Dominance in humans

Abstract

Dominance captures behavioural patterns found in social hierarchies that arise from agonistic interactions in which some individuals coercively exploit their control over costs and benefits to extract deference from others, often through aggression, threats and/or intimidation. Accumulating evidence points to its importance in humans and its separation from prestige—an alternate avenue to high status in which status arises from information (e.g. knowledge, skill, etc.) or other non-rival goods. In this review, we provide an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of dominance as a concept within evolutionary biology, discuss the challenges of applying it to humans and consider alternative theoretical accounts which assert that dominance is relevant to understanding status in humans. We then review empirical evidence for its continued importance in human groups, including the effects of dominance—independently of prestige—on measurable outcomes such as social influence and reproductive fitness, evidence for specialized dominance psychology, and evidence for gender-specific effects. Finally, because human-specific factors such as norms and coalitions may place bounds on purely coercive status-attainment strategies, we end by considering key situations and contexts that increase the likelihood for dominance status to coexist alongside prestige status within the same individual, including how: (i) institutional power and authority tend to elicit dominance; (ii) dominance-enhancing traits can at times generate benefits for others (prestige); and (iii) certain dominance cues and ethology may lead to mis-attributions of prestige. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies

“…A few cross-cutting themes emerge from the contributions to this theme issue as vibrant areas of ongoing or future progress, supporting the suggestion by Hobson [5] that we may be entering a more cross-disciplinary phase in the study of dominance hierarchies. Many contributions highlight the rapid development of advanced quantitative tools for social network analysis as playing an important role in driving new insight into the structure and function of dominance hierarchies (Tibbetts et al [67] and Dehnen et al [75]), comparative approaches (Strauss et al [22]), theoretical frameworks (Lewis [69], Zeng et al [24] and Strauss & Shizuka [78]) and modelling (Hamilton & Benincasa [76]), the theme issue highlights how research into dominance hierarchies uses the full breadth of tools available to modern biologists.…”

“…[ 22 ]), theoretical frameworks (Lewis [ 69 ], Zeng et al . [ 24 ] and Strauss & Shizuka [ 78 ]) and modelling (Hamilton & Benincasa [ 76 ]), the theme issue highlights how research into dominance hierarchies uses the full breadth of tools available to modern biologists.…”

“…The mathematical foundations for the measurements of hierarchies were also presented around this time by Kendall & Smith [17] and Landau [18,19]. Considerable research has now clearly demonstrated that these dominance hierarchies are a widespread feature of societies occurring broadly across the evolutionary tree ( [20,21]; see also Strauss et al [22] in this theme issue) including humans (see Redhead & Power [23] and Zeng et al [24] in this theme issue).…”

“…Considerable research has now clearly demonstrated that these dominance hierarchies are a widespread feature of societies occurring broadly across the evolutionary tree ([ 20 , 21 ]; see also Strauss et al . [ 22 ] in this theme issue) including humans (see Redhead & Power [ 23 ] and Zeng et al [ 24 ] in this theme issue).…”

“…Given alternative forms of social power in animal systems, it is natural to ask to what extent dominance versus other forms of social power operates in humans. Zeng et al [ 24 ] explore the theoretical challenges to applying dominance frameworks to human societies and describe human-specific forms of social dominance. Mirroring the distinction between dominance and leverage discussed by Lewis [ 69 ], these authors review research on ‘prestige’, which describes asymmetries in cultural information such as knowledge or skill and offers a non-coercive route to social power.…”