Definition
The effect of social hierarchy and status position on the evolution and implementation of social reasoning abilities.
Introduction
Sociality, the formation of social groups by a species, is often seen as an evolved solution to some of life’s most basic problems, such as how to obtain food, how to successfully reproduce and care for young, and how to avoid predation long enough for these prior concerns to be issues at all. While helping to solve many of these problems, sociality also presents a unique challenge: how are limited resources, such as food, to be distributed among group members? In response, many social species, including humans, developed social hierarchies wherein higher-status individuals typically have priority access to resources. Therefore, while sociality and social hierarchy helped solve some evolutionary problems, they themselves produced unique evolutionary pressures. In this context, Cummins...
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Kruepke, M., Barbey, A. (2016). Effect of Status on Social Reasoning (Cummins 1998). In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2634-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2634-1
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