The ubiquitous nature, and influence, of social status indicates humans have a subconscious predisposition to navigate these hierarchies. Status is attained through either the evolutionary inherent pathway of dominance (coercion and intimidation) or the human specific pathway of prestige (skill and respect). Individuals who possess greater traits in each pathway are known to more readily attract eye gaze and social attention compared to lower-status peers. However previous research by the authors found that during competition for attentional resources with other stimuli, when there is no need to shift attention spatially, low dominance is significantly greater at competing for non-spatial attention. Given this unique finding in the social status literature, the current studies aimed to understand why non-spatial attention is biased towards low dominance individuals. The studies had undergraduate students complete modified versions of the attentional blink (AB) paradigm.
Study 1 (N = 44) explored the effect of counter-stereotypicality, in which people will initially attend to individuals incongruent with the group stereotype. Dominance was manipulated using female faces varying in dominance as the second of two targets (T2) in the AB. It was hypothesised that high dominance female faces would bias attention, being the incongruent stimuli, however this was not supported, as attention was greater for both high and low female dominance. Study 2 (N = 47) explored attention competition – stimuli that follow low dominance faces will be identified less accurately because of low dominance dominating attentional resources. Study 2 used male faces varying in facial dominance as the first target (T1) and randomised numbers as T2. Study 2 supported this theory – T2 stimuli was identified consistently less accurately for low compared to neutral dominance. However high dominance fluctuated between having a strong and weak ability at competing for attention.
These results demonstrate that our non-spatial attentional systems may be tuned to certain perceptual features associated with low dominance, therefore extending our understanding of how people view and interact with social hierarchies. Further research will focus on understanding the effect that high dominance has on non-spatial attention.

Social status dominates attention: Understanding the low dominance bias of non-spatial attention