Review of measures of social status in experimental studies in behavioral sciences and neurosciences

Abstract

Social status (SS) has been exhaustively investigated in the field of social psychology, but are recent the contributions of economics and neuroscience to her study in experimental situations. The SS has been operationalized in different ways and this has derived in contradictions within the disciplines involved in her study. In this study we review techniques that used the ability and the chance to generate ES in experimental studies. Our review indicates that in the studies analyzed the use of deception prevails. Amongst the most frequent limitations were highlighted the inappropriate use of feedback and the lack of evaluation of the difficulty of the tasks. Among the strengths were identified aspects that provide more realism the task and using different measurement levels SS. Finally, we propose a technique that seeks to overcome these limitations while integrating the strengths identified in the research conducted.