Chapter 12 Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance PDF

342 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING Elevated status and dominance can give males greater sexual access along two paths. First, high-status men are preferred as mates by women. High-status men can offer women greater pr...

342 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING Elevated status and dominance can give males greater sexual access along two paths. First, high-status men are preferred as mates by women. High-status men can offer women greater protection and increased access to resources that can be used to help support them and their children and perhaps even better health care (Buss, 2016b; Hill & Hurtado, 1996). Women in polygynous societies sometimes prefer to share with other co-wives a bounty of resources that a high-ranking man can provide rather than have all of the smaller share of resources held by a lower-ranking man (Betzig, 1986). So one potential benefit of being a high-ranking man is preferential selection by women as a mate. A second path through which dominant men gain increased access to women is through intrasexual domination (Puts, 2010). Dominant men might simply take the mates of subordinate men, leaving these low-ranking men helpless to retaliate. As Daly and Wilson noted, “Men are known by their fellows as ‘the sort who can be pushed around’ and ‘the sort who won’t take any shit,’ as people whose word means action or people who are full of hot air, as guys whose girlfriends you can chat up with impunity or guys you don’t want to mess with” (1988, p. 128). Napoleon Chagnon reported this example of an interaction between two Yanomamö brothers. The higher-status brother (Rerebawa) had an affair with the wife of his lower-status brother. When the cuckolded brother found out, he attacked Rerebawa but received a sound thrashing with the blunt side of an axe. When Rerebawa gave Chagnon a tour of the village, he made it a point to introduce him to his lower-status brother by grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him to the ground, announcing, “This is the brother whose wife I screwed when he wasn’t around!” (Chagnon, 1983, p. 29). This was a serious insult that might otherwise have provoked a bloody club fight if the two Yanomamö men were of equal status. However, the subordinate brother just slunk away in shame, relieved not to have to battle his brother. Status and Sexual Opportunity Is there evidence that elevated status in men actually leads to more sexual opportunities with women? Kings, emperors, and despots throughout recorded history have routinely collected women in harems, choosing the young, the fertile, and the attractive. The Moroccan emperor Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, for example, had a harem of 500 women with whom he sired 888 children. Evolutionary anthropologist Laura Betzig assembled systematic data from the first six civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Aztec Mexico, Incan Peru, imperial India, and imperial China (Betzig, 1993). These civilizations spanned four continents and roughly 4,000 years, beginning in about 4,000 b.c. All six civilizations show a remarkably consistent pattern. In India, Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala in the early 19th century, housed 332 women in his harem. These included 10 high-ranking Maharanis, 50 middle-ranking Ranis, and other assorted mistresses and servants without rank: “All of them were at the beck and call of the Maharaja. He could satisfy his lust with any of them at any time of day or night” (Dass, 1970, p. 78). This extravagant sexual access to women was restricted to those high in status and power. Many men could afford only a single wife, and some were so poor that they could not afford even one. The rich nobles, on the other hand, could afford harems, and until very recently, in India, many did (Betzig, 1993). In imperial China, a similar story unfolded. In the Chou dynasty in 771 b.c., kings kept “one queen (hou), three consorts (fu-jen), nine wives of the second rank (pin), twenty-seven wives of the third rank (shih-fu), and eighty-one concubines (yu-chi)” (van Gulik, 1974, p. 17). Palace agents were required to scour the land for young, beautiful, and accomplished women, who were then transported back to the palace. The least attractive were given menial work at the palace, while the most attractive were chosen for the imperial harem. The number of women 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE 343 corresponded closely to the status of the man. The emperor Huang-ti was said to have had intercourse with 1,200 women. The deposed emperor Fei-ti kept six palaces stocked with more than 10,000 women. Great princes were restricted to hundreds of women, great generals had 30 or more, upper-class men housed 6 to 12, and middle-class men kept only 3 or 4 (Betzig, 1993). Across the globe, in Incan Peru, there were “houses of virgins” with 1,500 women, although no upper limit was set on the number. The women waited in these houses until receiving a summons from the king, at which point they were brought to wherever the king happened to be. As in China, the number of women kept depended on the status and rank of the man. The emperors kept the most women, numbering in the thousands. Inca lords kept a minimum of 700 “for the service of his house