Agency through hierarchy? A group-based account of increased approval of social hierarchies under conditions of threatened control

People whose personal control is threatened can maintain a sense of control through membership in agentic ingroups when they define their self in terms of group membership. Hierarchies within groups might be a heuristic indicator of collective agency as they foster collective goal-setting and coordinated action. Thus, we hypothesized threatened group members who were highly identified with their group to more strongly support ingroup hierarchies, particularly when they perceived hierarchy as fostering collective agency. We tested this across five preregistered experimental studies. In Study 1a (n = 412), Study 1b (n = 413), and Study 2 (n = 434), manipulated threat to personal control consistently enhanced support for ingroup hierarchies across organizational and national contexts, but only for those participants who were highly identified with the presented group. In Study 3 (n = 425), we replicated this finding by experimentally manipulating identification with the presented group. In Study 4 (n = 379), control threat increased hierarchy approval only when hierarchy was displayed as beneficial (vs. harmful) for the ingroup's collective agency. A meta-analysis across all studies provided conclusive evidence that a) there is indeed an effect of control threat on hierarchy approval, b) this effect relies on social identity processes and c) enhancing collective agency may be a key underlying motivation of this process. As predicted, our findings indicate that support for ingroup hierarchies after personal control loss is a group-based mechanism to restore personal control with collective agency beliefs. •People maintain and restore a sense of control through membership in agentic groups.•Hierarchical ingroup structures are a heuristic indicator of collective agency.•Following control threat participants increased support for ingroup hierarchies.•Importantly, this only occurred for highly identified group members.•This supports a group-based control account of hierarchy support.