Experiment shows we instinctively respond to symbols of hierarchy

About an interesting psychological study with applications to kink

Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash

There’s a scientific paper from earlier this year — “Hierarchical status is rapidly assessed from behaviourally dominant faces” — that’s pretty mind-blowing if you consider the implications for BDSM and D/s in particular.

Here’s roughly how it worked: Students got to play a fake game, then they contemplated pictures of the fake players — with carefully neutral faces — who ranked higher or lower while their brains were scanned:

The study found that people showed near instant intense interest in the faces of those they thought ranked higher than them. Less so for those that ranked lower.

This shows we instinctively:

• Recognise our place in a hierarchy.

• Pay more attention to those in dominant positions.

Or, as the researchers put it:

…the judgment of social hierarchy occurs rapidly when viewing anonymous conspecifics.

So far, so obvious! However, the nature of the experiment itself has implications for kink.

For a start, it illustrates that on some level, D/s is always “real”. Whatever layers of play and consent you add, monkey brain is still responding to anything that looks like hierarchy.

Far more importantly, it shows that we respond to purely symbolic dominance.

The students weren’t put in armlocks by bouncers, nor ordered around by martinets, nor locked in cells and kept as prisoners. Instead, they were shown their relative rank symbolically.

They responded to it instantly. For me, two things come out of this:

1. The experiment seems to explain why it's very hard to flip the valence of certain kinky or erotic activities between dominant and submissive.

There’s a whole rosta of services that a dominant should in theory be able to enjoy that, however, may have the wrong valence for the individuals involved. These range from anticipatory service, through missionary position sex, to recreational spanking.

This experiment shows us why some people just can’t detach themselves from the symbolism — whether learned or instinctive; it’s too instant, too visceral.

2. The experiment also suggests that symbolic things and actions really do make us feel more dominant or submissive, and aren't just about specific fetishes.

Kneeling in the corner only sometimes gets me hard, but always puts me in a submissive mood, and always puts Xena in her comfortably in charge mood. Similarly, our experiments with permanent chastity had an unanticipated intensifying effect on our dynamic.

So, perhaps this is the answer to the perennial, "Why can't you submit without your collar/chastity device/latex wombat suit?"

I would love to see similar experiments, but one without the actual game — do we respond in the same way to purely visual hierarchies? — and one with a more neutral way of presenting the hierarchy — do we respond to arbitrary symbols of hierarchy?

If you know of any experiments like that, please let me know!