Dominance Disputes

Equal social status increases the likelihood of conflict

On the topic of moral taboos, Paul Graham has written:

“I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.”

I read this and thought about status conflicts. People are most likely to challenge another’s attempt at dominance when they feel strong enough to take them on, but weak enough to need to. In other words, when who outranks whom is unclear.

This is true for monkeys.

In his superb 2019 book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, Nicholas Christakis describes a study of 84 macaques at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. The research team identified the leaders in this monkey community. They then removed the highest-ranking monkeys, and observed the resulting interactions. Chaos ensued.

When high-ranking monkeys were “knocked out” (as the scientists called it), conflict and aggression soared. After the leaders were removed, the group had fewer grooming interactions and played less frequently. Social ties disintegrated. “This suggests that stable leadership promotes peaceful interactions not only between leaders and followers,” Christakis writes, “but also between followers and other followers.”

When the monkey leaders were in place, they intervened between status-seekers and regulated social connections. Lower-ranking monkeys knew that if conflict arose, the higher-ranking monkeys would step in. The presence of leaders allowed lower-ranking monkeys to interact with one another without fear of attack. When the leaders were removed, the macaques began jockeying for power, which resulted in mayhem and violence.

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What about for humans?

In the second year of my doctoral program I read an obscure book called Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict by the Yale sociologist, Roger V. Gould. The key idea of the book, which helps to illuminate many different forms of social conflict (including envy and intra-elite competition):