Why there are no more alpha males | Richard Wrangham | The goodness paradox

Wasn't the myth of "Alpha male" debunked by David Mech the researcher that coined it?

Mr Wrangham should visit Jamaica, where I live, if he thinks aggression has been largely bred out of human populations.

Jocko wilink certainly missed this developmental stage of our past.

The ‘alpha male’ concept was derived originally from studies on wolf-packs which turned out to have reached completely false conclusions. In other words, the concept of alpha human males is hokum.

My father is a violent man, despised by everyone in the family, there’s not one of his 4 sons who gets along with him. He was aggressive & even physically abusive with his 3 wives. Having such an individual around makes me intuit that this hypothesis is true. As long as the groups are small & they have violent clashes with other groups, then members have no choice but to sit under the shadow of an aggressive individual. But when groups get bigger and tool making comes into the picture, their strength shifts from individual might to collective collaboration. Within these new circumstances, having an aggressive individual in the group isn’t something that needs to be endured or tolerated anymore. I’ve heard researchers mention that judging by the human skeletal remains we can see a significant reduction in testosterone, something happening throughout thousands & thousands of years but still fairly abruptly given evolutionary time, and their explanation was that as the groups of humans got larger they could now easily overpower the aggressive individuals. Given my experience I totally understand why our ancestors would kill any irate tribe members.

Im french and i am choke by all imprecision of this presentation, it's permissive and biased

This is a key factor in evolutionary psychology: Selection (natural or enforced) can bring about differences in physical AND mental characteristics. While the discussion here mentions long time scales (300K), we can see from the fox experiment that these changes can be significantly shorter. One evolutionary pressure on humans apparently came from the process of civilization and culture, which changed the ground rules of the evolutionary game. This steered us away from our other great ape relatives. Under these observations, it would be irrational not to assume that different environments over generations would enhance different survival strategies and skills in different populations. [maybe Nietzsche had a good point]

I thought every financial services dude in a designer suit and driving an expensive car considered himself an alpha male nowadays!

Alpha males exist in primate communities, and various other species. However, the idea of an alpha male human ignores the fact that humans are much more subtle and complex, then other species.

Hi T I o A & I, it is now many years since I first heard the expression 'Alpha male', it was clearly in the context of descriptions relating to the strange behaviour of some chimpanzees where characteristics of aggressive domination were observed, further study indicated that this is quite common in the relatively small social groups of these animals and in typical anthropocentric style such behaviour was soon attached to humans. At no time was any proper investigation of the animals conducted to find real biological mechanisms that demonstrate cause and effect in any scientific manner. Instead all sorts of speculations erupted in the public domain and weird random assertion and generalisations sprouted all around. The attempts I have made to identify something of the sort in my own attitudes and behaviour indicate that generally I am not what one would call subservient or compliant, from a very early age I show a great reluctance to simply do as I am told!, but by very much the same token I am not at all keen on issuing orders and expecting obedience!, this means that as far as I can see that alphabetical classification is derelict, just another common cognitive delusion, just a myth, one of so many that abound in our culture because beliefs are so much easier than reason. Cheers, Richard.

Not sure how this is different from phrenology. Not sure why elephant is not considered aggressive.

This is a lot to unpack. I'm not sure how maleness, reactive aggression and the concept of an alpha all got mixed together. To me, the important question here is that of leadership. What kind of alpha (leader) is successful? The domestication argument seems to run counter to this. Are people being selected for alpha tendencies, or for their domesticity? It doesn't seem right that we should all be sheep, and there should be no shepherds. Also, most people are an alpha at some point in their lives, in some capacity. We should probably be learning leadership instead of blaming our failure to do so up to evolution. People without alpha tendencies may be good slaves, but they're not good citizens.

Aggressive behavior is now carried out by em waves.

I thought Bonobos did not fight or express dominance. comments?

You dont share the whole video? Okay then, I unsubscribed.

Can't believe he opened with the fox domestication study - this was discredited years ago. Can't be bothered watching any more when someone starts with a study that's been debunked.

Did humans self-domesticate? Leave your thoughts in the comments. To watch the full talk, head to iai.tv/video/the-goodness-paradox-richard-wrangham…

Humans are my favorite hypergamous species.

So as we get less aggressive, our brains get smaller (or vice-versa)? That's a scary thought. Cian we deduce, then, that more aggressive individuals are more intelligent (and/or vice-versa)?

We need aggressive alpha males to offset the passive beta males.