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Phoenix666 writes:

The effect of the social environment on cooperation has received attention in studies of nonhuman animal behavior but has been largely overlooked in human research. Research with animals in the wild and under controlled conditions in captivity has consistently shown that social dynamics, and specifically the nature of the dominance hierarchy, has a large impact on cooperative outcomes. Although variable in form, every animal society has some form of dominance hierarchy. Hierarchy is defined as priority of access to resources and probability of winning competitive encounters, and reflects underlying assymetries in power. A hierarchy can be characterized in terms of linearity and steepness, with the former providing information about the degree of transitivity between individuals and the latter indicating the extent to which individuals differ from each other in winning encounters or accessing resources. Among nonhuman primates, it has been demonsrated repeatedly that the characteristics of dominance hierarchies impact cooperative outcomes, with steep and linear hierarchies being associated with decreased cooperation. For example, experiments have shown that cooperation is impeded among chimpanzees living in steep and linear hierarchies, whereas it emerges more easily among species with more relaxed hierarchies such as cottontop tamarins.

A great deal of research has focused on human cooperative behavior, but these experiments have primarily been conducted with anonymous participants, leaving the influence of social relationships on cooperation largely overlooked. Although the influence of hierarchy on cooperation has rarely been examined, researchers have considered hierarchy's influence on economic issues such as market entry, bargaining, and learning. Other work has investigated how disproportionate power in sanctioning influences cooperation, and both empirical and modeling investigations have been directed at how group status impacts cooperation and competition with other groups. In the current study, we hypothesize that social relationships, and specifically hierarchical relationships reflecting power assymetries between individuals, will have a negative impact on human cooperation as it does in our nonhuman primate relatives. In order to test the effect of social hierarchy on cooperation, we present participants with a task inspired by nonhuman primate research in which two individuals of known social rank are presented with the opportunity to invest in a cooperative task, and, if a threshold of investment is met and cooperation is achieved, the higher ranking of the two investors controls the distribution of the resource. To investigate how human cooperation is impacted by the presence of a social hierarchy, we compare cooperative success in the presence of a hierarchy (with both earned and arbitrarily assigned ranks) to success in a condition when hierarchy is absent.

It's an important topic at a time when many worldwide are remarking on how broken the current models of hierarchy and social organization are.

DOI: 10.1038/srep18634

Original Submission