Status Organizes Cooperation: An Evolutionary Theory of Status and Social Order

Status behaviors are verbal and nonverbal behaviors that elevate or lower the status of the individuals who perform them and that can combine to create status hierarchies in task groups. This article identifies how status behavior could promote contributions to public goods in social dilemma situations through its ability to organize a group—that is, through its ability to generate a status hierarchy and mobilize contributions from all members of a group—and offers an explanation for the evolution of cooperative status behavior. The evolutionary viability of cooperative status behavior derives from its orientation toward hierarchy: status behavior tends to produce hierarchy in groups, and status behavior discriminates between the presence and absence of hierarchy. Cooperative status actors achieve mutual cooperation when they encounter each other but are protected from exploitation when a collectively recognized hierarchy is not present. This article shows that a strategy of cooperative status behavior can proliferate under conditions that otherwise make cooperation impossible.