The revolution began on June 1, 2009, with a coalitionary attack against the seventh-ranked male in which he sustained visible wounds. This was followed two days later by repeated attacks on the tenth-ranked male. These attacks occurred over a period of four weeks, during which the tenth-ranked male was wounded several times. On June 21, the beta male was also attacked. He soon disappeared, and Higham couldn’t find him anywhere on the island. Two days later Higham finally spotted him in the sea. The aggressors had chased him into the water and continued to threaten him for hours from the beach, preventing him from swimming back ashore. Eventually, however, he made it back to the beach. The chasing and harassing of the beta male continued for about two weeks, during which time he was injured numerous times.
Finally, the alpha male was attacked, badly injured, and driven into the sea on August 10. He was kicked out of the group and never seen again. The other three targets remained in the group but dropped in rank below the tenth position, while their aggressors climbed to the top positions in the hierarchy. After looking at his field notes, Higham discovered that the revolutionary males had been in the same group for a similar amount of time and had become “friends,” having spent a lot of time hanging out together and grooming one another. So one reason why these coalitionary attacks were so effective was that the aggressors “trusted” each other and worked well as a team.
The theoretical models explaining when and why males decide to form a type of coalition against other males are similar to the models that explain the different strategies for rank acquisition used by immigrant males.6 Again, we have to consider the costs and the benefits of coalition formation. The main cost is always the risk of injury or death. The benefit of coalition formation—whether the goal is to maintain and reinforce one’s status or to improve it at the expense of the target—is equal to the benefit of having high rank in general. Again, this depends on whether the males find themselves in a winner-take-all market, where the benefits of top rank are disproportionately high, or in a berry-picking contest, where rank doesn’t matter. Van Schaik and other smart primatologists have developed mathematical models that explain to us common mortals why, when, and how primate males should form coalitions.
Remember that variable called beta, which tells us whether competition within a species or a group is mainly by contest or by scramble? It turns out that beta also influences despotism, or the steepness of the dominance ladder within a particular social system. In a highly despotic system, the ladder is set straight up and there are large gaps between the steps. This means that there are significant differences in power between top-ranking and bottom-ranking individuals, individuals don’t treat those ranking lower than themselves very nicely, and climbing the ladder is difficult. In a low-despotism system, by contrast, the ladder is set on a gentle slope and the steps are close to each other, or maybe the ladder is even set flat on the ground. When there is no dominance ladder, it means that the social system is egalitarian: either all individuals have equal chances of winning fights or they don’t fight much to begin with.
So, whether beta is high or low in a certain group determines whether or not there is a dominance hierarchy and how steep it is. The values of beta and the degree of despotism in a social system affect the strategies used by immigrant males to attain top rank (and also the average age of the alpha males) and the frequency of coalitionary aggression. When beta has high values—for example, in a small group where the alpha male does all the mating—alpha males are young individuals in their physical prime who get to the top by challenging and defeating the ranking alpha male. In larger groups, the values of beta decrease and alpha males are, on average, a little bit older, and in very large groups—in which beta is low—alpha males can be quite old, because they have risen to the top by succession, and this can take a long time. In despotic social systems in which beta has a high value, we would expect offensive coalitions directed at changing dominance ranks to be quite common, especially among the high-ranking and middle-ranking males. In these situations, low-ranking males are tempted to leave the group because they are excluded from mating and would be better off getting a fresh start in another group. In groups with low beta and little or no despotism, offensive coalitions should be rare or completely absent.
When offensive coalitions are frequent, it means that they are both feasible and profitable. Coalitions are feasible if they are strong enough to beat their target. They are profitable when, for each coalition member, the benefit gained in terms of increased opportunities for mating is greater than the cost entailed by the risk of injury or death. It is important to note that although risk of injury is intrinsic to any fight between two individuals, when a coalition is formed this risk becomes much higher if the coalition partner defects midfight. Therefore, coalition partners must trust each other to stay. The model developed by van Schaik and his collaborators tells us whether each type of offensive coalition—conservative, bridging, or revolutionary—is feasible and profitable and therefore whether it is frequent or rare in different social situations, depending on its effectiveness and the costs and benefits to the allies.
Conservative coalitions, which maintain the status quo, are always feasible because, by definition, the coalitionary males are higher-ranking and therefore stronger than their target. However, these coalitions are not very profitable because the coalitionary males don’t gain much; they maintain the rank they already had and its associated benefits. Conservative coalitions, however, serve an important preventive function. They can be random acts of aggression to keep subordinates stressed and therefore less likely to mount challenges to dominants. Alternatively, they may serve as practice for more dangerous offensive initiatives. In other words, high-ranking males may gang up against a weak target that is unlikely to ever attack them simply to test their partners’ willingness to engage in riskier coalitions of the offensive type. Conservative coalitions should be common in despotic social systems with high values of beta and are mainly formed by males near the top of the hierarchy, although not necessarily by the alpha male.
