Synonyms

Status; Social status; Prestige

Definition

Dominance is the rank of an individual relative to conspecifics, which predicts the outcomes of social interactions and has consequences for access to resources and influence.

Introduction

An individual’s rank relative to its conspecifics is a predictor of behavior, health, and reproductive output across the animal kingdom. When talking about animal societies, this is typically described in terms of dominance rank, which is determined by the outcome of contests for access to resources such as food or mates. In humans, the picture is far more complex and dominance is the product not only of direct physical contests between individuals (“physical dominance”) but of prestige, group membership (e.g., based on gender or ethnicity), and situation within large-scale “formal hierarchies” such as socioeconomic status.

Dominance in Humans

Wherever social groups exist, a dominance hierarchy will inevitably emerge, with unequal access to resources such as food and mating opportunities. The relative rank of an individual amongst its conspecifics can depend upon, for example, its size and strength, age, experience, aggression, matriline (i.e., the status of it’s own mother), or the quality of its coalitionary relationships. Hierarchies differ in their fluidity and linearity, the top spot may be occupied by a single individual or shared, and the hierarchy may be established and regularly enforced in the case of permanent groups or only become relevant occasionally, such as during the breeding season.

Taking primates as a case study (while acknowledging that the patterns reported are seen in the animal kingdom more widely), there are examples of societies in which reproduction and access to prime territories and food resources is dominated by a single individual. This is the case in, for example, gorillas, ring-tailed lemurs, and blue monkeys, where there is a single top-ranking individual to whom the rest of the group defers. In these despotic hierarchies, there are usually few status differences amongst the rest of the group. In contrast, in an egalitarian hierarchy, dominance relationships are “transitive”: each individual can beat all those ranked below her but none of those ranked above her (e.g., chimpanzees, lion-tailed macaques, and squirrel monkeys).

Dominance rank is usually estimated via observation of associated behaviors, such as who is approached or avoided by whom, gestures, and access to mates, food, or nest sites. Most commonly, rank is assessed by observing “contests” between all dyads in a group and recording the outcome (who is successful and who retreats). From these data, a matrix can be developed which allows the researcher to rank individuals on the basis of outcomes in contests across all dyads. These dyadic interactions, however, do not occur in isolation and there is a growing body of work which shows that the wider social context influences behavior and outcomes in these interactions. Laporte and Zuberbühler (2010), for example, report that the “pant-grunt” signal of chimpanzees, which is used as a greeting signal to higher-ranking individuals, was expressed more often by females to males if the alpha male and/or female were absent and was further inhibited the greater the size of the audience of bystanders.

Dominance in humans is much more complex than the primate cases described above and is the product not only of direct physical contests between individuals (‘physical dominance’) but of variables such as prestige, group membership (e.g., based on gender or ethnicity), and situation within large-scale “formal hierarchies” such as socioeconomic status. Furthermore, humans do not – usually at least – exhibit such obvious dominance behaviors and displays as the other primates. There are, however, markers to status with, for example, high-status individuals dominating conversation by talking longer, louder, and interrupting more often (Dunbar and Burgoon 2005). Humans are also reasonably good at telling us who, in their group, is a leader and who is a follower, thus providing an estimate of “influence.” Furthermore, we assign status on the basis of a myriad of physical (e.g., beauty, strength, ethnicity, gender) and behavioral (e.g., humor, leadership, intelligence, personality, social class) traits, regardless of whether there is validity to the assumption that some groups deserve to be positioned in higher ranks than others.

Physical Dominance

Physical dominance can play out in the context of face-to-face interactions and can take the form of both overt physical contest (as in the case of fights) but can also take more subtle forms such as verbal and nonverbal signals (e.g., body posture and lean; Dunbar and Burgoon 2005). Furthermore, physical dominance can be expressed via large scale, formal contests such as warfare. As Mazur (2005) argues, while these play out on national- and international-scales, often with considerable loss of life, and usually over competition for power and resources, there is often a personal motivation underlying these extravagant dominance contests.

