Abstract

Within human hierarchies, individuals differ in social influence and decision-making authority, which in turn regulate their access to resources. Research suggests two primary routes to status: prestige, derived from the perceived ability and willingness to confer benefits, and dominance, derived from the perceived ability and willingness to inflict harm. Yet how these strategies map onto everyday relationships and cooperative behaviour remains less well understood. I will present data from two rural Colombian villages, where we collected complete-community information on friendship, ostracism, prestige, dominance, trustworthiness, and contempt. To capture cooperation in action, participants also played network-structured economic games, where decisions about resource allocation, exploitation, and costly punishment were made with full knowledge of partners’ identities. Using a multiplex social relations model, we examined how these networks were structured and interconnected. Our results reveal stark contrasts between prestige and dominance. Prestigious individuals were more trusted, had more friends, and received greater allocations in economic games, reflecting broad social and economic benefits. Dominant individuals, however, occupied a more precarious position. While they too attracted friendships and cooperative transfers—possibly reflecting local authority—they were simultaneously distrusted, feared, punished, and targeted for exploitation. These findings provide a novel, large-scale test of dominance leveling in real-world networks. They demonstrate that prestige consistently affords social and cooperative advantages, whereas dominance can, at times, carry substantial costs. In small-scale communities, dominance may yield short-term gains but is ultimately a fragile and contested pathway to influence.

Practical information