Such indirect competitive tactics are more commonly used by young girls, who don’t use direct confrontation and physical aggression as much as boys do. Girls dominate a potential rival by spreading nasty rumors aimed at damaging her reputation; by excluding, ignoring, and socially isolating her, thus making her an unattractive social partner to other girls or boys; or by actively disrupting her attempts at alliance formation. Dominant children, both male and female, use both aggression and affiliation strategies to establish and maintain dominance: they simultaneously attack the child they want to dominate and befriend others who might help them in the process, forming alliances with them. These Machiavellian strategies are similar to those used by other primates to achieve and maintain dominance over their group members. Once Mother Nature has found something that works well in one species, she is happy to use that same trick in other organisms as well.
Dominance in romantic or married couples is an important but underappreciated phenomenon. The most stable romantic relationships and marriages seem to be those in which dominance is clear from the beginning. The dominant partner makes all the decisions, from what show to watch on TV in the evening to where to go on vacation in the summer, and the subordinate partner acquiesces and takes a supporting role. If what people expect from marriage is not necessarily everlasting passionate love but a stable partnership that will allow joint ventures such as buying a home and raising children together, or an opportunity to concentrate on one’s career without worrying about house chores, then an asymmetrical relationship with uncontested dominance probably guarantees the best outcome. The secret to a stable marriage is that one of the two spouses must be willing to pay a disproportionate share of the price for the stability.
One problem with such an unbalanced relationship is that once the children are out of the house, career goals have been accomplished, and the mortgage on the mansion has been paid off, the stable relationship may no longer have a reason to exist. The dominant spouse, or both, may lose interest and begin looking for another partner. Another potential problem is that the dominant spouse may become dictatorial and abusive. The subordinate partner can benefit enough from the stability and support obtained from the relationship (and the accomplishment of other goals that comes with it) to compensate for the lack of decisional power and all the losses associated with it, but only as long as the dominant partner adopts a tolerant and respectful dominance style. Abusive dominance makes the costs of subordination skyrocket to the point that the benefits of the relationship are no longer worth it and the subordinate must walk out.
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” says Lysander in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Individuals who fall in love with each other and are looking for more than a business partnership face formidable challenges, particularly if they both have strong personalities. If neither individual is willing to take a subordinate role, every time conflicting interests arise or decisions need to be made, the relationship is potentially threatened. In the absence of a clear-cut dominance relationship to settle all the contests, the costs of continuous fighting or negotiation inevitably take their toll. It is common knowledge that when couples fight and eventually break up, they do so over seemingly trivial issues. Clearly, it’s not disagreements over the dinner menu or the remote control that lead a couple to divorce. It’s the disagreements over who is in charge and who isn’t, and the stress and disruption that come along with these disagreements. Couples with unresolved dominance may last for a while, maybe even forever, but their relationship is inherently unstable.
Studies of baboons conducted by Stanford University biologist Robert Sapolsky illustrate the costs of unstable dominance relationships. Savanna baboons live in a complex and competitive society in which success depends on a good dose of selfishness coupled with the ability to form political alliances with others. Adult male baboons have cooperative and competitive relationships with each other, just as Washington politicians do. A study by University of Minnesota zoologist Craig Packer in the 1970s showed that male baboons often form coalitions to create the opportunity to mate with a female. If a female is in estrus and closely guarded by a dominant male who won’t allow anyone else near her, two other males may work together so that while one of them picks a fight with the dominant male, the other takes advantage of the distraction to mate with the desired female. The next day the lucky male may reciprocate the favor to his partner. Although male baboons need each other for these political alliances, they also compete for dominance. Thus, even between the closest of allies, the subordinate male is always on the lookout for the right opportunity to challenge the dominance of his buddy. Sapolsky showed that when a dominance relationship is stable, the dominant male has lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in his blood than the subordinate. When dominance is unstable, however, both individuals have equally high cortisol levels. Males who are being successfully challenged for dominance by their subordinates have the highest levels of cortisol in their entire group.6
A reversal of a dominance relationship can have life-changing consequences, for baboons as well as for people. In the 1935 novel Auto-Da-Fé—a masterpiece of European literature for which its author, Elias Canetti, won the Nobel Prize in 1981—the main character is a reclusive scholar, Peter Kien, who spends all his time in his apartment, where he keeps a massive library with thousands of volumes.7 The only person he keeps around is his housekeeper, an illiterate older woman named Therese who rents a room in his apartment and cleans and cooks for him. For eight years, their relationship is straightforward. Kien is the employer and Therese is the employee, he owns the apartment and she is the guest, he is a scholar and she is illiterate. He is dominant and she is subordinate: he barely looks at her when they talk, and she treats him with great deference. However, when Kien misinterprets Therese’s conscientiousness in dusting his books for a love of knowledge similar to his own and decides to marry her, their relationship shifts dramatically: they are no longer employer and employee, but husband and wife. All hell breaks loose. Therese is no longer intimidated by Kien’s intellectual superiority and believes that her cravings for expensive new furniture and clothes should take precedence over his desire to acquire more books and knowledge. She becomes more and more confrontational with him until one day she loses it and beats him to a pulp. Now their dominance relationship is reversed. Kien is afraid of Therese and becomes passive for fear of another beating. Therese gains control of the apartment and buys all the furniture she wants with Kien’s money. When the money runs out, she kicks Kien out of the apartment and pawns his books. If you like novels with a happy ending, Auto-Da-Fé may not be the book for you. Canetti is not optimistic about human beings’ ability to communicate with one another and resolve their disputes amicably; instead, he painstakingly describes how our lives crumble to pieces when we fall prey to the dark survival instincts of our own minds or those of the people around us. Although Canetti doesn’t mention the word dominance once in his book, he provides a vivid illustration of the powerful influence that a change in a dominance relationship can have on people’s lives.