Prestige

As is the case in the primate examples discussed above, status can be ascribed on the basis of access to resources, but in addition to this, the extent to which an individual is popular and exerts influence (or their “prestige”) is closely linked to status in humans. Prestige is earned by the expression of skill, rather than the ability to win physical contests or otherwise coerce others to ones will, and is associated with prosociality and leadership across traditional societies (see Henrich et al. 2015 for a review). Cheng et al. (2013) demonstrate that coercion and prestige are also distinct pathways to status in laboratory group tasks involving undergraduate Canadian students. Here, participants were able to attain status either via coercion via force and intimidation or via sharing of knowledge and expertise (prestige). Interestingly, popularity was not linked to status, with those following the route of “prestige” securing significantly greater popularity.

Official Hierarchies

Human dominance in face-to-face dyads and groups is situated within a structure of “official hierarchies” such as governments and socioeconomic strata (see Mazur 2005 for a review). These broad, formal, ranks organize access to resources, power, and influence, with a small number of “leaders” atop a series of levels of decreasing status and increasing numbers. Individuals may or may not know others in the levels above or below them, so here the formal status conferred by level in the official hierarchy interacts with the informal status derived from face-to-face interactions with those within one’s immediate group. Occupation of positions in these official hierarchies has profound effects on our psychology. An extreme example of this comes from Zimbardo’s classic “Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which groups of students were arbitrarily allocated to the role of “guard” or “prisoner” with consequent manifestations of extreme dominance behavior by the guards and deference by the prisoners (but see Haslam and Reicher (2012) for evidence that these effects can be mediated by, for example, permeability between roles).

Sex, Gender, and Status

One way in which we organize ourselves, and which has profound effects both on attributions of status and on the ways in which status is negotiated, is by sex. Men and women look and act differently from one another in a number of ways. Men’s larger size and greater upper body strength, and women’s greater investment in gestation and early infant care, are argued to have evolved under conditions of mild polygyny with greater competition amongst males for mates than amongst females (Archer 2009; Puts 2010). These biological sex differences likely predisposed men and women to efficient performance of different tasks which, over time, were attributed with different “status.” While men had a physical composition better suited, perhaps, to hunting, women’s biology provided the conditions for heavier investment in early offspring care. This not only set the scene for different selection pressures for men and women (who, to an extent, occupied separate ecologies as a result of their biology), but may also have resulted in the adoption of tasks which not only furthered the divergence in male- and female-ecological niches, but also conferred different levels of status to the two groups. The meat won through hunting is a valuable nutritional resource which can be traded and, therefore, confer status. In their biosocial model, Wood and Eagly (2012) argue that biological differences between men and women predisposed them to different social roles within communities which, in turn, influenced many of the traits and behaviors which we consider to be “male/masculine” and “female/feminine” today. For example, the greater assertiveness, aggression, and agency of the male gender role is certainly consistent with the requirements of competing for valuable physical resources. The nurturing and social traits of the female gender role are, in contrast, perhaps the result of a history in investment in caregiving. These pathways that flow from biological sex differences to the allocation of distinct tasks and responsibilities to men and women, to the behavioral and psychological traits required to fulfill these gendered social roles, likely had multiple consequences for the ways in which men and women establish dominance amongst same-sex conspecifics and also for the dynamics of between-sex interactions.

Male dominance is reported to be expressed via physical displays and contests more often than is the case for women and this. Men are more likely than women to respond to threats with aggression, particularly when there is an audience of other men (i.e., future potential competitors) and to participate in inter-group conflict (see Buss 2015 for a review). In addition, men score more highly on measures of “social dominance orientation,” which assesses preference for unequal status across groups. This is, perhaps, not entirely unsurprising given the likely stronger intrasexual selection on men to compete for mates due to an asymmetry in investment in gametes and, at minimum levels, in offspring (Archer 2009). Male dominance, however, is not as straightforward as success in physical contests. von Rueden et al. (2008), for example, investigated male status in a population of Amazonian Tsimane hunter-gatherers. The authors argue that this community provides a meaningful case study for conditions under which social life likely evolved over much of our evolutionary past. They report that physical size and social support predicted the outcome of dyadic physical contests amongst men: being larger and with more coalitionary support resulted in greater physical dominance. Social support also predicted “influence” and “respect,” as did hunting ability. The authors argue that male status is multidimensional and is dependent not only upon physical individual differences, such as a man’s size and age, and also upon the strength of one’s coalitionary support. Furthermore, status differentials in this population are related to proxies of reproductive success, with high-status men having more extra-marital relationships than those of lower status (von Rueden et al. 2010).

