Does social hierarchy matter for resource distribution?

GODOY JUAN CARLOS; MOLA DÉBORA JEANETTE; REYNA CECILIA

Revista Acta Colombiana de Psicología

Universidad Católica de Colombia

Año: 2019 vol. 22 p. 70 - 83

1909-9711

Resources are distributed unequally depending to the social status (SS) of people. Researchers have often used experiments to explain the role of SS in economic decisions. However, the diverse ways of inducing SS has produced contradictory results. In this study, we investigated the effect of SS on the distribution of monetary resources in students aged 18 to 25 years from Córdoba (Argentina). We conducted three experiments using mixed factorial designs. We evaluated different ways of inducing SS and the effect on decisions in different games. In Experiment 1, we compared the effect of two SS inductions on Ultimatum (UG) and Dictator Game (DG) decisions. In Experiment 2, we analyzed the effect of SS in the same games including Social Value Orientation (SVO) and Subjective Social Status (SSS) as covariates. In Experiment 3, we examined the role of SS, SVO and SSS in the DG and the Dictator Game Taking (DGT). In the three experiments, we did not find that SS had effect on decisions. However, we observed more rejection (Exp. 1: p < .001, n2p =.72; Exp. 2: p < .001, n2p = .65) and negative valence for unfair than fair offers (Exp. 2: p < .001). Also, pro-social individuals made fairer offers in the DG (Exp. 2: p < .05) and participants offered more money in the DGT than in the DG (Exp. 3: p = .01). Those findings showed that the effect of SS on behavioral responses is not robust, which highlights the need to have new experimental evidence to investigate its role. Key words: Social Hierarchy, Social Status, Economic Games, Effect Framing, Social Value Orientation, Subjective Social Status. (Revista Indexada en bases de datos como: Scopus, SciELO.org., y ERIHPLUS. Nivel 1/Grupo1 según Resolución de CONICET N° 2249/2014)