Scientific evidence for humans having Alpha males?

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Aspie1
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04 Dec 2016, 10:27 am

Alliekit wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Translation of YippySkippy's post: me, Aspie1, Outrider, Amaltheia, goldfish and every male here who is trying to either providing evidences or coming up with a theory are all losers and trying to "to avoid recognizing personal failings" (in dating).
To be fair though there is little scientific evidence supporting the claim
That's because no scientist wants to go near the this topic, when it comes to scientific research. It's too controversial. Female scientists don't want to study it, because some parts of it make women look bad; not a good thing in the time we're trying to push more women into STEM fields. Male scientists don't want to study it, let alone publish the results, because they'll be accused of Miss Sodgy Knee [sic] and be blacklisted among their colleagues. And both men and women don't want to study it, because it clinches the fact that we humans are rotten species, despite lying to ourselves that we aren't. Heck, when it comes to gender relations, even wolves who kill cute little bunny rabbits are better than us.

So in the end, we won't admit to this research showing us what we are as humans, so we can own it and adapt to it as a society. Namely, for women to understand why they're attracted to men who abuse them (alpha male power), for men to understand why they keep going for 20-year-olds even at age 50 (reproductive success), and for both to change their behaviors for the better. Instead, this valuable research remains hidden away in underground online forums, where it doesn't get much respect outside their subscribers, and the status quo continues.



Alliekit
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04 Dec 2016, 10:33 am

Aspie1 wrote:
Alliekit wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Translation of YippySkippy's post: me, Aspie1, Outrider, Amaltheia, goldfish and every male here who is trying to either providing evidences or coming up with a theory are all losers and trying to "to avoid recognizing personal failings" (in dating).
To be fair though there is little scientific evidence supporting the claim
That's because no scientist wants to go near the this topic, when it comes to scientific research. It's too controversial. Female scientists don't want to study it, because some parts of it make women look bad; not a good thing in the time we're trying to push more women into STEM fields. Male scientists don't want to study it, let alone publish the results, because they'll be accused of Miss Sodgy Knee [sic] and be blacklisted among their colleagues. And both men and women don't want to study it, because it clinches the fact that we humans are rotten species, despite lying to ourselves that we aren't. Heck, when it comes to gender relations, even wolves who kill cute little bunny rabbits are better than us.

So in the end, we won't admit to this research showing us what we are as humans, so we can own it and adapt to it as a society. Namely, for women to understand why they're attracted to men who abuse them (alpha male power), for men to understand why they keep going for 20-year-olds even at age 50 (reproductive success), and for both to change their behaviors for the better. Instead, this valuable research remains hidden away in underground online forums, where it doesn't get much respect outside their subscribers, and the status quo continues.


How would it make women look bad when there would be alphas in both genders?



Aspie1
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04 Dec 2016, 11:03 am

Alliekit wrote:
How would it make women look bad when there would be alphas in both genders?
There is no female counterpart of the alpha/beta male divide. In most mammals, humans including, all females have a more-or-less equal chance of finding a reproductive partner; males do not. And if you look at talk shows, with men having children with multiple women, and women agreeing to polyamory arrangements, it only confirms the theory.

There may be a social divide in women. Terms used are "queen bee" and "wanna be", among others, to identify their social rank in all-female groups. It's a mammalian function, equivalent to emotions, rather than a reptilian one, like finding a sex partner. It's the reason why approaching groups of women is a lost cause: the group's "queen bee" will fight like a mother bear to keep beta males (who are 80% of men) from getting anywhere near her group. But this overlaps with sociology, and is outside the scope of the alpha/beta divide in men.

Social divides in men exist too, also operating on a mammalian level. Most all-male groups do have an informal leader of sorts, that subtly leads the rest of the group, with others agreeing to his decisions. Low-ranking group members aren't always abused outright, but their needs often get ignored, like when us aspies get stuck with bad friends. This is most blatantly evident in prisons, where everyone regresses to their animal instincts. High-ranking inmates call all the shots, and low-ranking inmates are... well, let's just say it's a violating experience.



NorthWind
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04 Dec 2016, 12:06 pm

Aspie1 wrote:
The one man/one woman pairing is a social construct, pushed down on people since ancient civilizations. This arrangement persisted all the way until 1960's to 1970's, at least in the Western world. That's where society changed more over 30 years than it did over 3000 years prior. Modern divorce laws, combined with the rise of polyamory, further enabled the breakdown of pair-bonding. So the long-buried propensity to seek out alpha males in women, and to spread their seed far and wide in men, are now bubbling to the surface like a geyser. And here we are today.


