What would happen in Magargee's leadership roles experiment if there was a condition with a high status man in competition with an equally high status woman?
Why is it that women tend to get into verbal arguments while men tend to get into physical arguments?
People always joke that men will fight for two seconds and then can get over it and be best friends, but if women fight, they will not get over it and will become enemies. Why is that?
Does socioeconomic status affect whether a woman will become more physically aggressive towards attaining dominance/defending their status?
After reading the additional reading about siblicide, where the authors argued that before puberty, the older child is more likely to kill the younger child; while after puberty and into adulthood, the younger sibling is more likely to kill the older. The authors attribute the trend in children to mate value, while they argue that there is a competition over prestige and resources when the children reach adulthood. I am surprised by the author's argument about adult siblings because I think that especially for women siblings that mate value could become an important question. The authors of the study did not really investigate as to how much mate value and gender into effect adult siblicide. This could mean that there is an evolved mechanism that helps for the optimization of the family by siblings (or that could just be a counterintuitive violation of the selfish gene argument) but is there as much conflict between male-female sibling pairs as same sex sibling pairs?
To answer one of Chi Chis questions, I think that men would be more likely to get into violent arguments because thats how they were raised, maybe not by their parents but by evolutionary history, where dominance was displayed by who was the toughest and strongest. Physical fighting still manages to assess who is stronger, or at least better at fighting, displaying smarts, strength, and determination.
I can see these displays of prestige and how it is acquired countless times throughout history, from dictators acquiring power through violent revolution or in the case of Stalin, gaining influence by taking on numerous responsibilities no one else had wanted and excelling at them, which earned him respect, a support system, and ultimately power. Would one be considered superior to the other? To me it seems that the second way is better, because when you win through violence, the stakes are raised to a degree that violence may be the only way to take power back. More violence and more death benefits the group less and less.
If lowering of status results in depression, is it harder for people who have fallen to rise back in higher status positions? How do people overcome this to regain their status?
Why are dominant women in high status positions labeled "bitches" or other derogatory terms, even when they act the same way as their male counterparts?
I think it makes a lot of sense that women are more attractive to dominant and high status men. Obviously, these men can provide more resources, which makes them more attractive. However, I think their availability is another reason why women favor more dominant men. More dominant men are more likely to approach women in the first place. This forwardness and confidence with women contributes to their reproductive success.
I think it's interesting that in the social attention-holding theory, someone with high-status shows an increase in helping. I feel like people often perceive those in high-status positions as ruthless and uncaring. Wouldn't offering help to others of lower status risk helping them attain greater status than you have? Or at least risk wasting resources obtained from your high status on someone else?
The text states that we choose leaders based on an individual's competence at certain tasks. However, the tasks don't necessarily align with those required for a position. For example, a professor may be chosen to lead a class of students due to expertise in a field, but have a difficult time communicating the information and ideas to the students, or a politician may be great at designing policy and gaging substituent reactions and impact a policy will have on the nation's future, but may abuse their authority. It often seems like we choose leaders based on prestige and resources, even though these methods fail to provide a great leader relatively frequently. Is there an evolutionary mechanism to why we choose leaders based significantly on prestige and resources alone? And why do we continue to operate this way today?
In the dating world, men will sometimes feign prestige by lying and/or exaggerating their accomplishments and possessions. Do women have evolved evolutionary mechanisms to recognize and avoid being influenced by these attempts?
Is self-esteem quantifiable? Is there an established method by which an individual's self-esteem can be reliably measured and given a quantitative ranking?
Why would the reasoning strategies in Dominance Theory evolve sooner and separate from other reasoning strategies? Can't similar reasoning strategies be used across the board, or at least in multiple domains?
Buss didn't discuss too much about how people can hold different positions in different dominance hierarchies. In a highschool, for example, there can be all sorts of micro-hierarchies, each with locally dominant members. But the 'alpha-nerd' will probably behave submissively towards jocks even of lower status. Many kids ditch their friends in high school to try and roll with the cool crowd. Under what circumstances is it more advantageous to be a 'big fish in a small pond' vs. to try and move to a higher-status hierarchy and try to climb the social ladder?
