Talk:Dominance hierarchy

Non-Dogmatic Statements
I have removed the following:

Status may also be affected by the ability to marshal the support of others. Indeed, the need to maintain social position and social knowledge may be an impetus for the evolution of larger brain in humans and other animals

Unless the author of this statement can explain the bolded text, I feel this is mostly unsupported, non-dogmatic jargon. The ability to "marshal the support of others" is not an impetus for the evolution of hierarchies in animals or humans. It is leadership. The question about leadership is usually posed in the opposite way: Why do people follow someone (sometimes to their own peril)?

Social knowledge is not a scientific term. I am not sure what it means. Scientist in general agree that our larger brains evolved to enhance our social abilities in order to become better hunters. Meat contains high levels of Vitamin B12, and without meat-eating, we would not have been able to evolve our brains. Great hunters became big brainers.

Dominance relationships require the cooperation of both parties. The dominant party tacitly agrees not to kill or injure the submissive party provided the submitter concedes and does not interfere with the dominant party's access to resources or compete for mates. The ability to identify and remember members of the group along with their dominance status is also necessary. These hierarchies may have developed, in evolutionary terms, for efficiency and to reduce the likelihood of injury among group members who may share genes. As with the case of altruism in animals, the voluntary abbreviation of hostilities into symbolic form remains something of a Darwinian Puzzle. Again, the bolded statements are mostly untrue. Dominance does not require cooperation. Dominance is intrinsically tied to submission: one can't have dominance without submission. Thus, what dominance requires is submission.

Once more we are plagued with antropomorphic and antropocentric terminology. Animals do not "tacitly agree" to anything. They are simply placed "against the wall". If a fish or a dog beats another one, the "lesson" is learned by the loosing party. This is explained by the winner-looser effect observed in most dyadic relationships.

The italized statement is PARTLY true, but poorly worded. To add it, the author should attempt to make it into one paragraph and then insert it in the article. Also remove the reference to selfish genes. The untrue part of the statement comes from this. The animals do not need to share genes in order to benefit from dominant-submissive relationships and its ability to decrease aggressive behavior. Fighting is energetically costly. Thus, the animals involved in the fight just want to increase the allocation of energy to reproduction or survival. The loosing animal gains by being able to have a chance of passing HIS/HER OWN GENES!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.55.100.100 (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

--161.55.100.100 (talk) 20:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Updated and Cleaned...
A few months ago, I fixed this article so that it was more scientifically accurate, however some people here keep adding non-dogmatic or pseudoscientific issues, etc. The best way to address this, I believe, is to split this article in two or at least have two sections: one for humans, and primates hierarchies, and one for animals. I will attempt to do that as soon as I have more time, as someone really just butchered the article and is now a bit hard to split it in two. I admit, however, that I should have added more to the article. For such an interesting topic, it is really lacking... --Reefpicker (talk) 16:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok. I did a quick review and update. I will provide a better one later... I just could not see it the way it was! Anyway, I did not eliminate anything at all. I only divided the article and added some info myself... I also eliminated one major error: the article said that formation of hierarchies in ONLY due to territorial aggression. I think this was just an error of how the statement was said. However, I just removed it. Dominance hierarchies arise from competition for resources, but those resources can be anything: territory, food, mates, etc. --161.55.100.100 (talk) 17:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Dominance in humans vs. Animals
It is not clear how much of dominance hierarchy in humans is due to the intrinsic biology of our brains, derived from evolution, and how much is due to cultural factors.

I would argue that the similarity of dominance behavior between advanced primates and humans is strong evidence of a biological source for that type of behavior.Ace Diamond 20:58, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Certainly is a good indication. But we should be aware of the phenomenon of convergence in evolution, whereas two apparently similar traits in function, such as wings in bats and wings in birds are very different in terms of evolution and structure. Renato Sabbatini

Well, OK, but I think your argument assumes that nature is working harder than she has to. Do you think that behavioral evolution would stop with hairy primates and then restart with a different impetus in his naked brethern?Ace Diamond 22:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Of course I agree, Ace, I side with you in this subject. But we must always be skeptic and cautious when comparing, in biology, particularly in human sociobiology, which is so influenced by culture. There have been social organizations where dominance hierarchy was thoroughçy neutralized bu culture. --R.Sabbatini 14:29, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think that it might be posible to be too cautious about some things but at the same time I may be putting too fine a point on this. So we can agree to agree. Ace Diamond 02:18, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dominance hierarchies may have a biological origin, but they may be self-organizing. This is difficult to explain but if you think about a system in which assymetries among individuals competing for a resource lead to clear cut winner and loosser, then a dominance hierarchy will seem to have formed, wether the individuals involved in the group realized this or not. Indeed, the existence of real dominance hierarchies and how we measure the statistical significance of such hierarchies is still a controversial subject. --Reefpicker 18:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the need to maintain social position and social knowledge may be an impetus for the evolution of larger brains in humans.

I am not sure where the author takes this from but a large brain in humans is more directly associated with 1) language/speech 2) Tool Usage. It is our ability to understand and produce a complex language that probably cause our big evolutionary leap. Maintanace of social dominance had little to do with this.--Reefpicker 15:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Really, do you believe that language/speech is unrelated to social positioning and knowledge?Ace Diamond 03:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Social "positioning" is NOT related to language and speech. It is related to reproductive success and access to resources. It is a property of the physiological assymetries that exists in a population. (i.e no assymetry, no hierarchy). You can argue that the need to maintain a "social position" was an "impetus" or motivating factor driving evolution of larger brains, but our brains have evolved not to provide knowledge of our dominance status, but to provide the ability to manipulate objects, create tools, and transmit this knowledge vertically in time (culture). Thus, the evolutionary force that propelled the selection of bigger brains was probably the ability of the early hominid to use tools for hunting and to communicate this knowledge to their offsprings... --Reefpicker 21:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

charisma
What about the effects of charisma? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.141.140.108 (talk) 22:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC).

