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Social power, conflict policing, and the role of subordination signals in rhesus macaque society.

ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVES:Policing is a conflict-limiting mechanism observed in many primate species. It is thought to require a skewed distribution of social power for some individuals to have sufficiently high social power to stop others' fights, yet social power has not been examined in most species with policing behavior. We examined networks of subordination signals as a source of social power that permits policing behavior in rhesus macaques. MATERIALS AND METHODS:For each of seven captive groups of rhesus macaques, we (a) examined the structure of subordination signal networks and used GLMs to examine the relationship between (b) pairwise dominance certainty and subordination network pathways and (c) policing frequency and social power (group-level convergence in subordination signaling pathways). RESULTS:Networks of subordination signals had perfect linear transitivity, and pairs connected by both direct and indirect pathways of signals had more certain dominance relationships than pairs with no such network connection. Social power calculated using both direct and indirect network pathways showed a heavy-tailed distribution and positively predicted conflict policing. CONCLUSIONS:Our results empirically substantiate that subordination signaling is associated with greater dominance relationship certainty and further show that pairs who signal rarely (or not at all) may use information from others' signaling interactions to infer or reaffirm the relative certainty of their own relationships. We argue that the network of formal dominance relationships is central to societal stability because it is important for relationship stability and also supports the additional stabilizing mechanism of policing.

SUBMITTER: Beisner BA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5380402 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social power, conflict policing, and the role of subordination signals in rhesus macaque society.

Beisner Brianne A BA Hannibal Darcy L DL Finn Kelly R KR Fushing Hsieh H McCowan Brenda B

American journal of physical anthropology 20160123 1

<h4>Objectives</h4>Policing is a conflict-limiting mechanism observed in many primate species. It is thought to require a skewed distribution of social power for some individuals to have sufficiently high social power to stop others' fights, yet social power has not been examined in most species with policing behavior. We examined networks of subordination signals as a source of social power that permits policing behavior in rhesus macaques.<h4>Materials and methods</h4>For each of seven captive ...[more]

PMID: 26801956

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Project description:BackgroundMajor power theories assume that social power can play an important role in an individual's goal-related behaviors. However, the specific psychological mechanisms through which this occurs remain unclear. Some studies suggested that having power enhanced individuals' goal-related behaviors, by contrast, other studies suggested that low-power individuals were associated with a greater performance in goal-directed tasks. We were particularly interested in how social power changes individuals' goal-related behaviors during an emotional face-word Stroop task.MethodSocial power was primed by asking participants to recall a past situation in which they were in a position of power (high-power individuals), or a situation in which they were lacking power (low-power individuals). Afterward, participants were asked to complete an emotional face-word Stroop task. In the task, words representing specific emotions were written in a prominent red color across a face, and these words and facial expressions were either congruent or incongruent. The participant's task was to judge the emotion of the face while ignoring the red emotional words.ResultsOur behavioral data showed that these individuals displayed faster reaction time and better accuracy in congruent conditions, slower reaction time for fearful faces and worse accuracy for happy faces in both incongruent and congruent conditions. The event-related potential analyses showed that, compared with low-power individuals, high-power individuals showed greater P1 amplitudes when faced with emotional stimuli (both incongruent and congruent conditions), indicating that power affects individuals' attention in the early sensory processing of emotional stimuli. For the N170 component, low-power individuals showed more negative amplitudes when facing emotional stimuli, indicated that low-power individuals paid more attention to the construct information of emotional stimuli. For the N450 component, compared with congruent conditions, incongruent conditions elicited more negative amplitudes for both high- and low-power individuals. More importantly, fearful faces provoked enhanced P1 amplitudes in incongruent conditions than in congruent conditions only for low-power individuals, while, happy faces elicited larger P1 amplitudes in congruent conditions than in incongruent conditions only for high-power individuals. The findings suggested that during the initial stage of stimuli processing low-power individuals are more sensitive to negative stimuli than high-power individuals.ConclusionThese findings provided electrophysiological evidence that the differences in the emotional conflict process between high- and low-power individuals mainly lies in the early processing stages of emotional information. Furthermore, evidence from P1 and N170 showed that there was also a redistribution of attentional resources in low-power individuals.

Dataset Information

Social power, conflict policing, and the role of subordination signals in rhesus macaque society.

Publications

Social power, conflict policing, and the role of subordination signals in rhesus macaque society.

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