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Chapter 8 - In Front, More Numerous, Earlier, and Greater Force

from Part III - Iconic Dimensions and Magnitudes: The Conformation System of Authority Ranking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2025

Alan Page Fiske
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

This chapter discusses being in front of others, processing in first position, and having temporal precedence to conform authority ranking, as in military protocol; number of statues at a temple, number of heads or arms on a statue, number of names of a deity, and plural pronouns, and numerosity also conform authority ranking. Ancient rulers associated themselves with statues of the largest and most powerful animals, or with actual elephants and lions, conforming authority ranking by force and mass. The chapter’s conclusion recounts the author’s discovery of the analog magnitude system (AMS), which is the neurocognitive substrate for all eight of the dimensions and magnitudes whose conformational uses w have considered so far. The AMS is also the substrate for processing relative luminosity and relative loudness, so I realized I should find out whether luminosity and/or loudness often conforms authority ranking.

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