This article examines the 19th-century ‘antiquities rush’ – the frenzy of archaeological digging, scientific expeditions, and straightforward looting of artefacts in the broader Mediterranean – through the framework of international status competition. To do this, I first situate material culture at the foundation of international status-seeking and demonstrate the importance of cultural objects as status symbols for states. I then elaborate two logics of status-seeking that explain why states engaged in massive cultural extraction practices in the early 19th century. The first logic is that of cultural custodianship, where states pursued status as guardians of the cultural heritage of humankind. The second logic is a claim to cultural descendance, where states sought recognition as cultural heirs of classical civilisations. Cultural extraction, therefore, was critical in the establishment of the 19th-century international cultural hierarchy. Echoes of these arguments reverberate today in the competing claims of ownership and restitution of these antiquities. To illustrate these arguments, the article focuses on the international competition between France and Great Britain over the extraction of antiquities, examining in detail the removal of the Parthenon Marbles from Athens at the turn of the 19th century.

Workplace exclusion – often subtle and difficult to detect – significantly contributes to employee disengagement and turnover, costing US organizations over $1 trillion annually. This study examines how exclusionary behaviors (EBs) influence turnover intentions (TOIs) through disruption of psychological needs, using Rock’s SCARF model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness) and self-determination theory. A two-wave survey of full-time US employees (N = 277) assessed EB, SCARF-based need satisfaction, and TOI. Partial least squares structural equation modeling revealed that EB significantly undermines all five SCARF domains, but only fairness and status mediated the EB–TOI link. Certainty, autonomy, and relatedness did not have significant effects. These findings suggest turnover risk intensifies when employees feel unfairly treated or socially devalued, rather than merely disempowered or disconnected. The study advances theoretical integration between SCARF and SDT and offers practical guidance for managers seeking to reduce attrition by fostering inclusive, respectful, and psychologically safe workplace environments.

This article asks why states choose to explicitly label themselves as feminist and critically examines the case of Canada. Drawing on constructivist insights, I suggest that identity insecurity is a key contextual factor driving states’ decision to adopt a feminist branding. Through a thematic analysis of 1,551 statements from the Canadian House of Commons and additional documents published by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development from 2006 to 2017, I find that Canada’s choice to adopt a feminist brand occurred within a broader context of identity insecurity, with gender equality emerging as a strategic area to enhance the country’s role through strengthened leadership in this sector. This article advances the study of feminist foreign policies by highlighting the strategic motivations behind the adoption of the feminist label, offering insights into its diffusion despite differing levels of commitment to gender equality.

The work presents an approach to the meaning(s) of dignity in the constitutional field that focuses, first and foremost, on answering the question: what is dignity? Four ways of characterising the notion are described, relying, where relevant, on the input obtained beyond the legal field – especially in that of philosophy. Although each of them accounts for a different kind of human property, an important commonality among them is stressed, which provides a pathway to understand the place of dignity as a constitutional end within a material approach to constitutions.

Some economists argue that consumption of publicly visible goods is driven by social status. Making a causal inference about this claim is difficult with observational data. We conduct an experiment in which we vary both whether a purchase of a physical product is publicly visible or kept private and whether the income used for purchase is linked to social status or randomly assigned. Making consumption choices visible leads to a large increase in demand when income is linked to status, but not otherwise. We investigate the characteristics that mediate this effect and estimate its impact on welfare.

We report the results of experiments designed to test the impact of social status on learning in a coordination game. In the experiment, all subjects observe the play of an agent who either has high status or low status. In one treatment the agent is another player in the game; in the other the agent is a simulated player. Status is assigned within the experiment based on answers to a trivia quiz. The coordination game has two equilibria: one is payoff-dominant but risky, and the other is risk-dominant. The latter is most commonly chosen in experiments where there is no coordination device. We find that a commonly observed agent enhances coordination on the payoff-dominant equilibrium more often when the agent has high status.

The “collective action problem” describes situations where each person in a group can individually profit more by withholding contributions to group goals. However, if all act in their material self-interest no public good is produced and all are worse off. I present a new solution to the collective action problem based on status. I argue that contributions to collective action increase an individual's status in the group because contributions create perceptions of high group motivation, defined as the relative value an individual places on group versus individual welfare. Individuals are predicted to receive a variety of social and material benefits for their contributions to the group. These rewards can help explain why individuals contribute to collective action.

