Social dominance psychology in humans 2 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 There is a syllogism I call the Phylogenetic Inference: All members of clade X are F Species S is a member of clade X S is F It’s not infallible, but it is a good inductive rule, because monophyly acts as a kind of Straight Rule for biological induction. Let’s apply it here: All primates are organised by social dominance Humans are primates Humans are organised by social dominance Does it work? Monophyly offers us two key sets of properties: those that are the shared ancestral (“primitive”, or plesiomorphic) traits of the group, and those that are unique to a group or species (“derived” or apomorphic). So just because humans are primates, it doesn’t follow that they have the same social organisation as their cousins. But, and this is absolutely crucial, what apomorphies they will have will be something that is derived from the plesiomorphic state, where behaviours are both homologous and phylogenetically distributed. So, in other words, if behaviour is something that is passed on in speciation, even if it is modified, for instance by selection, then whatever it is that humans have, we have a reasonable expectation that humans will be at least social dominance apes. They may be, and in my opinion are, very different, but those differences will be built on top of primate social dominance behaviour. It’s not fashionable to assert that species have natures, or that humans have a “human nature” and the reason is not hard to see – pretty well every case where people have tried to argue for human nature, the result has been founded on the social morés of the investigator’s time and place. But the Phylogenetic Inference might constrain us somewhat – if the results are not reasonable in the light of the phylogenetic distribution of traits amongst primates, then we may look askance at the result. Moreover, psychology has to an extent developed independently of ethology a social dominance theory – that of James Sidanius and Felicia Pratto. So we might have some confidence that humans, like the other apes, organise their social structures at least in part by competition in social dominance. In the case of a typical ape (i.e., excluding orangs, who are probably social apes when conditions are not so marginal as they have been during their coexistence with agrarian humans), there is one, or at most two, hierarchies. In the case of two, there is a male and a female hierarchy, and they combine to form a single social hierarchy in various ways. Female status can be independent of, or parasitic upon, male status, and vice versa. What actually happens depends upon the specifics of the species, and is thus an apomorphy. So, what do humans do, “naturally”? I scare quote the term because there is a major misconception about what counts as “natural” for humans. Under the Evolutionary Psychology approach of Santa Barbara, there is a mythical period in the Pleistocene called the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation or EEA, in which humans are supposed to have adapted to then-prevailing conditions, and which serves us ill to a greater or lesser extent today. But it is my opinion that humans, like any species, are always adapting to novel conditions for their local population, and so we are now in, and always have been in, our “natural” environment. Yes, New York is as natural as the Kalahari or Klondike. Instead, let’s look at analogous environments to the Neolithic, like nomadic societies that are foragers the way those original populations of humans must have been. In small tribes, there is little social differentiation of role, but there is usually a “big man”, and some number of specialist hunters, shamans, herbalists and the like. Many societies are male dominated, but I do not know if there is evidence of female dominated societies. I would expect that some would be, because the degree of sexual dimorphism in humans is so small that culture must sometimes override whatever mild bias that male size and strength confers. So in our “primitive” state, we have a single local hierarchy based on male primary hierarchies, in which female status is both dependent upon the status of one’s mate, but also upon what the individual female can achieve. I do not want anyone to think I am suggesting that male dominance is biologically inevitable; in fact I think it is not, because we are not organised along bull-herd lines like gorillas, but more like chimps, where dominant individuals are not the only individuals that mate. Social cohesion is defined by the hierarchy. Those who do not fall within the pairwise hierarchy are out-group, and they are always treated less well than any individual within the hierarchy. In short, if you know that Fred is low status based on his previous pairwise transactions, and you are a beta individual, there is no chance of likely competition, but if you encounter a foreign individual, you may have to defend territory, mates, food resources and so on. So it pays to treat all foreigners as extremely low status, and all members of the local hierarchy as kin, because they almost certainly are. Kin selection means that it pays to treat those most closely related better than those who are less closely related, and so there will be selection against treating those not in the hierarchy equally. This doesn’t mean that humans are essentially racists, because there need not be more than cultural or political differences separating groups. It doesn’t even mean that humans must be xenophobic – a good many foraging societies have developed, indeed evolved (in the cultural sense), complex exogamic relationships with neighbouring groups to prevent xenophobia. But what this does mean is that there is a second axis of status to the local tribal hierarchy: the ethnic hierarchy. As societies become more complex, individuals are unable to track individual transactions, and have to start dealing with groups. This happens also for the vertical hierarchy of one’s own society, and so we get the construction of class. Now we have a two dimensional field against which one must assess each individual one encounters in a social transaction. But there’s another hierarchy as well, one which is familiar to every schoolchild. In tribal societies it doesn’t play much of a role, I expect, but in sedentary high density populations of several