People imagine high-status persons as tall, and in premodern art often depict rulers as bigger than others. Similarly, to evoke suitable emotions while representing the “greatness” of the Buddha and high gods, people often make statues of them as large as their technology permits. Rulers usually wear headdresses that make them seem tall, and are depicted wearing them. Rulers also tend to wear voluminous robes that make them appear especially large. Modern banners and statues of great political leaders depict them as huge, and their statues are often placed atop tall columns. Another conformation of authority ranking consists of lowering one’s head, bowing, kneeling, or prostrating oneself so as to be below a ruler or other person of “higher” rank. Rulers may place themselves on a dais.

Many cognitive experiments have shown that iconic dimensional conformations are prominent in implicit thought and perception of authority ranking relations. Cognitive experiments are designed to isolate the parameters of interest, or hold other parameters constant, so as to be able to make strong causal inferences. Schubert’s 2005 study showed pairs of role terms to German participants and told them to respond as quickly as possible to indicate with the UP or DOWN key to indicate whether the more powerful role terms was above or below the other role term. Participants responded significantly more slowly when the powerful role was displayed on the screen below the less powerful, compared to when the powerful role was displayed above the less powerful (Schubert 2005). Other researchers have replicated Schubert’s results, and extended them to surface area and to mass. Also, preverbal infants readily recognize that iconic dimensional conformations mean authority ranking relationships.

The discovery of iconic dimensional conformations raises many interesting questions. Are the conformational effects of iconic dimensions on superiors equal in degree to their effects on subordinates? What are the mathematical functions that link “amounts” of conformational dimensions to their effects? How do the conformation effects combine when there are repeated with the same dimension? What are the felicity conditions, under which the iconic dimensional conformations actually do conform authority ranking? When a pyramid brilliantly reflects sunlight, or an enormous bell peals, when and how are their percepts linked to an emperor who commanded them, rather than, say, the engineers or the workers who built them? Does sensitivity to the conformational effects of all ten dimensions emerge simultaneously in ontogeny? Why are these ten dimensions prevalent in conformations of authority ranking, but other dimensions, such as distance, apparently are not often used?