Based on the idea that women tend to display dominance in prosocial ways (compared to men, who display selfish dominance), wouldn't it make the most sense for women to be leaders in communities, since they are the ones that look out most for others (even though women aren't usually the strong ones, men could easily defend the society under the command of a woman)? Why is it that throughout history, this has not been the case? What would account for this?
In addition, the fact that higher testosterone is correlated with higher social dominance seems contradictory to the fact that men in long-term relationships have lower testosterone than men who aren't - wouldn't the men who were able to secure an LTR be the more dominant ones, considering dominance helps secure access to females?
In response to Chi Chi's question regarding Megargee's study, I think it would make sense that the high dominant women would still allow/appoint the high dominant men to leadership roles (much the same as they would the low dominant men). What would be interesting is what would happen if both the man and women were low dominant - would the woman assume the role to "take care of" herself and the man? Or would the man assume the role because he intrinsically views himself as more dominant than a women?
When I was reading about how dominant male tendencies created a reproductive advantage in polygamous societies, it made me wonder, do men who live in monogamous societies display less dominant tendencies than men in polygamous societies? Men who do not have to compete as much for mates in monogamous societies might display fewer dominant status seeking behaviors in order to reduce risk to themselves. Or do men have a set level of dominant tendencies regardless of what culture they are in? Or is the pressure to secure short term mates (before or in addition to marriage) enough to keep men in monogamous societies displaying the full extent of their dominant and status seeking behavior (as you would see in polygamous societies)?
I think there are many more factors that play a role in siblicides than just age disparity, sex, sibling age order, and country. I think these researchers have to also take into account personalities and genetics. Some families experience much more anger or violence than others, and some genetics include genes for psychopaths more so than others. I am wondering about the extent that personality genetics play a role in siblicides. Do calmer families still experience siblicides at moments of intense conflicts between siblings? My sisters and I have had some brutal arguments, but we ended up escaping our teenage years unharmed, and maturing into the family we are today.
I was interested in the direction of causality when it comes to the link between serotonin/testosterone and dominance. It was shown that monkeys experience a drop in serotonin when their social status rises. It seemed to suggest that these levels drop when they experience a perceived drop in status. Does it work in the other direction as well? Could someone with low serotonin levels be doomed to a life of low prestige and dominance? (or at least have a much harder time achieving it?)
According to the text, you can quickly rate the social heigharchy of a group very accurately. Why don't people feign dominance, wouldn't it be to their advantage?
Why do woman with high testosterone overestimate their peer rated dominance?
When paired with low dominance men, woman put the men in charge. What does this suggest about our society and woman's workplace equality?
Women more recently are starting to gain more status and take more dominant roles than before. This seems counter to Megargee's study. Might this just be social changes or are we just recognizing the different ways in which women assert their dominance.
It also said that women who were more dominant controlled what position they had and conceded it more often which would suggest that recently social pressures lead them to concede less.
It is interesting to see many examples of high status, dominant men in polygamy societies are able to gain so many fertile women as their wives. If according to evolutionary psychology, our main goal is to reproduce future generations, why aren't we having more polygamy societies? Also, are dominant men in monogamy societies in disadvantages, as compared to dominant men in polygamy societies? If so, are there any strategies that they use to reduce such disadvantage?
-- Edited by clin1204 on Monday 3rd of March 2014 11:32:00 PM
I'm interested in the deception of dominance or self-esteem and the strategies that people utilize to manipulate how others perceive them. Why is it that some people are more inclined to buy into deceptions of arrogance, inflated egos, conceitedness displayed by others - is it a reflection of one's own esteem and status? Degradation is another factor that intrigues me because it's something that I see as extremely prevalent in every day life (gossip, putting others down) - are the people who do partake in this strategy considered to have lower self-esteem or is degradation something that all people, no matter what status/self-esteem, utilize?
Why do women with high testosterone have high self-assessments of status but a low peer assessment of others? Is this the same across genders? Men with high levels of testosterone seem to have all of the qualities to achieve dominance and social status. Would they be threatened by a woman with high testosterone, and therefore give them a lower assessment?