Bridging coalitions, in which one coalitionary male is higher-ranking than the target and the other is lower-ranking, are always feasible because the high-ranking member of the coalition can always beat the target on his own. However, these coalitions are not profitable for the higher-ranking coalition member unless his partner is a relative. So a typical reason for a bridging coalition would be for a high-ranking male to help a younger brother rise in rank. For example, if Billy had had the guts to challenge the male right above him in the new group’s hierarchy and one of his brothers had helped him, theirs would have been a bridging coalition. Since benefits increase as the degree of despotism increases, bridging coalitions should be especially common in despotic species or in groups in which beta is high, and they should mainly involve high-ranking males, including the alpha male.
Revolutionary coalitions such as those observed by James Higham are expected in situations with intermediate values of beta and despotism, such as large groups with many adult males, because, while the cost of forming coalitions doesn’t change, the profitability of revolutionary coalitions increases as despotism increases, whereas their feasibility decreases. Revolutionary coalitions can be feasible and profitable when they lead to rank improvement. These coalitions are likely to be formed by middle-ranking males—who may revolt, for example, against the alpha and beta males—because the benefits of such coalitions are highest for these individuals. This is exactly what Higham observed on Cayo Santiago. High-ranking males, however, may prevent the formation of revolutionary coalitions by preventing males from being friends—for instance, by interfering in exchanges of grooming between them. Male chimpanzees are expert at such interference.
Primate Strategies for Taking Over Microsoft Corporation
Going back to our human example, if you become a new employee of the Microsoft Corporation and want to climb the power ladder all the way to the top, it is important to have an
estimate of beta—that is, how many children Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, has fathered with the employees of his company. Of course, neither Ballmer nor any of the employees in question can be trusted with this information, so it is important to do paternity genetic analyses to establish how far and wide Ballmer has spread his DNA in the company. Depending on whether (1) Ballmer is the father of all the children born to Microsoft employees since he became CEO in 2000, (2) at least some of the husbands of these employees have been able to impregnate their wives or the wives of other employees, or (3) Ballmer and all the male Microsoft employees have been trying to fill their baskets with more berries than anyone else around by impregnating as many females as possible, then the best strategy for career advancement will be (a) challenge Ballmer in a duel right away, (b) wait a while and then challenge Ballmer, or (c) stand in line, gradually rise in rank through seniority, and patiently wait for the opportunity to become CEO without any aggressive challenges to one’s superiors. Depending on the extent to which Ballmer has spread his DNA among the Microsoft children, employees can also estimate the likelihood that their revolutionary coalitions will be successful, whether they are likely to succeed in forming a bridging coalition with a lower-ranking family member or protégé, and whether their ambition to become CEO is likely to be curbed by conservative coalitions led by Ballmer and his buddies.
Well, don’t take my words too literally; the parallels between human and monkey lives are not so direct. For one thing, social strategies for climbing the ladder in modern working environments have nothing to do with the number of illegitimate children fathered by the company’s boss. The relevant variable in these environments is the structure of power—how despotic or egalitarian the system is, or put another way, how steep the dominance ladder is. In other primate societies, power and reproduction go hand in hand, and while this is not the case in modern human working environments, until relatively recently human society followed a similar model. In her book Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History, evolutionary anthropologist Laura Betzig shows that in many human societies throughout history, political and military power, which have historically been in the hands of men, had a direct link to reproduction: kings, emperors, and dictators possessed huge harems of women and sired hundreds of children with them.7 Despots also constrained the sexual and reproductive activities of their subordinates. For example, kings in the Middle Ages demanded to spend the wedding night with each woman who married a man in their kingdom, the so-called jus primae noctis (“the right to the first night”). Many women conceived a child with the king on their wedding night instead of with their husband.
Regardless of whether social despotism translates directly into reproductive control, theories of primate social strategies can explain, with appropriate corrections for the species, human social and political strategies as well. First, the general principle that the viability of different strategies for power acquisition depends on the balance between the benefits and the costs of each strategy clearly has cross-species validity and applicability to human behavior. Economists know this well. More specific principles apply as well. The degree of despotism in a group or society—which is determined by the extent to which resources are monopolized and controlled by a single individual and the extent to which the despot exerts his or her power over the low-status individuals—influences the benefits of high status and the strategies to achieve it.
