The Concept of the Human ‘Alpha Male’ is a Recent Social Construct

Not the evolutionary dynamic that you might believe

Being a so-called “alpha male” is an important part of patriarchal culture. Guys grow up learning that they ought to be tough, stoic, assertive, and dominant if they want to be considered “real men” by a society that has envisioned these things as the true metrics of masculinity. Fortunately, at this juncture, not every man cares about that, but for those who do, the myth of the evolutionary importance of the “alpha man” looms large. After all, our primate cousins all have alphas as part of their societies, so that must be a natural thing for humans as well — that must be how we also evolved, right?

Actually, no…

There is more than one thing wrong with this blanket supposition.

Problem #1 is that patriarchy as a social system is brand new to humans — appearing for the first time only about 6–9 thousand years ago, roughly around the advent of agriculture. Patriarchy is a dominance-based hierarchy system where might makes right and stronger or more powerful people have primacy and control over those who are weaker. But prior to that time (for about 97% of history), humans used enforced egalitarianism as their primary survival strategy. More about that in a minute.

Historically, in a patriarchy, men have social dominance over women and children, but also over any other men deemed to be too weak to prevent it. Gross wealth disparity, social classes, racism, and other forms of structural discrimination are all functions of this sort of dominance-based hierarchy where those with more clout or strength use it to subjugate those with less. It is only under this relatively recent societal configuration that the idea of human “alpha males” arises.

Problem #2, is the concept of human alphas as a certain type of man, one widely found in our culture. He’s wealthy, handsome, smart, or too tough to have to worry about those things. While it’s true that every primate group has an alpha male — and an alpha female — there is also only one of each. It’s not a class of animals within the troop who are more tough, strong, or high ranking. It’s just one male and one female, and those positions are not necessarily given to the most physically dominant animal. Contrary to our modern concept of being an alpha male, chimp and bonobo alphas spend a lot of time campaigning for that role and then working to maintain it, often by maintaining a coalition of supporters.

“Alpha male chimps also have an obligation to keep the peace in the group. They try to prevent fights from breaking out, and typically support the underdog in any conflict, even if that means not favoring a relative or friend. This provides security for the lowest-ranking members of the group, which helps the alpha’s popularity. Alpha male chimps are also the ones who demonstrate the most empathic behavior, spending a lot of time comforting others.”

Not exactly in line with modern conceptions of “alpha masculinity.”

Problem #3 is that enforced egalitarianism, as it is currently practiced in modern forager groups as well as in our Paleolithic past, actively suppresses attempts by any one person or group of people at becoming too dominant. This was one of the main ways that our ancestors used to keep themselves alive and it is still key to forager societies, which value both personal autonomy as well as group welfare.

It has been hypothesized that cumulative culture and extensive non-kin cooperation allowed Homo sapiens to replace other hominin species in the Pleistocene and facilitated the biological dominance of our species in the Holocene.

Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist and primatologist who is currently the Director of the Jane Goodall Research Center at the University of Southern California believes that suppressing our primate ancestors’ dominance hierarchies by enforcing these egalitarian norms was a central adaptation of human evolution. Most anthropolgists agree with him. Paleolithic life for small, isolated bands of humans was highly dependent on cooperative group behavior and he and many other anthropologists believe that this sort of “enforced egalitarianism” was likely crucial to our survival and evolutionary success.

As Dr. Peter Grey illuminates in this example taken from modern forager bands, keeping any one person, particularly any one man, from looking at himself as alpha, is critical to both group safety and cohesion.

One regular practice of the group that Lee studied was that of “insulting the meat.” Whenever a hunter brought back a fat antelope or other prized game item to be shared with the band, the hunter had to express proper humility by talking about how skinny and worthless it was. If he failed to do that (which happened rarely), others would do it for him and make fun of him in the process. When Lee asked one of the elders of the group about this practice, the response he received was the following: “When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle.”

In other words, our notions about the social desirability of dominant men is a by-product of a cultural system where that is valued — patriarchy — something that has only existed for about 3% of human history. In cultures where it is not valued, it isn’t even tolerated.

