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Status foundations: Further consideration of the role of ‘dominance’ and the relative importance of cost infliction and benefit generation

This extended reply addresses comments on our paper examining the role of cost infliction and benefit generation in status allocations across 14 nations (Durkee et al., 2020). Specifically, Cheng et al. (2021) identified multicollinearity among our predictors as cause for concern and reviewed existing evidence that purportedly challenges our conclusion that benefit generation is the primary foundation of human status allocation. To counter these concerns, we conducted re-analyses that addressed the collinearity among our predictors in different ways and found further support for our original conclusion that benefit generation is a more important predictor of status allocations than cost infliction. Additionally, we discuss the ambiguity of the empirical support for the role of cost infliction in human hierarchies and propose a distinction between pure cost infliction (PCI) and benefit generation via cost infliction (BGCI) to explain why “dominance,” as it has been operationalized in extant empirical studies, might be associated with status in human groups. We hope that our original data on the inferential foundations of status allocations and this extended discussion of the empirical and conceptual issues with the “dominance” construct can help improve future investigations of human hierarchies and their psychological underpinnings.