Competence-based social status modulates affective evaluation and dyadic motor coordination

Status is a key social dimension among human societies and is often conferred to those individuals that are perceived as more competent and skilled, especially in small groups. Previous findings suggest that status modulates several aspects of social cognition. However, little is known about the influence of social status on online dyadic motor coordination. In a first experiment (N = 26), participants were engaged in an interactive game with two fake players. We manipulated the scores achieved by the fake players so that one of them would rank first (high status) and the other would rank last (low status). Before and after the manipulation we measured participant’s implicit affective evaluation of the two players with a modified version of the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) and explicit ratings of attractiveness, competence, intelligence and dominance after the manipulation. We found a decrease from the first to the second AMP session in the evaluation of the low status player, which was also rated as less competent and intelligent than the high status one, confirming the effectiveness of our manipulation. In a second experiment (N = 16), we tested the influence of social status on motor coordination by asking participants to synchronize with the two players (in a within-subjects design) to perform imitative or complementary reach-to grasp movements. Main results indicate that, only during complementary actions, participants achieved a better performance when interacting with the low status player compared to the high one suggesting that competence-based hierarchical status plays a role in interpersonal coordination.