For most of us, the following scenario is probably familiar in many ways. It’s the last school assembly of the year, and the gym is buzzing with energy and chatter. Rows of students sit cross-legged on the floor, proud parents line the back wall, and a folding table stands at the front, stacked with certificates and trophies.

As names are called, students walk up to polite applause and whoops. Some earned certificates for academic excellence, others for leadership, perfect attendance, or “most improved.” One star student, Katya, walks up several times for multiple subjects, each time to louder applause. As her stack of papers grows, her smile widens.

In the back row, another student, Alan, sits rigidly. He struggled in math this year, and kept mostly quiet in class. When “citizenship awards” are handed out, his name isn’t called. By the end of the assembly, he is clapping without looking up, just waiting for the ceremony to end. 

Afterward, someone laughs and says, “Katya might as well run the school.” Everyone chuckles, and she grins, a little shy but clearly proud. It was just a joke, but at that moment, the pecking had been clearly established. The certificates weren’t just pieces of paper anymore. They marked out who matters, and everyone’s position in the school’s academic hierarchy. 

From an early age, we are taught to interpret our social world through rankings. Whether it’s childhood sports competitions, spelling bees, GPAs, or prom royalty, hierarchies encourage us to see who stands out as more talented, intelligent, or admired. As adults, we continue this pattern, easily recognizing status markers such as luxury cars, large homes, and prestigious job titles.

So, why do status hierarchies exist, and where are they typically found? Simply put, hierarchy is a basic element of social life.¹⁴ Status hierarchies function to organize social groups in order to allocate limited resources (like partners and food), facilitate social learning, and maximize individual motivation.¹ They help reduce conflict by clarifying roles and expectations, and allow groups to function more efficiently—whether it’s deciding who leads a hunt, who speaks in a meeting, or who gets picked first on the playground. As English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote in his book Leviathan in 1651, a strong central authority is necessary to avoid the chaos of the “state of nature.”²⁹ Without some kind of order, social life would be a lot more chaotic. 

Status hierarchies are a nearly universal phenomenon across social contexts and species.¹⁴ In humans, they are visible in family units, peer groups, classrooms, workplaces, and even informal social interactions. Children as young as one year can detect dominance relationships, and by preschool, they begin forming their own social hierarchies.^2,3 These structures become more complex through adolescence and adulthood, appearing in schools, corporations, governments, and social networks. Their pervasiveness highlights their adaptive value—supporting survival, cooperation, and social learning—while also influencing who gains access to opportunities and resources at each stage of life. 

In non-human primates, social groups also often have a clear pecking order. This dominance hierarchy shows who’s in charge and who falls below, based on how individuals act in conflicts. When one animal consistently wins and another backs down, a pattern forms. Over time, these interactions shape a ranking system that everyone in the group seems to understand.⁴ Even fish have status hierarchies. For example, among New Zealand Spotty Wrasse (a fish you’ve probably never heard of), dominance hierarchies take shape quickly and follow a clear size-based pattern—bigger fish tend to act more dominant, often taking over the shelter, while smaller fish usually back off or try to get away.⁵ And when a dominant male is removed, in extreme cases, the dominant female undergoes a socially-controlled sex change. 

Status hierarchies aren’t one-size-fits-all. Depending on the setting, they can look very different. Some are steep and rigid, with every person neatly ranked from top to bottom. Examples of these hierarchies can be found in a military chain of command or a corporate organization. Others are much flatter, splitting people into just two loose groups: the “ins” and the “outs.” If you walk into any North American high school, you’ll likely witness the clear delineation between the “cool” kids and the “not-so-cool” kids. However, status hierarchies all tend to be shaped by the same economic and cultural factors, the most important of which are occupation, race/ethnicity, and income (in the Western world, at least).¹⁵

And while hierarchies can be useful in organizing society and clarifying everyone’s role, history tells us that status hierarchies can be extremely damaging, potentially irreversible. During the transatlantic slave trade, racialized social stratification and economic exploitation created a clear binary hierarchy. Enslaved Africans were legally defined as chattel property—bought, sold, inherited, and treated as commodities—while white colonists held full legal rights and autonomy. This slave status was hereditary, with children inheriting their mother’s enslaved condition, ensuring the intergenerational reinforcement of racial hierarchy. The impacts of this social hierarchy are still deeply embedded in society today, from unequal access to quality education and healthcare to disparities in policing and incarceration rates and the persistent underrepresentation of marginalized groups in leadership roles. 

Sociometric status: A person’s level of respect, admiration, and likability as rated by peers in a social group, often based on popularity, friendliness, or perceived competence.

