Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance PDF

CHAPTER 12 Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance Learning Objectives A!er studying this chapter, the reader will be able to: Explain how dominance hierarchies emerge from individual interactions. Describe one example of dominance hierarchies in a non-human animal species....

CHAPTER 12 Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance Learning Objectives A!er studying this chapter, the reader will be able to: Explain how dominance hierarchies emerge from individual interactions. Describe one example of dominance hierarchies in a non-human animal species. Analyze why men might have evolved a stronger motivation for status striving compared to women. List five correlates of dominance. Analyze why humans have evolved submissive strategies. In 1996, Admiral Jeremy Boorda, chief of operations for the U.S. Navy, was about to be interviewed about the combat medal “V” for valor that he then displayed proudly on his chest of ribbons (Feinsilber, 1997). In fact, Admiral Boorda had never been awarded this medal. So, rather than face the shame of being exposed for the false display, he committed suicide. Rick Strandlof claimed he has received a Purple Heart for bravery when he served as a marine in the Iraq war, but the military has no record of it (Cardona, 2010). So frequent are false claims of military valor that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 was enacted, making false claims of having won a military medal illegal. Why would people falsify their credentials and risk being exposed as frauds merely to enhance their status and reputation? Status, prestige, esteem, honor, respect, and rank are accorded differentially to individuals in all known groups. People devote tremendous effort to avoiding disrepute, dishonor, shame, humiliation, disgrace, and loss of face. Status and dominance hierarchies form quickly. In one study of 59 three-person groups of individuals who had previously not known each other, a clear hierarchy emerged within 1 minute in 50 percent and within the first 5 minutes in the other 50 percent (Fisek & Ofshe, 1970). Even more striking, group members could accurately evaluate their own future status within a new group after they had merely seen the other members and before anyone had uttered a single word (Kalma, 1991). If there were ever a reasonable candidate for a universal human motive, status striving would be near the top of the list (Anderson, Hildreth, & Howland, 2015; Barkow, 1989; Frank, 1985; Maslow, 1937; Symons, 1979). The Emergence of Dominance Hierarchies Crickets remember their history of successes and failures in fights with other crickets (Dawkins, 1989). If a cricket wins a lot of fights, it becomes more aggressive in subsequent fights. If it loses a lot, it will become submissive and avoid confrontations in the future. This phenomenon was documented experimentally by the evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander (1961), who introduced a “model” cricket that overpowered other crickets. A!er being beaten up by the model, the crickets were more likely to lose 336 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING subsequent fights when battling real crickets. It is as though each cricket formed an estimate of its own fighting ability relative to others and behaved accordingly. Over time, a dominance hierarchy emerged, whereby each cricket could be assigned a rank order, with crickets lower in the hierarchy giving in to those higher up. Male crickets that emerge victorious are more likely to seek sex from female crickets. Similar phenomena occur throughout the animal world. The phrase “pecking order” comes from the behavior of hens. When hens first come together, they fight frequently. Over time, however, the fighting subsides because each hen learns that she is dominant to some hens but subordinate to others. This pecking order tends to be stable over time and has advantages for each individual hen. Dominant hens gain because they do not have to engage in continuous costly combat to defend rank. Subordinate hens gain because they avoid injury that would occur from challenging the dominant hens. It is important that this pecking order, or dominance hierarchy, does not have a function per se. The hierarchy is an emergent property of the group, not of the individual. Instead, the evolved strategies of each individual hen have functions, and in the aggregate, they produce a hierarchy. This means that we have to consider the functions of being submissive, as well as the functions of being dominant. All-out fighting in every encounter is a foolish strategy. The loser risks injury and death and so would have been better off giving in—relinquishing its territory, food, or mate—from the start. Fighting is also costly for the victor. In addition to the risk of injury from battle, victors allocate precious energetic resources, time, and opportunities in battle. So both losers and winners would be better off if each could determine who would win in advance and simply declare a winner without suffering the costs of fighting. By submitting, the loser is able to walk away alive and injury free. Although forced to relinquish a resource for the moment, the loser can venture elsewhere where opportunities