Ermer Elsa, Cosmides Leda, Tooby John
Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Evol Hum Behav. 2008 Mar;29(2):106-118. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.11.002.
Relative social status strongly regulates human behavior, yet this factor has been largely ignored in research on risky decision-making. Humans, like other animals, incur risks as they compete to defend or improve their standing in a social group. Among men, access to culturally important resources is a locus of intrasexual competition and a determinant of status. Thus, relative status should affect men's motivations for risk in relevant domains. Contrasting predictions about such effects were derived from dominance theory and risk-sensitive foraging theory. Experiments varied whether subjects thought they were being observed and evaluated by others of lower, equal, or higher status, and whether decisions involved resources (status relevant) or medical treatments (status irrelevant). Across two experiments, men who thought others of equal status were viewing and evaluating their decisions were more likely to favor a high risk/high gain means of recouping a monetary loss over a no risk/low gain means with equal expected value. Supporting predictions from dominance theory, this motivation for risk-taking appeared only in the equal status condition, only for men, and only for resource loss problems. Taken together, the results support the idea that motivational systems designed to negotiate a status-saturated social world regulate the cognitive processes that generate risky decision-making in men.
相对社会地位对人类行为有着强烈的调节作用，但在风险决策研究中，这一因素在很大程度上被忽视了。与其他动物一样，人类在为捍卫或提升自己在社会群体中的地位而竞争时会面临风险。在男性中，获取具有文化重要性的资源是同性竞争的一个焦点和地位的决定因素。因此，相对地位应该会影响男性在相关领域冒险的动机。关于此类影响的对比预测源自支配理论和风险敏感觅食理论。实验改变了受试者是否认为自己正被地位较低、相等或较高的他人观察和评价，以及决策涉及的是资源（与地位相关）还是医疗治疗（与地位无关）。在两项实验中，那些认为地位相等的他人正在观看并评价其决策的男性，相较于具有同等预期价值的无风险/低收益方式，更倾向于选择高风险/高收益的方式来弥补金钱损失。支持支配理论的预测，这种冒险动机仅出现在地位相等的条件下，仅针对男性，且仅针对资源损失问题。综合来看，这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即旨在应对充满地位因素的社会世界的动机系统调节着男性产生风险决策的认知过程。