Opportunity hoarding: When people or groups in privileged positions keep access to valuable resources (like jobs, education, or housing) to themselves or their networks, making it harder for others to move up.

Stigma-shifting: A strategy where a stigmatized individual or group redirects blame or negative attention onto others to protect or restore their own social standing.

Gene expression: The process by which cells use genetic information to produce proteins and other molecules, shaping how they function and respond to the environment. 

Medial amygdala: A region deep in the brain involved in processing social and emotional signals, including those related to status, fear, and social behavior.

Status hierarchies aren’t unique to modern society. Ancient Mesopotamia had them carved into stone: kings at the top, scribes and priests just below, laborers and slaves at the bottom. Similarly, in Ancient Egypt, pharaohs were treated as living gods, while farmers and servants labored under their divine gaze. Medieval Europe ran on rigid class systems, and even in supposedly egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, status still crept in, either through age, hunting skill, or storytelling ability. In Korea during the Koryo period (918 to 1392 CE), it was believed that slaves were people who had been rejected from heaven and lower-class citizens, and that consequently, it wasn’t possible for them to become common people.¹³ Across cultures and time periods, people have found ways to sort themselves, either by lineage, land, or character. 

Sociologists have long been fascinated by the question of why some people rise and others sit at the bottom of society. Early research into status hierarchies was born out of efforts to understand how power and inequality is built, maintained, and justified.¹² During the first two decades of the 20th century, the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber was one of the first to clearly separate status from class and power, defining it as social honor or prestige that can exist independently of wealth or political authority.¹² 

For much of the 20th century and into the early part of the 21st century, scholars explained these hierarchies in one of two ways. One camp, the individualists, believed people rose through natural differences—some were just more skilled, more confident, more useful. This view is rooted in meritocratic logic, or the idea that unequal outcomes reflect unequal contributions. Economists like Gary Becker⁷ argued that higher rewards are a response to greater investment in human capital, while sociologists like Peter Blau and James Coleman extended this thinking to social interactions and organizational roles.^8,9 From this perspective, hierarchies are functional in that they motivate effort and reflect real differences.

The other camp, the structuralists, argued that it wasn’t about individual traits at all. Rather, status hierarchy was about where you were born, what connections you had, and what role you were allowed to play. This inequality, argued sociologist Charles Tilly, is the result of “opportunity hoarding”—the social process where privileged groups control access to valuable resources, such as education, jobs, or housing and restrict them to others.¹⁰ Rather than personal merit, outcomes are determined by social positions.¹¹ According to this idea, hierarchies persist not because they’re fair or accurate, but because they’re hard to shake once in place.

According to these two camps, some hierarchies are earned, while others are inherited or imposed. However, American sociologist Roger Gould doesn’t believe that we need to pick just one side. Hierarchies, he argues, often emerge through social feedback loops. We watch how others treat someone, and we adjust our own behavior accordingly. Over time, this creates a self-reinforcing system, where people at the top get more recognition just because they’ve already been recognized.⁶

In the last few decades, the study of power, status, and hierarchy has developed into a large field spanning the social and biological sciences.¹⁴ Initially, studies were isolated to their respective disciplines; developmental scholars looked at children’s social popularity (also known as sociometric status), anthropologists explored status and prestige across diverse small-scale human societies, and biologists studied dominant-subordinate relations in primates and other animals. But more recently, these different strands have become increasingly interwoven as the study of hierarchy has become pan-disciplinary.¹⁴

Thomas Hobbes

Best known for his political philosophy and seminal work Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that human beings, left to their own devices in a “state of nature,” would exist in a condition of constant fear, conflict, and insecurity. He famously described life there as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”²⁹

Max Weber

German sociologist and political economist known for his analysis of social organization, authority, and bureaucracy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was one of the first to distinguish between class, status, and power as separate but interrelated sources of social inequality.

Roger Gould

A 20th-century American sociologist who studied conflict and social order, best known for his work on how status hierarchies emerge from collective action and group rivalry, especially in urban and labor contexts.

Status hierarchies affect humans and non-human animals in a variety of ways, from cognitive processes to how we deal with and express emotions. On a societal level, the structure of hierarchies can impact the way in which they amplify and entrench inequality. 

Cognition

Ever considered how status may affect how our brains work? Research suggests that status hierarchies shape cognitive processing, particularly how our brains allocate attention and memory based on a person’s perceived rank.¹

It probably comes as no surprise that high-status individuals generally capture more attention than low-status individuals across a variety of settings.²⁰ Perhaps they dress in fine clothing or drive an expensive sports car. Maybe their posture alone can indicate that they are a high-status individual, such as making eye contact and having an open posture.³⁰ But this special attention isn’t just a social bias; it’s supported by neuroscience. Studies show that areas of the brain associated with attention and face processing, like the lateral orbitofrontal cortex,  show greater activity when people view or think about high-status individuals.³¹ In short, our minds are wired to prioritize the socially powerful, likely because knowing who holds influence has historically helped humans navigate social life more effectively.