Back to hierarchy
The subject is not human intelligence; it is not even humans; it is hierarchy. I would like to know why hierarchy occurs. Self-organisation? Depends on what is meant. Here is a supposition. To survive, a creature must assess its environment and influence it to its advantage. The environment includes conspecifics so social animals would try to influence each other. Members would recognise who were more effective influencers. If that recognition is communicated between members of a social group, the hierarchy is in place. Since high status individuals use their influence for better access to food, to security and to mates, they will leave more offspring and whatever the quality is that makes for having more influence (charisma, bigger claws), if it is gene-related then it will spread.

Do worker ants have a hierarchy? - Pepper 150.203.227.130 00:18, 23 May 2007 - Do worker ants have a hierarchy? If not, can hierarchy only occur in individually reproducing species?

The ant society follows a much more despotic system in which the Queen has the highest status, however, strictly speaking it is a caste system, not a hierarchy. As far as workers go, since they are more or less genetically identical, it is hard to argue that they could even have a hierarchy! However, the short answer to that is NO. A big, no. If I have time today, I will look over E. Wilson's book and see how he portrays such societies....

The general answer to your second question would be yes. This is a very interesting topic... I think that the simplest way to put it, is that you have to think about the fact that an animal needs to control resources so as to: survive, thrive, and reproduce. When individuals compete for limited resources, and when such individuals live in groups, you will have the formation of hierarchies.

I think that the best way to think about hierarchies is to look at the simplest hierarchy, the pecking order in chickens, and to think how such a system will evolve JUST because each animal is NOT identical to the other, and their development (i.e. rate of growth), (will usually) is not going to be identical to the other either... As one of them develops a bit faster, or if one of them is born slightly earlier or stronger, he/she will dominate over the other, and so on and so forth... As long as those asymmetries exist, a dominant-submissive relationship will develop among this pair, and you can easily extend this to a group of 3, 4, 5, etc, animals. As the number of animals increases, the asymmetries decrease, and the hierarchy becomes less "steep", and for us, behaviorist, it becomes difficult to tell the "order" of the group... So, in order to know if you expect hierarchies to form in a group at any time during the year, you have to ask if the animals at that time of the year have reasons to compete for a resource (food, spawning territory, shelter, water, etc.), and then take into consideration size-differences, sex, etc. Because, such differences will drive the formation of hierarchies (together with the resource limitations) or not.... I am over-simplifying, but that's kind of it in a nutshell! To give you quick examples, some animals form hierarchies only when approaching the feeding grounds, during spawning season, etc.--Reefpicker (talk) 16:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Past merge suggestion
In November 2007 a template was placed on this page recommending merger with Dominance (ethology), but merger discussion was not initiated. The corresponding tag was removed from Dominance (ethology) in January 2010; I am therefore removing the tag from this page. Any editor who wishes to propose such a merge should consult Help:Merging for information and help. Cnilep (talk) 18:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Female dominance
This section at the moment just deals with female dominance over males. It should be expanded to explain how female members of species also form dominance hierarchies (i.e. female-female dominance hierarchies).

I appreciate probably less research has been carried out on this but this is a very interesting question and should at least be explicitly addressed. At the moment, nearly the whole page is about male-male dominance hierarchies i.e. only around 50% of the animal kingdom, give or take. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.195.106.44 (talk) 13:31, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * This portion or perhaps the systems portion of the text could also benefit from the introduction of reverse-dominance hierarchies, as seen in Bonobos. This system is one where females band together over males and where males attempting to assert dominance are punished. Further research should be done to understand the concept more clearly, but that is the basics of it. Adding it to the systems portion could be more helpful in the article as it is a different system. Michaelwilso21 (talk) 14:40, 27 January 2017 (UTC)


 * This has been (indirectly) researched a bit albeit only on humans. See Female intrasexual competition. — Srid 🍁 17:09, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Integrating female and male dominance
I'm thinking of combining what is available for the female and male dominance, rather than having a small section for females. The way it reads now, it comes off as if this behavior is only really found in male animals. As more research has become available, much of the sections dedicated exclusively for male has also shown to be prominent behavior in females as well. The section for female dominance will be removed, but the text will be incorporated into the other sections it corresponds to. Lopjor10 (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2019 (UTC)


 * - I'm extremely interested in reading those research! Could you refer me to them? Perhaps I will then be able to contribute to this article. — Srid 🍁 17:10, 30 November 2019 (UTC)


 * - Hi, that would be super helpful, thanks! There was general websites like this:

https://animalogic.ca/wild/the-definitive-directory-of-dominant-females https://www.thedodo.com/grrrl-power-9-badass-females-i-641279883.html https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dominance-hierarchy which summarize much of the more common examples in the wild and is also a good starting point. We can work on particular sections to lighten the load? Lopjor10 (talk) 17:50, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Sigma male section is not supported in other publications
The subsection relating to sigma males is not supported in other works that I can find online. Not only that, it seems to be contested by a considerable number of publications, it provides no sources for the claim that sigma males are a valid classification and is written in a far too colloquial way. Seems to be an attempt to introduce pseudoscience into the article, but I lack the formal training to make that call.

Until it's accepted as a serious bit of science in secondary review articles we must not mention it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Nonverbal Communication - Comm 4153
— Assignment last updated by ChaseWeber17 (talk) 21:14, 27 October 2022 (UTC)