Dominance Relationships 24/7
Dominance is so intrinsic to human social relationships that we don’t even notice it. However, I suspect that if I asked you to make a list of one hundred people you know, including family members, friends, and coworkers, and indicate whether you are dominant or subordinate in your relationship with each of these people, you could give a clear answer for at least ninety-five of them. Normally, we don’t think about how our daily interactions with the people we know are affected by our being dominant or subordinate. The truth is, however, that dominance permeates many aspects of our everyday social lives. The same is true for other primates as well.8
In a group of savanna baboons, every individual has social relationships—and dominance relationships—with everybody else in the group. In baboons, one practical consequence of dominance is “priority of access”: if a dominant and a subordinate
want the same thing—a piece of food, an attractive mate, or a spot in the shade on a hot summer day—the dominant will always get it, or get it first. The dominant baboon may let the subordinate have something they both want only if he or she cares much less about it than the sub ordinate does—for example, a piece of food when the dominant’s belly is already full. Although the importance of dominance is particularly clear when two individuals want the same thing or disagree about something, a dominance relationship between two individuals operates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and affects how the two individuals interact with each other in virtually every situation.
To begin with, if we measure the amount of time two male baboons spend looking at each other on a given day, chances are the subordinate spends a lot more time looking at the dominant than vice versa. Moreover, the subordinate is more likely to change his behavior in response to the dominant than the other way around. For example, if the subordinate is sitting in a corner eating a banana and the dominant walks by, the subordinate is likely to stop eating and go sit in a different spot. If the dominant is eating a banana and the subordinate walks by, the dominant will probably continue eating the banana as if nothing has happened. More generally, the subordinate avoids the dominant and gets out of his way, while the dominant pays no attention to the subordinate. When dominant and subordinate cross paths, the subordinate is likely to greet the dominant with a “bared-teeth display” or by “presenting” his behind. The dominant rarely greets the subordinate. The dominant stares at the subordinate or uses other threatening facial expressions or vocalizations and may even attack the subordinate. The subordinate never initiates threats or aggression toward the dominant, although when under attack he may occasionally fight back in self-defense.
In primate societies in which individuals have strong and stable dominance relationships, most fighting consists of intimidatory aggression by dominants against subordinates to maintain and reinforce the status quo. To try to control a dominant’s aggression, win his tolerance, and possibly receive some favors, a subordinate not only behaves submissively but also provides services to the dominant. For baboons and other primates, these services consist mainly of grooming. The subordinate is willing to spend hours cleaning the fur and massaging the body of a dominant. Generally, what the subordinate receives, or hopes to receive, in exchange is more grooming, tolerance, or help. The dominant allows the subordinate to stay close to him during or after grooming, and if the subordinate gets into a fight with another individual and calls for help, the dominant may intervene and lend a hand. In some cases, there is an exchange of grooming between a dominant and a subordinate, but, as described earlier in this chapter, the grooming given and received between the two is never well balanced.
Many of the baboon behaviors I describe here have obvious parallels in humans. I recently witnessed a conversation at a coffee shop on campus between two female colleagues I know very well: one is a tenured professor in her sixties—let’s call her Jane—and the other a young and untenured assistant professor hired a few years ago—I’ll call her Jill. When they found a table where they could sit, I noticed that they both went for the chair with its back against the wall—people like to have their back protected when they sit in a coffee shop or a restaurant—but then Jill immediately withdrew and let Jane take the favored chair. During the conversation, Jill was very attentive to everything Jane said and did, maintaining almost continuous eye contact with her, while Jane’s attention wandered when Jill was talking. Jill also smiled at Jane more frequently than the reverse. At some point, I overheard them talking about a potentially contentious issue—the hiring of a new faculty member in their department. As Jane forcefully stated her opinion on the subject to Jill, she stared her down and raised her tone of voice. Jill smiled harder than ever, quickly deferred to Jane’s viewpoint, and immediately moved the conversation to a more neutral topic. She also offered to get some more milk for Jane’s coffee, and toward the end of the conversation she apologized profusely for not being able to stay longer. Before getting up from her chair, she waited until Jane stood up first, and then they both left the coffee shop, Jane walking out the door first, and Jill following behind.