Status also has an effect on our memory. Research shows that people remember high-status individuals better, especially their faces and names.¹⁹ In one experiment, participants viewed a series of male faces paired with occupational titles indicating either high or low social status (e.g., CEO vs. plumber), then completed a recognition task to identify which faces they had previously seen. In a separate version, status was indicated by colored backgrounds linked to fictional personality groups, and participants again showed better memory for high-status faces, even when visual features were held constant.¹⁹ This enhanced memory is not due to superficial traits like attractiveness or familiarity, but appears to be linked to perceived social importance. These findings suggest that cognitive resources—what we notice, encode, and recall—are unevenly distributed depending on social status.

Emotions

Our position in a social status hierarchy has a powerful effect on how we feel and act.¹⁷ People who are higher up tend to feel more positive emotions and are more comfortable expressing how they feel. Those lower down, on the other hand, often experience more negative emotions and are more cautious about showing them. In fact, people with lower status are more likely to adjust their emotional expressions depending on who they're around—often to avoid conflict or stay safe—whereas those with more power tend to express emotions more openly, without worrying as much about the social consequences. In a workplace setting, for example, junior employees may hide frustration or disagreement to avoid conflict or harming their career prospects, while senior leaders may freely express their emotions, knowing that their status protects them from negative consequences.

Interestingly, lower-ranking individuals are also better at reading the emotions of others.¹⁷ They’re more tuned in, more observant, and more responsive, possibly because it’s important for their social survival. People at the top, on the other hand, only tend to notice others' emotions when they directly affect them, e.g., when a team member’s frustration starts to impact performance or threatens group cohesion. Overall, both power (control over resources) and status (social respect or prestige) seem to affect not just how we feel, but how we share and respond to feelings in others.

Inequality

Many argue that status hierarchies are fundamentally tied to cultural injustice and economic exploitation, two components of inequality.²¹ However, not all status hierarchies are built the same, and the way they’re “architecturally” structured has consequences for how inequality operates in society.¹⁸ Some hierarchies are tightly organized and widely agreed upon—like those based on wealth or race—while others are more flexible or localized, like status in a workplace or community group. Rather than focusing only on who is high or low in status, sociologists Fabien Accominotti, Freda Lynn, and Michael Sauder look at how status is distributed in their review of existing empirical research. Is the hierarchy steep or flat? Are positions tightly clustered or widely spaced? Is the ranking rigid or flexible?

The authors’ key insight is that hierarchies with linear and tightly clustered structures tend to amplify inequality. In these systems, differences between status levels are sharp, widely recognized, and hard to challenge, making it more likely that individuals accept and reproduce the hierarchy. In contrast, hierarchies that are more fragmented or multi-dimensional (like those where people disagree on what counts as high status) leave more room for contesting status, which may soften the link between status and broader material inequalities.

Apart from their inherent promotion of inequality, the very existence of hierarchies and their role in societies has been brought into question. 

Do we need status hierarchies?

The ubiquity of status hierarchies across species suggests that they serve some evolutionary purpose. However, some people, such as social psychologist Michael Kraus, have questioned whether they are necessary or inevitable.²³ 

Kraus gives the example of a pizza shop in Berkeley (the Cheeseboard Collective) where everyone shares the work and profits equally, and there are no bosses. However, he also points out that very few places actually work like this, which indicates why hierarchies are so common. Kraus believes that hierarchies probably exist because they’re useful. When people specialize in different roles—like being a manager or a worker—it creates differences in status, and these differences help us figure out who has the skills or resources we might need in a group. 

As we’ve seen earlier, our brains are wired to notice and remember people we consider important or successful. In fact, humans have developed nonverbal ways of showing status, like the universal “pride” pose (chest out, arms raised), which even blind athletes show after winning.²⁴ This suggests that status is deeply built into how we interact, not just a cultural invention. And so, even if we don’t think they’re necessary, they might just be inevitable. 

Across cultures

Although status hierarchies are seen across most societies, their differences have not been widely studied. Social cognitivist Matthias Gobel and psychologist Yuri Miyamoto argue that social status hierarchies are deeply shaped by cultural beliefs, leading to contrasts.²⁵ They compared East-Asian and Western contexts and found that while high-ranking individuals in both cultures tend to be agentic and self-focused, there are meaningful differences. For example, Western cultures like the United States tend to emphasize individual freedom and view the self as defined by distinct internal traits, independent from social or environmental contexts. In contrast, East-Asian cultures shaped by Confucian traditions emphasize mutual obligations within hierarchical relationships and view the self as fundamentally interconnected with and embedded in social ties.

