Nonverbal displays of dominance and prestige: Evidence for cross-cultural and early-emerging recognition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Two universal strategies for attaining influence – dominance, or the use of intimidation and force to obtain power, and prestige, or garnering respect by demonstrating knowledge and expertise – are communicated through distinct nonverbal displays in North America. Given evidence for the emergence and effectiveness of these strategies across cultures, including non-WEIRD small-scale, traditional societies in Africa, Asia, and South America, the nonverbal displays that are used to reliably communicate these strategies also might be universal. Here, we demonstrate that the dominance display is recognized by the Mayangna, a small-scale society in rural Nicaragua, and by Canadian children as young as 2 and 3 years old. We also find that the prestige display is reliably differentiated from dominance by both groups, and judged as a high rank signal by the Mayangna. However, members of the Mayangna confused the prestige display with happiness, and children confused the prestige display with a neutral expression. Overall, findings are consistent with a ubiquitous and early-emerging ability to recognize dominance, and with the suggestion that the prestige display is more culturally variable and ontogenetically slower to emerge.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".