We humans create social hierarchies to preserve order and form rich expectations of how the powerful will behave. We have evolved to be sensitive to the behavioral cues that signal these power dynamics. For instance, we often associate a person's physical height with power, which leads us to attribute more power and status to tall people. These kinds of associations may be particularly influential when we're just getting to know the person and initially sussing out our relative places on the social hierarchy.

My own research focuses on whether people interpret naysaying - the act of negating, refuting, or criticizing (without explicit intention to hurt a particular target) - as a similar kind of power-signaling cue.

Continued here