Jul 09 2008
The Benevolent Alpha
Dominance is not always attained and maintained through hostility. Particularly when the hierarchy is stable and/or the rank difference is large, dominant individuals will treat subordinates with friendliness. Similarly, submissive individuals will respond to superiors with overtures of friendliness or hostility – muted though either may be. There are at least two axes we must consider.(25) Particularly in humans, but not absent in other primates, dominant individuals will treat subordinates with obvious gentleness and even charity. Thanks to our largely unconscious sensitivity to signs of greater or lesser rank, we need not hit one another over the head with a frying pan while baring our teeth to acquire and protect social rank. Through more subtle forms of personal influence we can dominate others or communicate to them we pose no threat. Channels of communication include appearance, facial expressions and bodily language, gestures, spatial positioning, and physical and visual contact (or lack thereof).(26) Along with appearance I would add dress and cultural artifacts.(27)
Sans a physical fracas, human beings place themselves into social hierarchies and politely respect the position of others. Gould tells of experiments showing that people in arbitrarily assigned task groups “sort themselves quite quickly–sometimes in minutes–into leader and follower roles, with one or two people doing the most talking and receiving a disproportionate amount of credit for group achievements.”(28) Even in “groups” as small as the relationship dyad, a rapid way to distinguish the dominant member is to see who is making the decisions.(29) In how many relationships and groups you partake in are decisions determined by vote, with all members having equal say?
Religious institutions tend to have particularly strict rules about who has “a say” (i.e., holds power). Even beyond the means by which it has been formalized, there is customarily a tremendous gap between the leaders (dominants) and the followers (subordinates). The perceived gap is even greater between the alpha position and those below. True believers, and even those of faded stripes, often maintain that their god’s word is not to be questioned.
Yes, physical dominance does play a role in human life, particularly in the hierarchical struggles among adolescent males (30) and in sporting events, but it is clearly a complex topic. By examining hierarchical behavior in a more obvious form — as observed in closely related species — we might gain a clearer clue as to how it functions in human life, particularly and especially in human religious thought and ritual.
In the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville — an aristocrat entirely comfortable with hierarchy and his own position in it — thought he found in the American people a love of equality surpassing that of any other society. Somehow he missed a crucial detail. Americans, like anyone else, then and now, prefer equality to subordination, but many, perhaps most, would find a situation in which others were subordinate to them even more satisfactory. The idea of equality, of a society without rank, is much more a compromise solution — an insistence that, if I can’t be king, then no one else can either — than it is a fulfillment of a noble dream. If that were not so, then many tens of thousands of people would grow old instead of being cut down for making a disparaging remark or going to prison for avenging the remark. And an even larger number of people, many hundreds of millions, wouldn’t make such remarks, to put people down, to make others, individuals and groups, feel foolish or weak or small. But the desire for superior rank is strong, and so they do.
- Gould (34)
—
(26) Benthall, J. & Polhemus, T., (eds.) The Body as a Medium of Expression, Dutton, New York, 1975
(27) Benthall, J. & Polhemus, T., 1975
(28) Here’s an idea for a psychological experiment: Are people more likely to take the advice of a well-dressed person if that person has a pen clipped into their chest pocket? My guess is yes. Like the sword, the pen is a mighty instrument, even as a mere symbol.
(29) Gould, R. V. Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity About Social Rank Breeds Conflict, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2003, p.45
(30) Gould, 2003, p.40
(31) Wright, R., The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, Vintage, NY, 1995, p. 259
(32) Gould, R. V., 2003, p. 181
[July hiatus automated re-post. First appeared here: http://almightyalpha.blogspot.com/2007/09/benevolent-alpha.html ]