That it is a social construct doesn't necessarily make it unnatural for humans. We are by far not the only species who change mating strategies depending on circumstances. Only, in humans culture is a mayor contributing factor whereas other animals only change mating strategies based on environmental conditions, population densities, male/female-ratios etc.
If the only natural thing for men was to try to impregnate as many women as possible men wouldn't be able to fall in love as (this kind of) love would be an evolutionary useless emotion for them.
Under certain harsh conditions monogamy would also be of advantage to alpha males because you didn't successfully pas your genes on only because you got a woman pregnant the child also needs to survive and under some circumstances this is easier if there's a father around.

Aspie1 wrote:
Also, all men want to be alphas, even though the alpha/beta divide is hard-coded into a man's DNA. (There's no equivalent genetic divide in women, although there's a milder social divide.)

Do you have any evidence that it's hard coded in the DNA? And if it's hard coded in the DNA but only men have it and women don't does that mean it is on the Y chromosome or do you think the gene(s) just doesn't have any effect on women?
I don't doubt that genetics have a big influence on to how many women a man is appealing but I highly doubt that there is a strict divide and that it is purely genetic.

Amaltheia wrote:
If alpha males have greater mating success, then every male alive today is likely descended from a long line of alpha males.
If being an alpha is in the genes, then every male alive today has the genes to be an alpha.
So, the question should be: is there scientific evidence of humans having beta males?

This is true if being alpha or beta is hard coded in the DNA like Aspie1 says on one or very few genes (and if it's on many many genes a strict divide is difficult). Without it being hard coded on one or few genes it'd just be like in every species where only few males have most of the reproductive success (red deer for example). There continues to be variance in the male population and a few males continue to have most of the reproductive success.
I also highly doubt that there's one alpha male gene because then this gene would need to have a huge influence on body size, physical appearance, health, confidence, different personality traits and so on when other genes are already proven to strongly influence these traits.

Amaltheia wrote:
A hypothesis that occurs to me to get around this problem is: a male's status as an alpha or beta or whatever comes from their maternal genes, so the mating success of alpha males is irrelevant. Those alpha males that reproduce with females with the alpha male gene will produce alpha males, those alpha males that reproduce with females with beta male genes will produce beta males, and so on.

Females don't have genes that males don't have. It coming from their maternal genes would mean it's on the mitochondrial genes (not likely) or on genes that are silenced in sperm or on the X-chromosome and then it would get relevant again in the next generation as the alpha males also have more daughters and not just more sons and they would pass on the non-silenced version of the gene or the X-chromosomal genes.


Amaltheia wrote:
This would work if the gene is located on the X chromosome and the beta male gene is recessive. Since females have two X chromosomes, a beta-male gene on one X chromosome would be masked by an alpha-male gene on the other. Males only have one X chromosome, so if they happen to get a beta-male gene on their X chromosome — and all males get their X chromosome from their mother — they end up being beta males. That would explain the continued existence of beta males, despite the greater mating success of alpha males. Presumably females with two beta male genes would be beta females and have poor mating success, but that would effect only one in four females, and the beta male gene would survive in their mixed gene sisters.

Aspie1 claims this alpha male gene only has an influence on males and not on females, so no genetically beta females according to him.
Either way, the alpha males would have more daughters than the beta males. Their daughters would have one or two alpha male genes. Those daughters would again be more likely to mate with alpha males and then produce 50% or 100% alpha male sons and 50% or 100% homozygous alpha male gene daughters (depending on if the mothers are alpha/alpha or alpha/beta). Beta would get more rare, how fast would depend on how much more successful alphas are and with what ration you start.
Even if the beta gene wouldn't be lost immediately Aspie1's 20%alpha 80%beta divide wouldn't be possible like that.

Amaltheia wrote:
So, the question becomes: where are these genes determining a male's Greek-letter status located? Has anyone actually identified them and determined on which chromosome they exist?

