Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance PDF

CHAPTER 12 Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance Learning Objectives Afer 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 me...

CHAPTER 12 Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance Learning Objectives Afer 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 fve 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 diferentially to individuals in all known groups. People devote tremendous efort 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 frst 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 fghts with other crickets (Dawkins, 1989). If a cricket wins a lot of fghts, it becomes more aggressive in subsequent fghts. 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. Afer being beaten up by the model, the crickets were more likely to lose PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING 336 subsequent fghts when battling real crickets. It is as though each cricket formed an estimate of its own fghting 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 frst come together, they fght frequently. Over time, however, the fghting 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 fghting in every encounter is a foolish strategy. The loser risks injury and death and so would have been better of 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 of if each could determine who would win in advance and simply declare a winner without sufering the costs of fghting. 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 fghting 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 blufs 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 blufs, 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 crayfsh cannot inhabit the same territory without determining who the boss is (Barinaga, 1996). The crayfsh circle each other cautiously, sizing up their rivals. They then plunge into a violent fray, trying to tear each other apart. The crayfsh 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 The subsequent behaviors of the winners and the losers are so diferent that researchers suspected that changes must occur in their nervous systems. Researchers discovered a specifc neuron in crayfsh that responds diferently to the neurotransmitter serotonin, depending on the animal’s status. In dominant crayfsh, the presence of serotonin makes the neuron more likely to fre. In the losers, serotonin inhibits the neuron from fring. One battle, however, rarely consigns an animal to a permanent position as dominant or subordinate. When researchers put two subordinate crayfsh 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 crayfsh readily make the shift to dominant status when circumstances change. The same is not true of dominant crayfsh, however. When researchers paired two previously dominant crayfsh in the same territory, one was inevitably forced into subordinate status. But the loser, who previously had been dominant, continued to be aggressive, forcing fghts with the dominant crayfsh 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 diferent 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 beneft: 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 highranking 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. 337 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING 338 Increased sexual access by dominant male chimps seems to be especially pronounced when the females enter estrus (Ellis, 1995). Three of the four studies that examined this link found that dominant males experienced greater sexual access when females entered estrus and were thus most likely to conceive. Subordinates’ sexual access occurs when the females are less likely to conceive. One study using DNA fngerprinting supported this conclusion, fnding that high-ranking males had indeed sired a disproportionate number of ofspring. Similar results on the links between dominance, sexual access, and reproductive outcomes occur with orangutans, baboons, and macaques (Ellis, 1995; Rodriguez-Llanes, Verbeke, & Finlayson, 2009). Two other key features of primate dominance hierarchies have been noted (Cummins, 1998, 2005). First, hierarchies are not static. Individuals continually compete for elevated position and sometimes usurp a dominant male. Ousted males sometimes regain a measure of their former dominance. Deaths and injuries of a dominant animal can result in a period of instability in which others rush to fll the void at the top of the hierarchy. Individuals continuously jockey for position in the hierarchy, rendering it an ever-changing rather than static form of social organization. Second, the physical size of a primate is not the primary determinant of rank. Dominance in primate hierarchies depends heavily on social skills, notably the ability to enlist allies on whom one can rely for support in contests with other individuals. In one documented case, a subordinate male ended his alliance with an alpha male because the alpha had refused to support him in contests with another male over sexual access to a particular female (de Waal, 1982). Increased sexual opportunities with females provide a powerful adaptive rationale for the evolution of dominance-striving mechanisms. It also suggests an evolutionary basis for the sex diference in the dominance-striving motive. Evolutionary Theories of Dominance, Prestige, and Status An evolutionary theory of status must specify the adaptive problems that are solved by ascending status hierarchies, as well as explain why individuals accept subordinate positions within hierarchies. Ideally, a good theory should be able to predict which tactics people will use to negotiate hierarchies. Academics, for example, jockey for position, but in diferent ways than might occur in an inner-city neighborhood: “Brandishing a switchblade at a scholarly conference would somehow strike the wrong note, but there is always the stinging question, the