title: Pulling Rank: Military Rank Affects Hormone Levels and Fairness in an Allocation Experiment.
abstract: Status within social hierarchies has great effects on the lives of socially organized mammals. Its effects on human behavior and related physiology, however, is relatively little studied. The present study investigated the impact of military rank on fairness and behavior in relation to salivary cortisol (C) and testosterone (T) levels in male soldiers. For this purpose 180 members of the Austrian Armed Forces belonging to two distinct rank groups participated in two variations of a computer-based guard duty allocation experiment. The rank groups were (1) warrant officers (high rank, HR) and (2) enlisted men (low rank, LR). One soldier from each rank group participated in every experiment. At the beginning of the experiment, one participant was assigned to startstanding guardand the other participantat rest.The participant who startedat restcould choose if and when to relieve his fellow soldier and therefore had control over the experiment. In order to trigger perception of unfair behavior, an additional experiment was conducted which was manipulated by the experimenter. In the manipulated version both soldiers started in thestanding guardposition and were never relieved, believing that their opponent wasat rest, not relieving them. Our aim was to test whether unfair behavior causes a physiological reaction. Saliva samples for hormone analysis were collected at regular intervals throughout the experiment. We found that in the un-manipulated setup high-ranking soldiers spent less timestanding guardthan lower ranking individuals. Rank was a significant predictor for C but not for T levels during the experiment. C levels in the HR group were higher than in the LR group. C levels were also elevated in the manipulated experiment compared to the un-manipulated experiment, especially in LR. We assume that the elevated C levels in HR were caused by HR feeling their status challenged by the situation of having to negotiate with an individual of lower military rank. This would be in line with the observation that unequally shared duty favored HR in most cases. We conclude that social status, in the form of military rank affects fairness behavior in social interaction and endocrine levels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of ViennaVienna, Austria; Department of Behavioural Biology, University of ViennaVienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Siart
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Lena S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Pflüger
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wallner
keywords: allocation experiment; cortisol; hierarchy; military rank; social; status; testosterone