Seeing red: How perceptions of social status and worth influence hostile attributions and endorsement of aggression

Within social hierarchies, low social status is associated with increased vigilance, hostile expectations, and reactive aggression. We propose that societal devaluation is common across many low social status groups and produces a sense of threatened social worth. Threatened social worth may lead those of low status to be more vigilant towards social threats, thereby increasing the likelihood of hostile attributions and endorsement of aggression. Integrating theory on belongingness, social rejection, and stigma compensation, two studies test a sequential process model demonstrating that threatened social worth mediates the relationship between status, hostile attributions, and endorsement of aggression. Employing a relative status manipulation, Study 2 reveals a causal effect of status and highlights the importance of perceptions of low social status on threatened social worth. These data demonstrate the role of social worth in explaining the link between status and hostility and have implications for research in the social, health, and developmental domains.