There is evidence to suggest that women use indirect aggression to a greater degree and direct physical aggression less, than do men in order to influence their own status and that of others. Perhaps the most classic example of this is accusations of witchcraft, in which an individual’s reputation is degraded by untestable accusations, with women more commonly accused (see Hess and Hagan (2006) for a review). This may be due to the high costs to women’s fitness of direct physical aggression (due to investment in needy offspring), and therefore more indirect forms of aggression may have evolved (see Stockley and Campbell 2013, for a review). Much as male status via acquisition of resources necessary to invest in offspring may be desirable to the opposite sex, perhaps female status is bound up in the traits which make her desirable to men, such as physical attractiveness and chastity. Vaillancourt (2013) suggests that women use two broad strategies to appear attractive to mates: self-promotion (displaying physical attractiveness) and rival derogation (disparaging appearance and fidelity). Hess and Hagan (2006), for example, report that women in a laboratory task were more likely to express desires to retaliate to a threat by attacking reputation than were men.

As argued, however, the behavior of men and women cannot be interpreted in light only of their biology. Biology exists within, and interacts with, a social context. Archer (2006), for example, reports that sex differences in physical aggression against a partner is correlated societal gender equality, such that the size of the sex difference was reduced under conditions of greater equality.

Dominance and Reproductive Success

Across species, high-ranking individuals obtain more food and have greater reproductive success. In primates, for example, high-ranking males tend to have more offspring than do those of lower ranks. This, however, is not a straightforward linear relationship and is most likely influenced by factors such as the numbers of male competitors and receptive females, male coalitions, female choice, female reproductive synchrony, and alternative male mating strategies (see Clutton-Brock and Huchard. (2013) for a review). The relationship between rank and reproductive success is equally variable in female primates. In order to interpret variation in the magnitude of the relationship between rank and fitness, Clutton-Brock and colleagues call into question the assumption that that status and fitness should be more closely linked in males than females, due to the asymmetry in minimal investment in reproduction by mammalian males and females. The interpretation and application of this classic model has come to treat the proposed dichotomy of competitors (typically males) and choosers (typically females) almost literally, with a greater research focus on competition for resources and status amongst males than females. In their review of a growing body of evidence that females can compete for resources and status to the same extent, or more vigorously, than males, Clutton-Brock and Huchard (2013) show that there are relationships between the degree of reproductive competition and physical traits associated with attracting mates and with intrasexual competition in both sexes. They argue that sex differences in effects of status on fitness (i.e., that status is often more closely linked to fitness in males) may have been over-estimated due to differences in the breeding lifespans of males and females and that without direct comparisons of relationships between rank and fitness of males and females, it is not possible to conclude that selection pressures on traits associated with status vary between the sexes.

As a case study of the above, status and reproductive success are correlated in both men and women, albeit the strength and direction varies. Various measures of status are positively related to number of men’s surviving offspring in traditional societies (see Hopcroft 2006 for a review); high income men have more biological children in the contemporary USA whereas years of education is inversely related to reproductive success in both men and women (Hopcroft 2006). Nettle and Pollett (2008) report positive selection for male wealth due to higher childlessness amongst low-income men across eight societies but a negative relationship between income and reproductive success in women. Fieder and Huber also show that income is associated with fewer children for women and more for men (2007). Here it seems likely that interactions between the biology and social-role occupation of men and women are at play. It is interesting to imagine, for example, whether in a hypothetical society in which there was full gender equality in the opportunity to balance education, employment, and childcare, inverse relationships between wealth and reproductive success would exist to the same extent for women or between education and reproductive success for men and women.

Conclusion

There are sex differences in the expression of aggression across species, and of direct and indirect aggression in humans, stemming from divergent intrasexual selection pressures. This, however, is qualified by evidence that sex differences may not be as large as previously assumed and vary with context, such as societal level of gender equality in humans. Dominance in humans is perhaps best viewed as the status that results from the relative positioning of an individual within their local groups and communities (negotiated via either prestige or coercion) which, in turn, is situated within – and interact with – the context of large, formal, status hierarchies. While there are many remaining unknowns, what is clear is that an individuals’ rank has profound implications for his or her life history.

Cross-References