Memory bias for social hierarchical information is modulated by perceived social rank

ABSTRACT

Hierarchies pervade human society, characterising its members along diverse dimensions ranging from their abilities or skills in a particular domain to their economic status or physical stature. One intriguing aspect of the centrality of hierarchies, relative to egalitarian constructs, is that hierarchically-organised social information appears to be remembered more easily than non-hierarchically-organised information. However, it is not yet clear how one’s social rank within a hierarchy influences processing. In a pre-registered study with 66 healthy participants, we examined memory recall for hierarchical information when participants themselves were positioned higher in the hierarchy versus lower in the hierarchy, both relative to an egalitarian control condition. The results replicate previous work showing that hierarchical information is memorised faster relative to the egalitarian control. Importantly, this effect was modulated by the participant’s position within the hierarchy, with higher positioned participants memorising information faster than lower-positioned participants. This study provides new evidence showing biases in memory will favour hierarchical information if modulated by perceptions of one’s own social rank.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• self-enhancement bias
• social hierarchy
• social rank

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank team members from the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by The Cambridge University Psychology Research Ethics committee. At the beginning of the study, informed consent to participate was obtained from each individual. In addition, each participant was debriefed at the end of the study.

Notes

1 Participants also completed a number of other affect and social questionnaires as part of a larger study. Further information on the other questionnaires are available online.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the The Medical Research Council (Grant Reference: SUAG/043 G101400) and partly supported by the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit (CBU).