“According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos. Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it’s a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior. If teasing doesn’t work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn’t exist. That almost always works. Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends. No human being can live for long alone. The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he’d better shape up or the same thing will happen again.”

And even within the patriarchal construct, there is a limit to how much power “alpha males” actually have at this point in time. Assertions that 80% of women want to mate with 20% of men is absurd, first because it is functionally impractical and second because it can be debunked simply by looking out of the window.

If this were actually the case, homo sapiens would have never made it out of the Paleolithic age. They would have died off, as many of our other hominid cousins did. People who assert this have clearly not done the math for what this would actually mean in terms of population growth. A few men would have had to have had harems of women — with most men having no mates, and a lot of inbreeding taking place between half-siblings — something that would have been highly destabilizing and that has never been a widespread social dynamic for that reason. This is not a description of a long-term evolutionary trend — it’s a sampling of Tinder and other major dating apps, where 9 times as many men are enrolled as women.

And aside from the evolutionary maladaptiveness of such a system, around 62% of Americans are either married or living with a partner. Although this number is down from 71% in 1990, that’s still a significant percentage of the population that is paired up in a serious commitment and it speaks not at all to dating statistics. Some of these pairings may be between homosexual or non-binary partners, but the vast majority of them are between men and women of all shapes, sizes, and socio-economic levels.

According to a Pew Research study, “Roughly seven-in-ten adults (71%) say it is very important for a man to be able to support a family financially to be a good husband or partner.” But interestingly, “Men are especially likely to place a greater emphasis on their role as financial providers.” In addition, “However, the importance of being the financial provider ranks behind being caring and compassionate when it comes to being a good spouse or partner, in the public’s estimation.”

Any cultural preoccupation with a man being an “alpha” is really just a rather new social construct that comes out of patriarchal demands on men — something that only started up a few thousand years ago. Sure, there are some women who buy into this construct as well. After all, we’ve all been raised in the same social system, but as the Pew study points out, what most people value in a partner is them being a loving and caring person. And a lot of women I know find attempts by men to behave in an “alpha” fashion somewhere between laughable and downright offensive.

Primatologist, Meredith Small notes that seeking novelty is the single most observable trait among all the sexual behaviors, preferences, and drivers of female primates. She says that female primates are actually the complete opposite of how we’ve been taught to imagine them — as reluctant breeders or seekers of “intimacy” with a single “best” mate or only seeking to mate with the alpha. A belief in the importance of being an “alpha” is all just kind of a cultural myth, extrapolated from the rules and dynamics of patriarchy and generalized to the rest of human culture throughout time. But it isn’t true.

At a time when patriarchy limited women’s ability to provide for themselves, finding a stable mate who could keep the children fed made sense. A woman’s entire identity as a person was essentially subsumed by that of her husband, and she had few other avenues for improving her circumstances or maintaining any sort of status in the world except through that of her husband or father. But when you remove those cultural conditions, the dynamics begin to change.

Today, about half of married women earn as much or more than their husbands and in 22 of 250 major US metropolitan areas, women under 30 typically earn as much or more than men. On the other side of the patriarchy bubble, for millions of years before it came on the scene, our ancestors actively discouraged any man who thought of himself as an alpha. There were no chiefs or “big men” and they kept it that way on purpose because it wasn’t what was most conducive to the survival of the group.

Up until a few thousand years ago, our ancestors lived in small nomadic forager groups with a lot of kin in neighboring bands. The socially and economically cooperative nature of those cultures did not tolerate infighting or disharmony except in very limited responses to recognized breaches of the social contract of the group. It is really only with sedentism related to the agricultural revolution that these egalitarian and largely peaceful cultures began to change in favor of greater hierarchy, oppression, and domination of others.

It is only in this context that a human alpha male has any relevance or makes any sense. Stop acting like it’s a timeless evolutionary dynamic that drove human development because there really isn’t any evidence of that. Being confident, secure in who you are, and able to pay your bills is always attractive, but amongst a lot of people in the US, acting like an “alpha” is seen as acting like a jerk — by women, men, and others. It’s a set of behaviors from an era that is passing by the wayside. Let it go.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2022