Social hierarchy is an ubiquitous principle of social organization across animal species. Although some progress has been made in our understanding of how humans infer hierarchical identity, the neuroanatomical basis for perceiving key social dimensions of others remains unexplored. Here, we combined event-related potentials and structural MRI to reveal the neuroanatomical substrates of early status recognition. We designed a covertly simulated hierarchical setting in which participants performed a task either with a superior or with an inferior player. Participants showed higher amplitude in the N170 component when presented with a picture of a superior player compared with an inferior player. Crucially, the magnitude of this effect correlated with brain morphology of the posterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal gyrus, insula, fusiform gyrus, and caudate nucleus. We conclude that early recognition of social hierarchies relies on the structural properties of a network involved in the automatic recognition of social identity.

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad Grant MINECO-PSI2012-34071), the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (Grant FP7/2007-2013)/European Research Council (Grant 323961), and Grup de Recerca en Neurociència Cognitiva, AGAUR (Grant 2014 SGR 1210N). M.B. was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO-FPDI-2013-17528). N.S.-G. received the prize ICREA Acadèmia for Excellence in Research, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya.