Effects of inter-group status on the pursuit of intra-group status

•Membership in a high-status group increases members' desire for intragroup status.•Concern about intergroup status determines how members pursue intragroup status.•When the group's status is not threatened, members seek status through competition.•When the group's status is threatened, members seek status through cooperation.•The ways in which members seek intragroup status determines collective outcomes.

This research examines how the status of one's group influences intra-group behavior and collective outcomes. Two experiments provide evidence that, compared to members of low-status groups, members of high-status groups are more concerned about their intra-group standing, which in turn can increase both the likelihood of competitive and cooperative intra-group behavior. However, whether the desire for intra-group standing manifests via competitive versus cooperative behavior depends on the relevance of the task to the group's inter-group standing. When the task is not clearly relevant to the group's status, members of high-status groups are more likely to engage in competitive behavior out of a desire to manage their intra-group status, which, in turn, leads to less desirable collective outcomes. However, when the group's status is at stake, members of high-status groups seek intra-group status via cooperative behavior, leading to better collective outcomes.