devastating riposte, the moralistic outrage, the withering invective, the indignant rebuttal, and the means of enforcement in manuscript reviews and grant panels” (Pinker, 1997, p. 498). A good theory would also have to account for why status striving appears to be so much more prevalent among males than among females. Ideally, such a theory would also account for the behavior of those consigned to subordinate status. For example, there is compelling evidence from traditional societies that people use ridicule, ostracism, and even homicide to deter individuals whose ambitions lead them to strive for dominance over others in the group (Boehm, 1999). An ultimate theory should explain why people often strive for equality among members of the group (Boehm, 1999; Knauft, 1991). A good theory would also diferentiate between dominance hierarchies, which determine the allocation of resources, and production hierarchies, which involve coordination and division of labor for the purpose of achieving a group goal (Rubin, 2000). Finally, a good theory should identify the diferent paths to elevated rank or status. Several authors make a critical distinction between dominance and prestige as two distinct routes to status (elevated rank) (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Maner, 2017). Dominance involves force or 12 STATUS, PRESTIGE, AND SOCIAL DOMINANCE the threat of force. Thus, a schoolyard bully or a Mafa “made man” may attain status through an ability to infict physical punishment on others. Individuals may defer to these dominants and relinquish resources to them in order to avoid incurring the costs of violence or the threat of force. Prestige, in contrast, is regarded as “freely conferred deference.” Individuals may attain high prestige because they have special skills, knowledge, or social connections. Prestige hierarchies tend to be domain specifc. One person may defer to another who has superior hunting skills; another might defer to the healer who has superior medicinal skills. Among the Tsimane of Bolivia, for example, skill in food production is an excellent indicator of “respect,” whereas physical size best predicts dyadic ranking of fghting ability (von Rueden, Gurven, & Kaplan, 2008). Whereas dominant individuals might instill fear in subordinates, prestigious individuals evoke admiration. Prestigious individuals may be sought for the information they can provide (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001) or for the reproductively relevant benefts they can bestow (Buss, 1995b). Thus, lower-ranking individuals seek to approach and imitate prestigious individuals, who possess valuable information that can be acquired. A more recent framework proposes that the key to status is competence (Chapais, 2015). The forms of competence include fghting ability, skill at making and handling weapons, ability to recruit allies, leadership skills, ability to infict costs on others, and so on. This unitary model of status breaks down the sharp distinction between dominance and prestige described above because both require competence. You can’t use force without the competence to successfully deploy it. You can’t acquire prestige as a hunter or as a medical healer without actual competence at hunting or medical healing. In short, although there are several paths to status, competence in the relevant domains may be the key underlying all those paths. Prestige Signaling, Altruism, and Reputation In Chapter 9, we explored the role of costly signaling in the evolution of cooperation and altruism. Costly signaling also plays a key role in the acquisition of prestige (Bliege Bird & Smith, 2005; Boone, 1998; Plourde, 2008). In traditional hunter-gatherer societies, signaling comes in forms such as throwing lavish feasts for the group, providing meat from difcult-to-capture prey animals, or displaying knowledge that is valuable to the group. In modern social groups, individuals acquire prestige by displaying high levels of competence on tasks that groups value, displaying generosity by giving more than taking, and making personal sacrifces that signal commitment to the group (Anderson & Kilduf, 2009). In the path to prestige, it is better to give than to receive. One of the keys to prestige signaling is that others have to be aware of the individual’s signals in order to accord prestige. In one experiment, participants were given an opportunity to contribute to a charity to help needy people either anonymously or in the presence of others in their group (Bereczkei, Birkas, & Kerekes, 2007). Subsequently, changes in social reputation (e.g., how much others respected the individual) were examined as a function of whether the individual ofered or did not ofer charity and whether the behavior was observed by others or anonymous (see Figure 12.1). Those who chose to contribute to the charity experienced a dramatic boost in prestige in the eyes of others, but only if the contributions were made publicly. Reputation is so important that people are willing to sufer huge costs in order to avoid a bad reputation. One interesting study gave people diferent choices in which they had to select between damage to social reputation and incurring a diferent form of large cost (Vonasch, Reynolds, Winegard, & Baumeister, 2017). One dilemma pitted having a reputation as a criminal and spending no time in jail versus spending a year in jail but no longer being considered a criminal by one’s community. Forty percent chose to spend a year in jail. Another dilemma asked people to choose between living to the ripe old age of 90, but after your death, people would remember you (falsely) as a pedophile who sexually abused children versus dying right now and being fondly remembered by your community. Fifty-three percent chose to die right now. As the authors state, some people choose “death before dishonor.” These fndings point to the prime importance of status and reputation in the human mind. 339