I once had a male colleague who stopped walking every time we crossed paths in the hallway of our building and flattened himself with his back against the wall. He acted this way with other people too. He never walked in the middle of a hallway; rather, he was always way over to one side, with his back sliding against the wall. I once observed a male pigtail macaque who walked around the same way, his back always flattened against the wall of his compound. Like my colleague, this male was subordinate in the dominance relationships he had with all the other adult males within his group.
Pecking Orders
In rhesus macaques, baboons, and other primates, dominance generally follows the transitive property: if A is dominant over B and B is dominant over C, then A is also dominant over C. As a result, all individuals can be ranked in a linear dominance hierarchy, with the individual who is dominant over all the others at the top and the individual who is subordinate to all the others at the bottom. An individual’s position in the hierarchy is called its dominance rank. To emphasize the distinction between dominance in a dyadic (pair) relationship and dominance rank in a hierarchy, students of primate behavior use the terms dominant and subordinate to refer to roles in a relationship and the terms high-ranking and low-ranking to refer to an individual’s position in the hierarchy.
Dominance hierarchies need not necessarily be linear. If a dominance relationship is nontransitive, such that A is dominant over B and B is dominant over C, but C is dominant over A, then the dominance hierarchy is nonlinear: it contains triangles or loops involving three or more individuals. Finally, there can also be despotic hierarchies, in which one individual rules over all other members of the group, with no rank distinctions being made among others.
Researchers interested in understanding the consequences of dominance have examined and compared the lives of high-ranking and low-ranking monkeys. Although in special situations—for example, when primates are kept in captivity and provided with abundant food and protection from danger—it may look as though high-ranking and low-ranking individuals lead very similar lives, in more naturalistic conditions the advantages of high rank are substantial. High-ranking animals survive longer, reproduce better, and generally live a healthier, more comfortable, and less stressful life than the low-ranking ones. It’s the same for humans. For an entertaining description of the lives of the powerful and the powerless in human societies, as well as the effects of dominance hierarchies in the workplace, I highly recommend Richard Conniff’s books The Natural History of the Rich and The Ape in the Corner Office.9
Dominance and hierarchies are not unique to primates. According to Harvard evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, dominance in animals was first discovered by Swiss and Austrian entomologists who were studying bumblebees in the 1800s.10 These researchers reported that the queen was dominant over the worker bees and that subordinate workers that tried to steal and eat eggs were physically punished by the queen or other more dominant individuals. Insects aside, the first well-described dominance hierarchy in animals was the “pecking order” in chickens studied by the Norwegian biologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe between 1920 and 1935. He showed that when a bunch of chickens are first thrown together, they fight with each other over access to food, nest sites, and roosting places. When fights between two individuals have a clear winner and loser, aggression between them ceases and in subsequent days the loser always yields to the winner. Schjelderup-Ebbe demonstrated that chickens could recognize each other and remember the outcome of fights with particular individuals for weeks. He also described how the dominant chickens maintained their status by either pecking an opponent or making a threatening movement toward an opponent with the intention of pecking. Shortly after his work was published, numerous other researchers documented the occurrence of dominance r
elationships and hierarchies in other birds and mammals.
Confusion About Primate Dominance
Dominance in primates is nothing special compared to other animals, but primatologists have differing opinions about it. In the early days of primatology, one group of researchers believed that dominance was simply the result of some individuals acting tough, threatening others and picking fights, and inducing fear in less aggressive individuals. Others held the opposite view: the fearful and submissive behavior of subordinates accounts for dominance relationships; aside from being aggressive, the dominants don’t contribute much. The idea that dominance can simply be equated with the behavior of dominants or the behavior of subordinates was later criticized by primatologists who argued that monkeys and apes have social relationships, just like people, and that dominance should be considered a property of relationships, not of individuals. This means that an individual can be dominant in a relationship with one individual and subordinate in a relationship with someone else.
But not everyone agreed. In a short paper published in 1981, primatologist Stuart Altmann, now an emeritus professor at Princeton University, argued that monkeys and apes don’t have dominance relationships with one another simply because they don’t have social relationships. According to Altmann, social relationships are abstractions that exist only in the minds of the people who study primate behavior—an invention of the human observer to describe why monkeys behave the way they do. Monkeys don’t categorize individuals as dominants or subordinates, high-ranking or low-ranking, kin or nonkin, friend or foe, Altmann wrote. Any individual’s behavior is always a response to another individual’s behavior. Since dominance relationships don’t exist, they cannot have any influence on the behavior, survival, or reproduction of individuals. He concluded that dominance relationships are important, but only to the researchers, not to their subjects. Altmann applied his reasoning to nonhuman primate behavior, but psychologists known as behaviorists have similar views about human behavior as well. From their perspective, an unhappy husband and wife respond to each other’s annoying behavior, but their relationship is an abstraction that exists only in the mind of their marriage counselor.
Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships Page 5