tens of thousands within walking distance, one is likely to encounter many more people roughly the same age as yourself. Humans have roughly four stages of their life: pre-adolescent, adolescent, early adult and late adult. Within those rough stages, we compete against our peers. We treat “the babies” poorly unless we are constrained by adults. We are highly competitive with our peers (within a few years of our own age) as teenagers (often to the point that failure leaves us deeply depressed), and as young adults we compete for status with each other. So there is a cohort hierarchy as well. Each of these axes can generate a ranking by gender or by the entire social group. Every human being is born into a point in that space, with some set of properties based on biology (height, strength, cognitive dispositions) and the position of their parents. This determines where they begin, and how far they can go. Every human must solve a simultaneous equation to optimise their position in the world, and they do so without even being aware they are doing so. Here is how it “looks”: In complex societies, which we all live in since agriculture made it possible to sustain large populations, we must deal with people with whom we are not personally acquainted as members of a class, but for our immediate circle, we are still in tribes. One can change ethnicity by changing the way one dresses, speaks and behaves (although one is limited when ethnic markers include things like skin colour, facial structure and so on, despite modern advancements in plastic surgery; nevertheless, many people attempt to change their appearance, like Chinese having their epicanthic folds lessened to look more European), and one can change one’s class the same way. Cohorts change more or less automatically, although one’s position may not. In the next post I will try to employ this as an explanation of the origin of religion and of gods. This won’t be new to anyone who has followed this blog over the years. Biology Philosophy Science Social dominance Social evolution
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We have to deal with members of a shared class and members of other classes we are not acquainted with but if they have the same ethnic markers (or others we are familiar with) we can identify the situation, the role needed and an exchange can take place. When the symbols come in to question, it leads to problems with transactions within the economy of ethnicity. As what once indentified someone as the same or as a group we can exchange with, now makes no-sense. But this is a constant and dynamic processes as an ethnicity is based on what competing groups find they can agree upon, not on what they don’t. It’s not rigid and in constant movement but dependent on reciprocity, gift giving and ‘good manners’ as opposed to placing people under ‘heavy manners’. When symbols change as they do, they need to be replaced. When there is nothing to replace them, older less fuctional models are going to continue as they are still needed and in a contested situation needed as a matter of group survival. Or who we are and where we come from becomes a nonsense. S
This kind of thing fascinates me, though I’m hardly learned enough even to comment. (That won’t stop me!) But I always read these things with a grain of salt. Like you suggest, the researchers “findings” usually seem to agree fairly well with prevailing attitudes. (i.e., they’re “PC.”) I wonder. You seem to go to some length (not great, admittedly) to show that male dominance is not biologically determined, despite the fact that human societies where this is not the case are almost vanishingly rare. Supposing the data really did show this was biologically inevitable, would you dare report it? Or, perhaps, would your desire that it not be so affect the way you read the data? I think we’ve reached a point where we can see intellectually that there’s not much, if any, good reason for males to dominate, but I can also easily see that human history might be said to support the notion that it’s in our “nature” for males to dominate. In fact, it looks like we have to buck our nature to have things otherwise. Then again, I think we have evolved to a place where we can see that nature’s way isn’t always the best way.
It has been a truism since Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics back in the 1890s that we must strive against our biological natures to be moral and just. The problem is that if moralities evolve (culturally), then we are merely replacing one contingent account of what to do for another. I will one day blog about this, because I do think with Huxley that we strive against our biology to do good.
Reaserchers findings have to be based on evidence and on evidence building the methodology not the other way round. Ethnology is well understood amongst non-historical cultures, in historic one’s this is not the case as anthropology focused traditionaly on oral non-historic cultures. The relationship between oral forms of information and text for example is in it’s early days of development. I don’t think you can have a rigid all embracing methodolgy in place that is anything other than tentative and subject to change as the evidence presents itself.
So not all primates have apomorphies? It’s only the apes is it? Actually, I think I got a smack in the face from Ape O’Morphy in a rough bar in Dun Laoghaire. He’d been fishing for plesiosaurs.
Technically, all species have apomorphies (except those that don’t, which are called various things like pseudospecies, paraspecies, and so on). But you want to watch out for those plesiosaurs. I hear they have a nasty bite.
I never thought about this beyond the transmition and replication of cultural material specificaly oral narrative. Biology offers an understanding of classification that is adaptable to the study of such material. I always viewed the transmition as a cultural rather than biological activity but then I am studying it within a historical period and I am not a biologist.
Just shooting through – will read post in detail later – but initial observation: Isn’t that a deductive argument, not inductive? If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. I think you’re arguing the soundness of the argument based on the truth of the first premise. Just a technical observation – don’t think it affects the rest of your exposition.