Four laboratory studies tested the theory. In Study 1, following interaction in a 6- person public goods game, participants reported viewing higher contributors as more group motivated and higher status. Higher contributors also wielded more interpersonal influence in task interactions with participants. Participants also cooperated with higher contributors more, and allocated greater altruism to them in a Dictator game. Study 2 addressed an exchange-theoretic alternative explanation for the findings of Study 1, showing that observers of collective action who did not benefit from higher contributors’ contributions to the public good, nonetheless rated them as higher status, cooperated with them more, and gave them greater altruistic gifts. These results show that collective action contributors can earn social and material benefits even outside the group.

Study 3 more directly tested the mediating role of group motivation. Contributors who sacrificed a greater proportion of resources for the collective action were rated as more group motivated and higher status than a moderate proportional contributor, even though the amounts they contributed were the same. These findings support the theory, and underscore the significance of self-sacrifice in the acquisition of status in collective action.

Study 4 investigated the effects of status rewards on contributors’ behavior towards and perceptions of the group. Participants who received positive status feedback for their contributions subsequently contributed more than those who did not. Rewarded participants also identified more with the group and saw it as having greater solidarity and cohesion. I conclude by discussing theoretical implications and future research.

Competition involves two main dimensions, a rivalry for resources and the ranking of relative performance. If socially recognized, the latter yields a ranking in terms of social status. The rivalry for resources resulting from competitive incentives has been found to negatively affect women’s performance relative to that of men. However, little is known about gender differences in the performance consequences of social-status ranking. In our experiments we introduce a novel design that allows us to isolate the effects of status ranking from those caused by a rivalry for resources. Subjects do a time-limited task where they need to search for numbers and add them up. Performance is straightforwardly measured by the number of correct summations. When there is no status ranking we find no gender differences in the number of attempted summations or in performance. By contrast, when there is status ranking men significantly increase the number of attempted summations as well as the number of correct summations. Remarkably, when women are subjected to status ranking, they significantly decrease the number of attempted summations. The net result is striking. With status ranking men attempt more summations and correctly solve many more than women. These differences are markedly large and statistically highly significant. Our results suggest that increased participation in competitive environments could harm women’s labor market success along a hidden channel.

Ultimatum proposals and dictator donations are studied when proposers can choose the income and sex of the responder. Responder attributes generated strong effects in the selection decisions; subjects preferred to send proposals to low-income responders and female responders were much more popular than males. Hence, signals of income and sex appear to be important in deciding with whom to bargain. We also report from an experiment where both responders and proposers could select co-player based on socioeconomic status and gender. Both female responders and proposers were strongly preferred. A weaker tendency was that high status subjects were favored.

We report experimental evidence showing a positive effect of redistribution on economic efficiency via the self-enforcement of property rights, and identify which status groups benefit more and which less. We model an economy in which wealth is produced if players voluntarily comply with the—efficient but inequitable—prevailing social order. We vary exogenously whether redistribution is feasible, and how it is organized. We find that redistribution benefits all status groups as property disputes recede. It is most effective when transfers are not discretionary but instead imposed by some exogenous administration. In the absence of coercive means to enforce property rights, it is the higher status groups, not the lower status groups, who benefit from redistribution being compulsory rather than voluntary.

Some of the earliest work on heterogeneity in social preferences focuses on gender differences in behavior. The source of these gender differences is the main interest of this paper. We report on dictator game experiments designed to identify heterogeneity of other-regarding preferences according to personality, gender, status, and whether the choice is framed as giving or taking. We find that the effect of gender on giving is more subtle than previously understood, and is explained collectively by various personality factors. We also find that women, high status treatment individuals, and individuals in the giving language treatment give less, and are also less sensitive to the price of giving.

We present the results of an experiment measuring the impact of low group status and relative group size on trust, trustworthiness and discrimination. Subjects interact with insiders and outsiders in trust games and periodically enter markets where they can trade group membership. Low status and minority subjects have low morale: that is, they comparatively dislike being low status and being minority subjects. Group discrimination against low status and minority subjects is unchanged. However, low status subjects are deferential to high status subjects in terms of comparatively higher trust, and minority subjects are deferential to majority subjects in terms of comparatively higher trustworthiness.

Social power establishes and legitimizes actions for individuals within a society who accept the structures that create that power. Differences in power can develop without strict hierarchies, however. Here, we explore the power differences among groups living in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico using bioarchaeological data and a case study from the Harris site, a Late Pithouse period village occupied circa AD 550–1000. Aspects of mortuary practices and supporting archaeological data offer nuanced interpretations of individuals with situational power linked to social practices that both solidified and maintained power by particular households. The power differences documented here are not based on coercion; instead, they are tied to cooperation and engagement with the community. For small-scale communities such as Harris, situational power is interpreted for individuals with access to prime agricultural land and/or ritual, or by association with certain land-holding lineages. This system is consistent with a heterarchical structure that embraced flexibility in the use of power.