ALT A screencapture of the symposium abstract. It reads: Social hierarchies shape life outcomes from employment to relationships, making it crucial to understand how people perceive and judge social status. This symposium brings together cutting-edge empirical work on how visual and semantic cues influence perceptions of socioeconomic status and social hierarchy. First, we examine how skin tone and class-linked names independently shape status judgements in India, with implications for employment decisions. Next, we explore how status-related societal stereotypes moderate the impact of clothing on competence perceptions in the U.S. and Singapore. We then investigate how marginalised groups strategically use attire to counter status-based stereotypes, revealing systematic differences in impression management across racial and gender lines. Finally, we present evidence that racial stereotyping emerges from the simultaneous activation of multiple fuzzy categories rather than discrete ...