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Social Hierarchies

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Power structure; Social ranking; Stratification

Definition

Systems of social organization in which individuals are arranged by group status and have differential access to social and material resources.

Introduction

Social hierarchies are broadly defined as systems of social organization in which some individuals enjoy a higher social status than others (Sidanius and Pratto 1999) – specifically, in which people are stratified by their group membership (Axte et al. 2014; Jost et al. 2004; Sidanius and Pratto 1999). In socially stratified societies, high-status groups are afforded greater access to material and social resources relative to low-status groups, leading to differential opportunities and outcomes. For example, those with low status face more verbal harassment and physical assault (Katz-Wise and Hyde 2012), are discriminated against in employment decisions (Parker et al. 2016), and face harsher treatment by the criminal justice system (Wu 2016).

Theoretical...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Zachary C. Roth & Kimberly Rios

Authors
  1. Zachary C. Roth
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  2. Kimberly Rios
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Correspondence to Kimberly Rios .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Division of Social Sciences, New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL, USA

    Catherine Cottrell

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Roth, Z.C., Rios, K. (2020). Social Hierarchies. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1833

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