and on whom to take his pleasure” (Cieza de Leon, 1959, p. 41). Status and rank, it appears, afforded men great sexual access to women in each of the six first recorded human civilizations. Genetic analyses have confirmed the effects of status, power, and position on reproductive outcomes. Blood samples from 16 populations from around the former Mongolian empire revealed that 8 percent of the men bore a chromosomal “signature” characteristic of the Mongol rulers (Zerjal et al., 2003). The most prominent ruler, Genghis Khan, established large territories for his sons who had many wives and large harems. An astonishing 16 million men in that region are likely descendants of the ruler Genghis Khan, warranting the label “Genghis Khan effect.” Similar genetic results have been discovered in Ireland, where roughly one out of every five males in northwestern Ireland is likely to be a descendant of a single ruler (Moore, McEvoy, Cape, Simms, & Bradley, 2006). A meta-analysis of 33 non-industrial populations—ranging from the Ache of Paraguay to the Nyangatom of Ethiopia—found that men’s status was positively correlated with several reproductively relevant outcomes. In both polygamous and monogamous cultures, higher-status men had more wives, higher fertility rates, and more surviving offspring. In polygamous societies but in not monogamous societies, status was also positively correlated with lower offspring mortality. In monogamous but not polygamous societies, status was linked with marrying younger, hence more reproductively valuable, wives. These effects generally held regardless of whether the cultural subsistence patterns were based on agriculture, foraging, horticulture, or pastoralism. This linkage between status and mating success appears to hold in modern cultures as well, although in dramatically reduced form. Legally enforced monogamy in modern Western cultures restricts the number of women a man can marry. The elimination of harems coincided with the end of the prevalence of despots and kings. Nonetheless, men who are high in status indeed gain greater sexual access to a larger number of women (Perusse, 1993). Because this access occurs in the context of legally enforced monogamy, the increased sexual access of high-status men comes from short-term sex partners, friends with benefits, extramarital affairs, serial girlfriends, and serial marriages. Men scoring high on social dominance, for example, admit having more affairs (Egan & Angus, 2004). Socially dominant adolescent males are more sexually active than their low-status peers (de Bruyn, Cillessen, & Weisfeld, 2012). And modern men who have high incomes and are high in status tend to have more frequent sex and a larger number of children (Hopcroft, 2006; Weeden, Abrams, Green, & Sabini, 2006). A study conducted in Austria revealed that even within universities, male academics in high-status positions had more children than other employees (Fieder et al., 2005). Men in supervisory positions within modern business organizations have more children than their subordinates, an effect not true for women (Fieder & Huber, 2012). Men who are high in status marry women who are more physically attractive than men lower in status (Elder, 1969; Taylor & Glenn, 1976; Udry & Eckland, 1984). High-status men also seek out women who are younger and hence more fertile (Grammer, 1992). Although the structure of modern civilization has changed dramatically from that of the earliest civilizations, the link between a man’s status and sexual access to young, attractive women continues to hold, albeit much less strongly than in the days of kings and despots. 344 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING In sum, empirical evidence supports the evolutionary rationale for predicting a sex difference in the strength of the motivation to achieve high status. All available evidence suggests that high status in men leads directly to increased sexual access to a larger number of women. Elevated status in women, of course, also confers many reproductive advantages such as more resources for them and their children. But the Alex Joseph, surrounded by his multiple wives, living in a small town in Arizona. Historically and cross-culturally, high-status men often become effectively polygynous, direct increase in sexual gaining sexual access to multiple women in the form of wives, mistresses, or concubines. access afforded men high in status suggests a more powerful selective pressure for a status-striving motive in men. Are Men Higher in Status Striving? Is there any direct evidence that men are higher than women in dominance or status striving? Surprisingly, few studies have been devoted to this question, but there are some hints. In one six-culture study, Whiting and Edwards (1988) discovered that boys were more likely than girls to engage in rough-and-tumble play, assaults and other aggressive actions, displays of “egoistic” dominance, and acts of seeking attention. Boys in all six cultures were more likely than girls to issue dominance challenges to same-age peers. Girls, in contrast, tended to display nurturance and pleasing sociability more than boys. Psychologist Elenor Maccoby (1990) reviewed the evidence for sex differences in children across thousands of studies. She described two of the most robust sex differences in the preschool years: The first is the rough-and-tumble