might be better, or perhaps lie low for the moment and wait for a more opportune time to challenge (Pinker, 1997). In sum, selection will favor the evolution of assessment abilities—psychological mechanisms that include assessment of one’s own fighting abilities relative to those of others. In humans, these assessment mechanisms are undoubtedly complex, transcending mere physical brawn to include the ability to enlist powerful friends, coalitions, and kin. Following assessment, strategies of dominance and submissiveness both have functions. One function is to avoid costly confrontations. Of course, there is sometimes uncertainty about the outcome. The various bluffs and bellows and hairs-on-end might be designed to exaggerate participants’ prowess and get another to back down prematurely. But selection would also favor seeing through these bluffs, since animals that submitted prematurely or needlessly would lose access to precious resources. A dominance hierarchy refers to the fact that some individuals within a group reliably gain greater access than others to key resources—resources that contribute to survival or reproduction (Cummins, 1998). Those ranked high in the hierarchy secure greater access to resources; those ranked low have less access to these resources. In the simplest form, dominance hierarchies are transitive, meaning that if A is dominant over B and B is dominant over C, then A will be dominant over C. Dominance and Status in Non-Human Animals More than one male crayfish cannot inhabit the same territory without determining who the boss is (Barinaga, 1996). The crayfish circle each other cautiously, sizing up their rivals. They then plunge into a violent fray, trying to tear each other apart. The crayfish that emerges victorious becomes dominant, metaphorically strutting around his territory. The loser slinks away to the periphery, avoiding further contact with the dominant male. 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE 337 The subsequent behaviors of the winners and the losers are so different that researchers suspected that changes must occur in their nervous systems. Researchers discovered a specific neuron in crayfish that responds differently to the neurotransmitter serotonin, depending on the animal’s status. In dominant crayfish, the presence of serotonin makes the neuron more likely to fire. In the losers, serotonin inhibits the neuron from firing. One battle, however, rarely consigns an animal to a permanent position as dominant or subordinate. When researchers put two subordinate crayfish in the same territory together, one inevitably shifts from subordinate to dominant status. When the neurons are tested 2 weeks later, in the dominant animal, the crucial neuron was excited by serotonin rather than inhibited by it. Thus, subordinate crayfish readily make the shift to dominant status when circumstances change. The same is not true of dominant crayfish, however. When researchers paired two previously dominant crayfish in the same territory, one was inevitably forced into subordinate status. But the loser, who previously had been dominant, continued to be aggressive, forcing fights with the dominant crayfish even to the point of getting itself killed. It is as if “the animals are reluctant to go from being dominant to being subordinate” (Barinaga, 1996, p. 290). Chimpanzees also battle for dominance (de Waal, 1982). Dominant male chimps strut around, making themselves look deceptively large and heavy. The most reliable indicator of dominance status among chimps is the number of submissive greetings it receives from others. Submissive greetings are a short sequence of pant-grunts that are accompanied by a lowering of the body so that the submissive male is literally looking up at the dominant male. This lowering is often accomplished while making a series of quick, deep bows. Sometimes, the submissive chimp brings objects to greet the dominant chimp, such as a leaf or a stick, which he presents while kissing the feet, neck, or chest of the dominant chimp. The dominant male, in turn, reacts by stretching to full height and making his hair stand on end so that he appears even larger. An observer might conclude that the two chimps are substantially different in size, even if they are in fact the same size. One male chimp grovels while the other struts. The females, in contrast, usually present their rear ends to the dominant chimp for inspection. The occasional failure to display the submissive greeting by either a male or a female is a direct challenge to the dominant chimp’s status and may provoke retaliation. Dominance status among male chimps comes with a key reproductive benefit: increased sexual access to females (de Waal, 1982). The dominant chimp in a colony typically secures at least 50 percent of the copulations and sometimes as many as 75 percent, even when there are a half-dozen other males in the colony. A survey of 700 studies concluded that middle- to high- ranking males typically have a reproductive advantage over the low-ranking males (Ellis, 1995), although there are some species, such as the rhesus macaques, in which females mate secretly with subordinate males (Manson, 1992). Chimpanzees battle for dominance; the dominant male typically gains more sexual access to females than the submissive male.