Humans often take decisive action to influence their social environments, including their own position within a social hierarchy. Those who are highly motivated by status attainment may be especially prone to such activity. Here, we ask whether desire for social status contributes to the early detection of social stimuli, and more specifically, whether it plays a role in which environmental stimuli are consciously detected. We used a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task to examine vigilance to status-relevant versus non-status-relevant stimuli, and asked whether measure of narcissism, a personality trait strongly associated with a drive for status attainment, moderated people's task responses. Results showed that when task stimuli were status relevant, self-reported narcissism moderated stimulus processing such that as participants reported higher levels of narcissism, the likelihood that they would recognize these rapidly presented words increased if they were status relevant, but not if the stimuli were non-status-relevant. These results suggest that the motivations that underpin personality traits, for example the drive to seek social status associated with narcissism, may play a formative role in the early processing and detection of social stimuli, thereby shaping people's social behaviour.

中文翻译：

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对状态线索的自恋警惕


人类经常采取果断行动来影响他们的社会环境，包括他们自己在社会等级制度中的地位。那些对地位获得有高度激励的人可能特别容易受到此类活动的影响。在这里，我们询问对社会地位的渴望是否有助于社会刺激的早期检测，更具体地说，它是否在有意识地检测到环境刺激方面发挥作用。我们使用快速连续视觉呈现任务来检查对状态相关和非状态相关刺激的警惕性，并询问自恋（一种与获得地位的驱动力密切相关的人格特质）的测量是否调节了人们的任务反应。结果表明，当任务刺激与状态相关时，自我报告的自恋会调节刺激处理，因此，当参与者报告更高水平的自恋时，如果这些词与状态相关，他们识别这些快速呈现的词的可能性就会增加，但如果刺激与状态无关，则不会。这些结果表明，支撑人格特质的动机，例如寻求与自恋相关的社会地位的驱动力，可能在社会刺激的早期处理和检测中发挥形成作用，从而塑造人们的社会行为。