Relative status regulates risky decision making about
resources in men:
evidence for the co-evolution of motivation and cognition
Ermer, Cosmides, Tooby
By:
Breana & Bryan
The Evolution of Decision Making
 While many decisions that humans or other organisms make
may be mathematically irrational, they can be ecologically
rational
 E.g. ambiguity aversion can be easily reversed by shifting the
context
 Authors primarily explore two concepts
 If decision-making is fractured into separate systems governing
separate domains
 If it is domain-specific, whether this has implications on a
separation of motivation and cognition within domains
Resource and Intrasexual Competition
 Resources important to male-male but not female-female
competition.
 A motivational system should regulate males’ willingness to
take risks in a competitive environment
 Presence of peers encourages men, but not women, to prefer
high risk/high reward options (Daly & Wilson, 2001)
 Not only the presence of peers should matter, but also the
sex and status of those peers
 This should only apply to problems involving status-relevent
resources
Risk-Sensitive Foraging Theory
 Willingness to take a risk is regulated by an organisms need
 i.e. if safer choice doesn’t meet organism’s needs, risky choice
seems more viable
 Has successfully predicted both animal foraging behavior (Real
& Caraco, 1986) and human risky decision making (Rode et al.,
1999)
 This theory becomes somewhat more complicated when
applied to this research
Risk-Sensitive Foraging Theory
 Resource of interest: Social Status
 Social status is always relative to who is being compared
 Everyone aspires to be high-status
 High-status individuals should seek the low risk/low reward
choice
 Equal or lower-status individuals should seek the high
risk/high reward choice
Dominance Theory
 Motivation to risk injury is regulated by the value of a
resource to an individual, and by the risk of a competitor
causing injury in pursuit of that resource.
 Individuals should be less willing to ‘challenge’ higher status
individuals, but should be motivated to ‘challenge’ equal
status individuals.
Risk-Sensitive Foraging Theory vs
Dominance Theory
 Both theories predict a high level of risk-taking when dealing
with equal status individuals
 Dominance theory predicts less risk-taking in the presence of
higher status individuals, and more risk-taking with lower
status individuals
Motivation for risk-taking
Other’s
Status
Risk-Sensitive
Foraging
Dominance
Higher
High
Low
Equal
High
High
Lower
Low
Low
Predictions
Relative social status will regulate men’s risky decision
making about resources
2. The presence of both resource opportunities and status
rivals will result in one of two patterns
1.
a.
b.
Higher status competitors will increase risk-taking
motivation
Only equal status competitors will increase risk-taking
motivation
Relative status should only regulate decisions within the
domain of intrasexual competition
4. Previous predictions will only apply to men
3.
Study 1 - Methods
 Subjects – 94 (42 male) Psych students
 Presented with both a resource loss problem and a medical
loss problem
 Both contained a sure option and a risky option
 Subjects told the experimenter was interested in perceptions
of others’ decisions
 Competitors-the ones observing the videos
 Competitor status based on the college they were from (e.g.
Princeton-high status)
Study 1- Results
 Relative social status significantly affected how often
men chose the risky option on the resource loss
problem
 Dominance theory supported-men who thought they
were being evaluated by status equals chose the highrisk/highgain option for acquiring resources significantly more
often than men who thought their own status was lower or
higher than that of their evaluators
Study 1- Results
*proportions of men choosing the risky option in the lower and higher status conditions
did not differ significantly from one another
Study 1- Results
 Relative status had no effect on how often men chose
the risky option on the control problem (medical
treatments for preventing loss of life)
L=64%, E=50%, H=57%
 Social status did not significantly affect how often
women chose the risky option on either problem
resource loss: L=35%, E=29%, H=33%
medical loss: L=53%, E=47%, H=39%
Study 2 - Methods
 Subjects - 159 (101 male) Psych 101 students
 Presented with a similar resource gain problem and a medical
gain problem, but also with two problems to explore the
effect of personal involvement in the problem
 Competitor status again based on college prestige
 Virtually identical procedure
Study 2-Results
relative status significantly affected how often men chose the risky option on the
resource loss problem
Study 2- Results
 Status had no effect on men's choices in response to the
control (medical loss) problem
L=41%, E=65%, H=45%
 Status had no significant effect on men's choices on the
medical gain problem
L=50%, E=46%, H=74%
 Dominance theory supported-men chose the risky option
more often in the equal status condition than in the lower or
higher status conditions
Study 2-Results
 Relative status had no effect on men's choices on the
resource gain problem
L=55%, E=52%, H=48%
 Difference between resource loss and gain problems is
expected
 cues of impending competition are necessary to activate a
motivational system regulating competitive inclinations, and
it is this system that uses relative status to regulate men's
risky decision making
Study 2- Results
•Status effects for women were present in Experiment 2 (although not in
Experiment 1)
•Does not fit any theory
Study 2- Results
 Status did not significantly affect women's choices on
the resource gain problem
L=61%, E=25%, H=35%
 Social status did not significantly affect women's
choices on either medical problems
framed in terms of loss of life:
L=63%, E=40%, H=42%
framed in terms of gains in longevity
L=63%, E=50%, H=41%
Follow-Up Studies
 2A
 Women from study 2 given the resource gain/loss problems
 Also given an identical medical loss problem, but where friends’
lives were at stake
 2B
 Men given the medical loss with friends problem and a variant
of the resource gain problem
 Also given a third, dummy problem
2A- Results
Results suggest that experiment 2 represented noise rather than a real
difference between populations
2A-Results
 Relative status did not affect women's risky choices
on the medical friends problem
L=62%, E=46%, H=69%
2B- Results
 Men's relative status did not affect their choices on
the medical treatment problem
L=58%, E=56%, H=33%
 The resource gain problem found no status effects
L=50%, E=44%, H=56%:
Conclusions
Supports hypothesis that relative social status will regulate
men’s risky decision making about resources
 Supports hypothesis that equal status competitors will
increase risk-taking motivation

-losing
one’s resources would result in challenge by equal status
competitors

Supports hypothesis that relative status should only
regulate decisions within the domain of intrasexual
competition
- men's
responses were produced by a motivational system specialized
for regulating competitive interactions, which is equipped with
its own, proprietary decision rules (this is cue regulated)

Supports hypothesis that the previous predictions will only
apply to men
Discussion
 Problems with study
 Imagined situations
 Results for women on Study 2
 Questions?