No, I think it is inductive because the truth conditions of the premises do not guarantee the truth of the conclusion (because taxa can lose their traits in evolution). It is inductive in that we can expect that they won’t, or that if they do they will have an apomorphy of the trait in question (like snakes have four limbs in their genes, but not phenotypically) that indicates what has happened, but evolution is a historical process, and history loses information over time. So it is inductive, and the warrant one has is directly proportional to the amount of evolution that has occurred in the group in question.
Hmm. I think I see what you’re saying, but I’m not so sure I agree. An argument is deductive as long as there’s no way for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. A deductive argument makes no requirement for the premises to actually *be* true. What you’re talking about is the truth conditions of the premises. That might make the argument unsound, but not invalid – and not inductive. To make it inductive, you’d have to change it thus: All *known* members of clade X are F Species S is a member of clade X S is F There you could have true premises and a false conclusion. Now, this is all assuming I haven’t forgotten something fundamental from my logic… And on your actual argument – I think you dismiss the counterexample of orangutans too readily. I was under the impression they were solitary creatures and not social like the other great apes. If this is the case, it undermines your first premise. Further (ignoring orangs for a moment), I personally wouldn’t necessarily claim that “all primates are organised by social dominance.” When talking about evolution and behaviour I think we should be extremely wary of talking about evolved *behaviours*. We can talk about evolved faculties, dispositions and tendencies, such as a language faculty; a stock of emotions that attract/avert us from the triggers of those emotions; or a preference to red or green rather than blue foods. But these baseline faculties have to work their way through many environmental, developmental and stochastic processes before they arrive at behaviours. In the case of social dominance, I’d suggest we (humans) have at least two baseline faculties that work in tension to yield the phenomenon of social dominance as seen in great apes: hierarchical tendencies (a sense of and/or desire for status, for example); as well as egalitarian tendencies (a sense of outrage at an perceived as unfair, for example). These tendencies are both directed towards solving the problem of encouraging group cohesion and cooperation – but there’s no one solution to that problem. In different circumstances, one solution might even be better, such as when your group is under a lot of pressure from other groups. In this case the increased cohesion of a hierarchical social structure could prove more beneficial to a more lose egalitarian structure. If all that makes sense…
Yes, but I think you are taking too literally the quantifier here. Take the following claim: “all mammals have hair”. This is roughly the same thing as the taxonomic claim “hair is an apomorphy of mammals” or “hair is a diagnostic criterion of mammals”. Yet all taxonomists know that there is secondary loss of hair among some mammal groups, especially the cetaceans. Yet no taxonomist would need to add that qualifier, because it is known that generalisations in biology are not formally universal claims. In other words, all generalisations license only inductions in biology. If you were doing, say, physics, then you might have such a universal claim. Not in biology (nor, I would warrant, other historical sciences). So the syllogism is an inductive one, implicitly. Orangs do have dominance hierarchies, and they are male linked, and territorial. Higher status males are larger and in good condition, and juveniles are always subordinate. Females appear to have no general dominance relations, and pre-adolescent juveniles will play together irrespective of relationship coefficients. It seems to vary according to the local ecological resources, time of year, and geographical conditions. See Edwards, Sara, and Charles Snowdon. 1980. Social behavior of captive, group-living Orangutans. International Journal of Primatology 1 (1):39-62. Trevor B. Poole. 1987. Social behavior of a group of orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) on an artificial island in Singapore Zoological Gardens. Zoo Biology 6 (4):315-330.
Christopher Frayling and Robert Wokler “From the Orang-utan to the Vampire: Towards an Anthropology of Rousseau,”in, Rousseau after 200 Years. ed. R.A. Leigh (New York 1982),pp 109-24 Interesting in regard to the features of the orang you just mentioned and the difficulties of interpretation that surround the subject.
Oh, and regarding fairness; this is itself a facet of hierarchical behaviour – no ape (or human) wants to receive less than their peers, because that just is status reduction. But most apes will cheat to get more if they can get away with it, and the chimps appear to be more like the Rational Man of economics than humans are: Jensen, Keith, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello. 2007. Chimpanzees Are Rational Maximizers in an Ultimatum Game. Science 318 (5847):107-109.
A more lose egalitarian structure such as a sense of outrage at an perceived unfair may be the triger for the increased cohesion of a hierarchical social structure. Or a split that produces two competing structures, who’s identity is brought into focus as the result of dispute. As you note the factors in encouraging group and inter-group cohesion, cooperation or diffrence, depend on the enviroment and the culture or cultures in question.
I think I find the notion of a complex network of overlaping apparent similarities examined historicaly more appealing than examining the development of human culture as a series of rigid stages infered from some essence be it genetic, Psychological, a meme, anthropology or ethnology. It seems a far more fluid and similarities can be deceptive. I do think cultures evolve and adapt and biology may prove useful in this regard. But its a very plastic processes in my view.
Would certianly help me tighten up my argument I suspect. Youre expertise in these areas has been most helpfull in developing my own limited understanding of philosophy and science.