As a consequence, in East-Asian settings, those at the top are also more likely to be other-oriented, placing greater value on relationships and group harmony. In the West, however, a higher social rank is more related to unique skills and competences. Gobel and Miyamoto argue that understanding status requires looking beyond Western models and call for more research in diverse cultural contexts.

Status and meritocracy

The idea of meritocracy—that people succeed and gain status based on talent and hard work—has long appealed to those who value fairness and equal opportunity. Optimists see it as a way to break down inherited privilege, arguing that in open societies, individuals can rise through education, skill, and determination. Although the term was coined satirically by Michael Young in 1958, it has since been embraced as a hopeful model for how society should work.²⁷

But skeptics argue that meritocracy often reinforces inequality rather than fixing it. They point out that what we call “merit” is often shaped by access to privilege—like elite education, social connections, or cultural know-how.²⁶ Those already at the top can pass down advantages to their children while appearing to play by the rules. In practice, the system can reward familiarity over fairness, making it harder for outsiders to move up. 

Social reorganization

What happens to people when their social status changes? And is this the same for people at the top of the hierarchy as it is for those further down the ladder? A study by researchers at the University of Texas suggests that losing status affects us more than gaining it.¹⁶ That is, when dominant individuals drop in social rank, they experience significantly more stress and brain changes than those who move up the ladder. 

Now for the disclaimer. For ethical reasons, the study was conducted with mice. However, despite referring to rodents instead of people, the scientists believe the findings overlap with human experience and offer a starting point for understanding our biological response to status change. That’s because the brain regions involved in the study of the mice—like the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus—are part of the limbic system, an evolutionarily ancient network shared with humans. This overlap suggests that mice and humans may process status changes through similar emotional and social pathways.

The research team observed groups of male mice in tightly controlled environments. Within minutes of being placed together, the mice formed clear hierarchies according to the amount of aggression and success at winning confrontations. After 10 days, the researchers reshuffled the groups, so that no two mice from the same original group were placed together again, in order to trigger social change. They then tracked behavioral responses, measured stress hormone levels, and studied brain activity. In particular, they focused on the medial amygdala, a brain region linked to social behavior. 

The biggest changes were seen in previously dominant mice that lost their top status: not only did their stress spike, but their brains showed marked shifts in gene expression. This process, where information stored in a gene is used to make a functional product for use in the cell, suggests that the mice’s brains were reacting on a molecular level to the status change. 

“Stigma-shifting”

It’s not just individuals who experience status hierarchies. Countries also need to affirm their place in the world order. 

Political scientist Claudia Junghyun Kim argues that international status hierarchies shape the ways that countries respond to stigmatization, such as being morally condemned for actions that violate international norms.²² Rather than simply denying accusations or submitting to judgment, some states engage in a process Kim calls “stigma-shifting.” This involves redirecting moral blame onto other actors—often more powerful states—by exposing their own norm violations, hypocrisies, or historical wrongs. Through this, the stigmatized state challenges the legitimacy of those sitting atop the global hierarchy, thereby undermining the authority that allows them to stigmatize in the first place.

Kim shows how Japan, stigmatized over its colonial past, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, and challenges in global order-making, has attempted to reaffirm its international status by subtly shifting stigma onto neighboring countries like China and South Korea. For example, in dealing with the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has emphasized its technological competence and transparency while casting doubt on China’s environmental standards or South Korea’s political motivations.

Rather than viewing stigmatization in international relations as simply a tool of discipline, Kim shows that it’s also a site of resistance and status renegotiation on the global stage. However, in the current era of online mis- and disinformation, renegotiating a country’s identity in the face of stigmatization can be a futile task.  

Visual Hierarchy

Hierarchies are everywhere in our society, even in the way we design things. In design, this takes the form of visual hierarchy, or the way elements are arranged to guide a viewer’s attention. In this article, we look at how these visual structures influence how we interpret and prioritize information, often without even realizing it.

Social Identity Theory

What if your identity wasn’t just about you, but about who you stand with? Social identity theory suggests that much of how we see ourselves—and how we treat others—comes from the groups we belong to, such as our nationality, profession, or social circles. These group ties give us a sense of pride and belonging, but they also shape how we compare ourselves to others, often reinforcing social divisions and hierarchies in subtle but powerful ways.

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