embodied, higher ranks create psychological distance from others, allowagency by the higher ranked, and exact deference from the lower ranked. Beliefs that status entailscompetence are essentially universal. Interpersonal interactions create warmth-competencecompensatory tradeoffs. Along with societal structures (enduring inequality), these tradeoffsreinforce status-competence beliefs. Race, class, and gender further illustrate these dynamics.Although status systems are resilient, they can shift, and understanding those change processes isan important direction for future research, as global demographic changes disrupt existinghierarchies.

Kawakatsu et al. (1) make an important ad-vance in the quest for this kind of understanding, pro-viding a general model for how subtle differences inindividual-level decision-making can lead to hard-to-miss consequences for society as a whole.Their work (1) reveals two distinct regimes—oneegalitarian, one hierarchical—that emerge fromshifts in individual-level judgment. These lead to sta-tistical methods that researchers can use to reverseengineer observed hierarchies, and understand howsignaling systems work when prestige and power arein play.

hierarchical social order