play style characteristic of boys and their orientation toward the issues of competition and dominance.... A second factor of importance is that girls find it difficult to influence boys.... Among boys, speech serves largely egoistic functions and is used to establish and protect an individual’s turf. Among girls, conversation is a more socially binding process. (Maccoby, 1990, p. 516) A sex difference in dominance motivation appears to emerge at an early age. Browne (1998, 2002) argues that temperamental sex differences, including men’s higher aggressiveness, competitive striving, desire for status, and greater inclination to take risks are linked with sex differences in status and income in the workplace as adults. Another source of evidence about sex differences comes from research on social dominance orientation (SDO) (Pratto, Sidanius, & Stallworth, 1993). Those who are high on this orientation endorse an ideology involving the legitimacy of one group’s domination over another, the deservingness of discrimination and subordination of one group by another, and the allocation of more perks to one group than another. Some of the items on the SDO scale are “To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on others”; “Rich people have their money because they are simply better people”; “Some people are just inferior to others”; “Some groups are simply not the equals of others”; “Only the best people [for example, the smartest, richest, most educated, and so on] should get ahead in this world”; “Winning is more important than how the game is played”; “[It is OK to get] ahead in life by almost any means necessary” (Pratto, 1996, p. 187). 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE 345 SDO should be higher in men than in women because such an orientation led ancestral men to greater control of and access to women. Furthermore, women would have been selected to choose men high in SDO, since this would have led to a greater bounty of benefits for themselves and their children. Taken together, both rationales suggest an evolutionary basis for predicting a sex difference in SDO. Indeed, men consistently score higher than women on SDO scales. In one study of 1,000 Los Angeles adults, men scored higher on SDO—a sex difference that proved to be consistent across culture of origin, income, education, and political ideology (Pratto, 1996). The sex difference in SDO has also been documented in other cultures, most notably in Sweden, which is one of the most egalitarian cultures on earth. In sum, men appear to score higher on attitudes endorsing getting ahead, including those that justify one person’s higher status than another and one group’s dominance over another. These findings support the evolutionary hypothesis of a sex difference in motivational strength to gain dominance and status. Men and Women Express Their Dominance Through Different Actions Another source of evidence for a sex difference in dominance comes from the acts through which men and women express their dominance. In one study, 100 acts previously mentioned as dominant were listed (Buss, 1981). Examples are “I took command of the situation a$er the accident,” “I talked a great deal at the meeting,” “I demanded a back rub,” “I decided which programs the group would watch on TV,” and “I hung up the phone on my lover.” The first study asked men and women to rate each act for its social desirability, or how worthwhile it was in their eyes. Profound sex differences emerged. Women more than men tended to rate prosocial dominant acts as more socially desirable, including “Taking charge of things at the committee meeting,” “Taking a stand on an important issue without waiting to find out what others thought,” “Soliciting funds for an important cause,” and “Being active in many community and campus activities.” In sharp contrast, men more than women tended to rate egoistic dominant acts as more socially desirable, including “Managing to get one’s own way,” “Flattering to get one’s own way,” “Complaining about having to do a favor for someone,” and “Blaming others when things went wrong.” Men appear to regard more selfish dominant acts as more desirable, or less undesirable, than do women. Do these sex differences emerge in the actual behaviors of men and women? Dominant men, but not dominant women, reported performing the following acts: “I told others to perform menial tasks rather than doing them myself,” “I managed to get my own way,” “I told him which of two jobs he should take,” “I managed to control the outcome of the meeting without the others being aware of it,” and “I demanded that someone else run the errand.” Dominant men, in other words, appear to perform a relatively high frequency of egoistic dominant acts, in which others are influenced for the direct personal benefit of the dominant individual. Dominant women, in contrast, tended to perform a higher frequency of prosocial dominant acts, such as “I settled a dispute among the members of the group,” “I took the lead in organizing a project,” and “I introduced a speaker at the meeting.” Dominant women appear to express their dominance primarily through actions that facilitate the functioning and well-being of the group. This sex difference in the expression of dominance has also been revealed through a subtle psychological experiment by Edwin Megargee (1969). Megargee wanted to devise a laboratory