In a highly despotic group, particularly if the group is small and the alpha male does not have a great deal of support behind him, it pays to directly challenge the leader. Mario’s strategy of directly challenging the senior professor might have been the right move under different circumstances, but in that particular situation it failed for several reasons: Mario was too young and inexperienced, and his RHP was still low relative to that of his boss. In addition, Mario failed to gain knowledge about the political strengths and weaknesses of his adversary and did not bother to get to know the other group members, much less garner their political support. Mario should have waited a few years, gained some more political experience and power, and then challenged his boss as a resident rather than as an immigrant. Military regimes are good examples of despotic systems in which the leader has a disproportionate amount of power and can be replaced only through a challenge from one of his direct subordinates—an army general or colonel—or someone from another political party, or even another country, provided the challenger has high RHP.
In more democratic human groups or societies in which power and resources are more evenly distributed among individuals on different steps of the status hierarchy, it pays to wait and rise in rank through seniority, particularly in large groups with a lot of social inertia. Gina’s strategy of entering her company at the bottom of the hierarchy, being a good citizen, and keeping a low profile was appropriate given that she was young and inexperienced and therefore had low RHP and her company had a complex and multilayered structure of power. It is unlikely, however, that being patient and submissive will ever take Gina all the way to the top of the ladder. Most likely, Gina will take many years to become a midlevel administrator, and then her career will stop there. To make it to the top in a competitive environment, you must make political alliances and challenge those with power. If you don’t, someone else, either a resident within the company or an immigrant from another company, like Sarah, will use more aggressive strategies and get ahead of you—exactly what happened to Billy the rhesus macaque. Sarah’s strategy was the most appropriate given her own RHP—her experience, skills, and self-confidence—and the situation in the company. Sarah waited a while after immigrating into the new department and then challenged the leader as a resident, after having made the right political alliances, securing support from key allies, and even undermining the leader’s power and support by spreading negative rumors about him.
In all of these situations—whether climbing the ladder as a challenger immigrant, an unobtrusive immigrant, or a challenger resident—it is fundamentally important to acquire and use social knowledge to form effective political alliances. Humans are political animals, but their societies and relationships are more complicated than those of other primates. As discussed in Chapter 2, social knowledge, political alliances, and dominance status are intimately interconnected. Social skills are necessary to form strong relationships and to be liked by others enough for them to be willing to cooperate. The ability to charm and lead others—what we call charisma—is an important skill in forming effective political alliances. And in any kind of human social organization, from academic departments to business companies to entire countries, strong political alliances are necessary for anyone to climb to the top of the ladder and stay there for a while. Clearly, having high RHP is a prerequisite to becoming a leader in every kind of human social organization. But in humans, even more than in other primates, good social skills, the ability to form political alliances, and the self-confidence that usually accompanies these traits are much more important components of RHP than the strength of one’s biceps or the sharpness of one’s canine teeth.
Chapter 5
Cooperate in the Spotlight, Compete in the Dark
Coffee, Tea, and Human Nature
My research laboratory at the University of Chicago is in the Biopsychological Sciences Building. In one corner of the building’s lobby is a small kitchen with a sink, a refrigerator, and a microwave oven. Tucked behind the refrigerator is a large, ultramodern espresso machine that resembles a laser printer more than a beverage dispenser. The espresso lovers in my building buy massive amounts of expensive coffee once every few months, and the coffee maker/laser printer is always fully loaded and ready to go. You see, caffeine is the fuel that keeps the brains of many researchers running, and some of us like to take highly concentrated doses—in the form of double or triple espresso shots. Without drugging our brains with caffeine, it would be impossible to stare at a computer screen for hours without falling asleep.
> On the wall above the coffee maker is a list of all the names of the Espresso Club members. Each time club members make themselves a cup of coffee, they mark an X next to their name. At the end of the month the marks are counted and people pay their tab to the club’s treasurer. My colleagues and fellow espresso drinkers happen to be honest people who record every cup they drink, but if they wanted to cheat, there’s nothing to prevent them from doing so. In theory, we could have installed a webcam near the espresso machine to monitor whether people honestly record their coffee consumption, but we didn’t. We have other, more important things to worry about, such as dwindling funding for research.
(Incidentally, when webcams were first invented, one of their first applications was thought up by a guy who used it to check his coffee on the kitchen stove while he was working on his computer; the website showing his coffee maker on the stove became very popular, and people were amazed at this new technological development, which used a personal computer and the Internet to keep an eye on the room next door.)
The arrangement that my colleagues and I have developed to pay for espresso is not unusual. Researchers and students in the Department of Psychology at Newcastle University in England put coins in an “honesty box” every time they make themselves a cup of tea or coffee or use milk.1 They have the option of putting in the box the exact amount of change for their drink (fifty British pence for coffee, thirty for tea, and ten for milk), more if they feel especially magnanimous, or nothing at all if they are out of change or out of generosity. A notice with the instructions for payment is displayed on the wall above the counter where the honesty box and the coffee- and tea-making equipment are located.
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