The Man Who Helped Popularize the Term ‘Alpha Male’ Says You Are Using It All Wrong

Primate researcher Frans de Waal explains the fallacies around our concepts of alpha behavior

The first thing you’ve got wrong about your idea of human alphas is that there can be more than one. Every primate group has only one alpha male and one alpha female. 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. The same goes for wolves. There’s one alpha male and one alpha female and gaining that status has more to do with attitude than strength or size for both chimpanzees and wolves.

The alpha wolves are not necessarily the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest. High rank has more to do with attitude and confidence than size or strength. Dominance also does not favor gender — either the alpha male or the alpha female may be the overall “leader of the pack”.

Frans de Waal, who has been researching primates for over 40 years, gave a TEDtalk in 2018 about the mistaken ideas we have developed around the term alpha. As one of the people who helped popularize that term through his 1982 book Chimpanzee Politics, de Waal is uniquely positioned to point out how the idea of alphas has been taken out of context and misused by humans.

There really is no such thing as a human alpha. We don’t have one male leader and one female leader in our cultures, and even if we did, exerting dominance alone isn’t what it takes to become one. Our current usage of the term alpha to mean dominant, assertive, intimidating, and someone who imposes their will on others really doesn’t align with alphas in the animal kingdom.

It’s even possible for the smallest male in the group to be the alpha in chimpanzee society. “The smallest male, if he has the right friends and keeps them happy, or if he has female support, he can be the alpha male,” says de Waal. An alpha can be intimidating or vigorous, but he still must also have the right allies. Amongst chimpanzees, the alpha male also has to be generous because alpha status is conferred on the guy with the strongest coalition.

Food sharing is a common way of helping to form coalitions in the chimp world, often as part of a campaign to become the alpha. Male chimpanzees are typically not that interested in infants, but just as with human males on the campaign trail, tickling babies is one of the ways that chimps garner favor with females.

But what’s really interesting is that there may even be coalitions of older males who are not the alpha but who are ultimately more influential than he is. De Waal presented this image below as a humorous example of that manifesting in humans, but it’s completely tongue in cheek. It produced a big laugh at his TEDtalk to show the former President exhibiting the characteristic “bipedal swagger” of the alpha while flanked on either side by older males who look kind of unassuming but actually hold most of the power.

We have this notion not only that that human alphas exist, but that they are just kind of born that way by being tall, strong, and handsome, or perhaps they cultivate that status by acting in certain ways —being confident and brash, or not caring about what anyone else thinks — but there are some problems with this notion, despite its prevalence. First of all, primate alphas gain that status through consensus after a lot of campaigning, and there is only one alpha. They aren’t born as alphas and they have to work really hard to get others to recognize them as such.

Once the position is won, it must be constantly protected and cultivated, because other males will try to take that position. The coalitions that the alpha creates must be maintained, and the coalitions of other hopefuls must be constantly disrupted. It’s pretty much non-stop politicking to stay in the alpha position. Male chimpanzee alphas spend a lot of time doing this, and it’s actually quite stressful for them, something that has been demonstrated physiologically. It’s a lot of work that takes a lot of doing; you can’t just be an alpha.

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. As de Waal characterizes them, alphas are the “consoler in chief.” In general, females demonstrate more of this sort of behavior, but the alpha male has been shown to be the top comforter of others in the troop. De Waal says that males who become very good at these two things become extremely popular, which helps them to stabilize their position as alpha.

What it takes to be an alpha chimp is good, fair, empathetic leadership. Conversely, bullies are not liked or usually tolerated, and if they have managed to gain position are apt to lose it through this sort of behavior — completely unlike what is purported by Pick-Up Artists and other proponents of the alpha male idea. Alpha females also hold very important, central positions within the community, and this is also quite different from human alpha male believers, who generally hold rather low opinions of women.

It’s also important to note that bonobos are as genetically close to humans as chimps are, and their most important alpha is generally always a female. So amongst our closest primate cousins, the top alpha does not always have to be male.

Secondly, human society is a lot more complex than chimpanzee society.

People can belong to different hierarchies, for example; a guy who is the most vocal, dominant person in his amateur football team might be under the heel of an aggressive boss during his day job. Is he an alpha male, or not? It depends on context, obviously. Humans have many different social groups and varying roles within them, because we’re more complex. A universal “alpha” seems unlikely.

Also, the fact that many communities of men (particularly online) are seemingly convinced that they can all be alpha males is a contradiction in terms; there should only be one alpha male per community, that’s sort of the whole point. The rest should try and depose him as and when the opportunity presents itself, but until then they are, at best, “beta males”, a term often used as an insult by members of said community with no sense of irony.

In other words, this is a made-up construct that has no real bearing on human biology or sociology. It’s just another way that the patriarchal dominance hierarchy in which we currently live tries to justify itself by making it sound plausible that human alpha males exist. It’s trying to pretend that ruthless, controlling, bullying behavior is not only an inevitable sign of leadership but that it’s a desirable thing to strive for by way of showing your fitness for power and prestige. What a crock! That’s just the dominance hierarchy justifying itself.

A dominance hierarchy (which is what patriarchy actually is, not just a dynamic between men and women) is about maintaining traditional power through displays of aggression, coercion, and artificial barriers to true competition. It revolves around clawing your way to as high in the pecking order as you can get, by any means necessary, including violently holding other people down or erecting barriers to them being able to compete — all the while telling yourself that you’ve earned your place fair and square.

Conversely, an alpha wolf’s primary responsibility is to take care of the pack and ensure their safety and wellbeing. They do not necessarily eat first or have other wolfy perks of power that humans near the top of the dominance hierarchy pyramid typically assume for themselves. The same is true of alpha chimpanzees, who hold and maintain that position by doing things that are good for the whole troop, not just for themselves, not just for their friends and family members, not just for those in their coalition, but for all.

This is what it truly means to be an alpha, and if some guys really want to be alphas then they’d better start acting like our animal examples rather than some invented idea of patriarchal badassery and “I got mine” behavior. Animal alphas are what you might call “servant leaders.” They have prestige, but they also have a lot of responsibilities to those in their charge. They may swagger a bit, but they also back it up with caring, coalition building, and maintaining the peace and safety of their communities. This is what it means to be an alpha, and if there were such a thing amongst humans, it would need to look a lot more like this.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love.

Thanks to Steve Kaiser for the story prompt.