test situation in which he could examine the effect of dominance on leadership. He first administered a dominance scale to a large group of men and women who might serve as potential subjects. He then selected only those men and women who scored either high or low on dominance. On completion of this selection procedure, Megargee (1969) brought pairs of individuals into the laboratory, in each case pairing a high-dominant subject with a low- dominant subject. He created four conditions: (1) a high-dominant man with a low-dominant 346 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING man, (2) a high-dominant woman with a low-dominant woman, (3) a high-dominant man with a low-dominant woman, and (4) a high-dominant woman with a low-dominant man. Megargee presented each of these pairs a large box containing many red, yellow, and green nuts, bolts, and levers. Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between personality and leadership under stress. Each pair of subjects was to work as a team of troubleshooters and repair the box as quickly as possible by removing nuts and bolts of certain colors and replacing them with other colors. However, one person from the team had to be the leader, a position that entailed giving instructions to his or her partner. The second person was to be the follower and had to carry out the menial tasks requested by the leader. The experimenter then told the subjects that it was up to them to decide who would take the leading role. The important question for Megargee was who would become the leader and who would become the follower. He simply recorded the percentage of high-dominant subjects within each condition who became leaders. He found that 75 percent of the high-dominant men and 70 percent of the high-dominant women took the leadership role in the same-sex pairs. When high-dominant men were paired with low-dominant women, however, 90 percent of the men became leaders. The most startling result occurred when the woman was high and the man low in dominance. Under these conditions, only 20 percent of the high-dominant women assumed the leadership role. From these laboratory findings alone, one might conclude that the women in this condition were suppressing their dominance or that the men, despite being low in dominance, felt compelled to assume a standard sex role by taking charge. It turns out, however, that neither conclusion is warranted. Megargee had recorded the conversations between each pair while they were deciding who would be the leader. When he analyzed these tapes, he made a startling finding: The high- dominant women were appointing their low-dominant partners to the leadership position. In fact, the high-dominant women actually made the final decision about the roles 91 percent of the time! This finding suggests that women express their dominance in a different manner than the men in the mixed-sex condition. This basic sex difference in the expression of dominance has been found repeatedly by subsequent investigators (e.g., Carbonell, 1984; Davis & Gilbert, 1989; Nyquist & Spence, 1986), although it’s possible that it might not hold in today’s modern environments given the fuller integration of women in the workplace, a topic for future research. Megargee’s study highlights a key sex difference: Men tend to express their dominance through acts of personal ascension whereby they elevate themselves to positions of power and status. Women tend to be less oriented toward personal striving for status over others, opting instead to express their dominance for group-oriented goals. These studies, taken together, support the hypothesis that the sexes differ in status striving. These sex differences show up in many spheres of activity. Men’s personal diaries, for example, contain more references to same-sex competition (Cashdan, 1998). And in the workplace, men on average tend to take greater risks, express a greater desire for status, and are more willing to sacrifice other qualities of life such as flexible hours or time with family in order to get ahead (Browne, 1998, 2002). Another possible sex difference stems from a hypothesis that proposes that men engage in riskier resource-related behavior when they are being observed by others who are similar in status but not when interacting with those who are demonstrably higher or lower in status (Ermer, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2008). The logic stems from the notion that in stable, well-established status hierarchies, it is wise to cede resources to the more formidable competitor without taking risk. Among competitors of roughly equal status, the outcomes are uncertain, and so selection should favor riskier decision making about resources. In a series of laboratory experiments to test this idea, Elsa Ermer and her colleagues had participants make decisions such as the following: Imagine that you bought $60 worth of stock from a company that has just filed a claim for bankruptcy. The company now provides you with two alternatives to recover some of your money. If you choose Alternative A, you will save $20 of your money. If you choose Alternative B, you will take part in a random drawing procedure with exactly a one-third probability of saving all of your money and a two-thirds probability of saving none of your money. Which of the two alternatives would you favor? (Ermer et al., 2008, p. 110)