Social Hierarchy & Social Networks: The Effects of Prestige and Dominance within a Developmental Context

Abstract

There has been a recent resurgence in interest about status and status hierarchies in human behaviour. This development was spurred by Henrich and Gil-White (2001), who outlined a model for understanding status in humans, with two pathways to achieving status, via dominance and prestige. The growing support that Henrich and Gil-White’s hypothesis has gained has produced import insights within the field. However, questions still remain about the social processes that govern prestige, dominance and rank differentiation. The current research integrative social network theory and analysis with theory produced within the field of social hierarchy. Moreover, research was carried out among a network of social orphan within Romania; measuring prestige, dominance, influence and network effect. The results of the current research indicate that whilst all humans have the propensity to utilize prestige and dominance as rank acquisition strategies and that both pathways are viable routes for accruing rank. However, the evidence further suggests that socio-cultural processes and network structure largely govern an individual’s behaviour and rank acquisition strategy.