Hierarchies naturally emerge in social species, and judgments of status in these hierarchies have consequences for social relationships and health. Although judgments of social status are shaped by appearance, the physical cues that inform judgments of status remain unclear. The transition to college presents an opportunity to examine judgments of social status in a newly developing social hierarchy. We examined whether appearances—as measured by raters’ judgments of photographs and videos—provide information about undergraduate students’ social status at their university and in society in Study 1. Exploratory analyses investigated whether associations differed by participants’ sex. Eighty-one first-year undergraduate students (M_age = 18.20, SD = 0.50; 64.2% female) provided photographs and videos and reported their social status relative to university peers and relative to other people in society. As hypothesized, when participants were judged to be more attractive and dominant they were also judged to have higher status. These associations were replicated in two additional samples of raters who evaluated smiling and neutral photographs from the Chicago Faces Database in Study 2. Multilevel models also revealed that college students with higher self-reported university social status were judged to have higher status, attractiveness, and dominance, although judgments were not related to self-reported society social status. Findings highlight that there is agreement between self-reports of university status and observer-perceptions of status based solely on photographs and videos, and suggest that appearance may shape newly developing social hierarchies, such as those that emerge during the transition to college.

等级自然出现在社会物种中，对这些等级中的地位的判断会对社会关系和健康产生影响。尽管社会地位的判断是由外表塑造的，但影响地位判断的身体线索仍不清楚。向大学过渡提供了一个机会，可以在新发展的社会等级制度中检验社会地位的判断。在研究 1 中，我们检查了外表（通过评估者对照片和视频的判断来衡量）是否提供了有关本科生在大学和社会中的社会地位的信息。探索性分析调查了关联是否因参与者的性别而异。81 名一年级本科生（M_年龄 = 18.20，SD= 0.50；64.2% 的女性）提供了照片和视频，并报告了她们相对于大学同龄人和相对于社会其他人的社会地位。正如假设的那样，当参与者被判断为更具吸引力和统治力时，他们也被判断为具有更高的地位。这些关联在另外两个评估者样本中被复制，他们在研究 2 中评估来自芝加哥面孔数据库的微笑和中性照片。多层次模型还显示，具有较高自我报告的大学社会地位的大学生被认为具有较高的地位、吸引力和支配地位，尽管判断与自我报告的社会社会地位无关。调查结果强调，大学状态的自我报告与仅基于照片和视频的观察者对状态的看法之间存在一致性，