Probably not because the 20%/80% divide doesn't make sense if alpha/beta status is encoded on one gene and if it's not on one gene the strict divide doesn't make sense as one could have some alpha and some beta genes - unless you are only alpha if you have all alpha genes e.g. if these genes work in the same enzymatic pathways, so one missing -> whole pathway ruined. Even so it'd be difficult for a few genes to influence all characteristics an alpha needs when some are proven to be influenced by genes that have the same effect in women and men and do not work in the same enzymatic pathway - thus no strict divide.
If the alpha/beta genes are enormously many they are not specific alpha/beta genes but merely genes that happen to influence body height or immune system or anything else they influence in both women and in men. They might just have a higher influence on male mating success then because women are far more limited in how many offsprings they can produce which caused evolution of different behaviour of males and females when it comes to mating in most mammalian species.

I think all evidence there really is points towards alpha/beta status not being a strict 20%/80% thing and towards it depending on many genes as well as other factors. This doesn't mean that every male could be an alpha male but that there are males who can change what they are (just like in every mammalian species that has one sort of alpha males or another - and what humans have isn't exactly the same kind of alpha males as in any other species I merely agree that there are men with more personal success and mating success than others and if you want to call them alpha males this is as good as any other term)



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04 Dec 2016, 12:34 pm

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Do you have any evidence that it's hard coded in the DNA?


The short answer is that Aspie1 has no evidence for anything he's saying. He said so himself a couple posts back.



Aspie1
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04 Dec 2016, 12:44 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
The short answer is that Aspie1 has no evidence for anything he's saying. He said so himself a couple posts back.
There is evidence, only it's not available through any mainstream channels. Perhaps I phrased it wrong earlier. The reality is, mainstream scientists are afraid to say the "wrong" things, because the truth is not politically correct. Kind of like it's "wrong" to say that Middle Eastern refugees are becoming a burden on Germany and Sweden. (Also other countries, but most refuges prefer those two.) So when scientists do study the human sexual selection process, their findings get relegated to PUA-type forums, where they don't garner much respect from the society at large.



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04 Dec 2016, 1:13 pm

Wow Northwind, I am impressed :lol: -you remind me of Quora users who post very serious and long posts such as this.

One part of your post rings a bell:
I recall there was a paper claiming that good-looking couples are more likely to have daughters than sons by 30% - and as a result women are becoming more beautiful while men are getting uglier over the generations
I don't remember why exactly but I think it was related to the frequency of having sex and attractive people tend to have more sex (if I recall right X sperma live longer in the womb).



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04 Dec 2016, 8:27 pm

underwater wrote:
I usually don't post much in L&D, but I came across this article on a topic that keeps cropping up here:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/bra ... nald-trump

Does there actually exist any scientific evidence that alpha males/females exist in human society, the way it manifests in the animal kingdom?

I keep seeing people referring to alpha/beta males, but I keep thinking the world is a lot more complex than that - and that a lot of men - both autistic and NT - misinterpret women's behaviour because most women are extremely good at pretending to like someone they are scared of.

Secondly, if there are alpha males, where are the alpha females? In the animal kingdom these form pairs. Is that so in human society?


Alpha males and females do in fact, exist. They often have higher testosterone, higher rates of reproduction, low rates of disability and disease, good social skills, athletic prowess, sexual prowess, etc. Strong jaws in both the men and the women are indicators of alpha-ism.

There are alpha, beta, gamma, and omega males and females. Alpha males would be your Donald Trumps, Brad Pitts, etc, Omegas would be Chris Chan, or the homeless guy begging for change on the street.



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05 Dec 2016, 2:06 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Wow Northwind, I am impressed :lol: -you remind me of Quora users who post very serious and long posts such as this.

One part of your post rings a bell:
I recall there was a paper claiming that good-looking couples are more likely to have daughters than sons by 30% - and as a result women are becoming more beautiful while men are getting uglier over the generations
I don't remember why exactly but I think it was related to the frequency of having sex and attractive people tend to have more sex (if I recall right X sperma live longer in the womb).


How does men becoming uglier make sense though. If attractive people (including men) are the ones that have the most sex, then doesn't that mean that people of both genders should be becoming more attractive?

I do recall reading somewhere that people are becoming both more attractive and smarter though, because people tend to choose partners that are both attractive and intelligent (and/or highly educated).



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06 Dec 2016, 3:24 am

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
One part of your post rings a bell:
I recall there was a paper claiming that good-looking couples are more likely to have daughters than sons by 30% - and as a result women are becoming more beautiful while men are getting uglier over the generations
I don't remember why exactly but I think it was related to the frequency of having sex and attractive people tend to have more sex (if I recall right X sperma live longer in the womb).

That's quite interesting.
I've not heard of this particular effect but I've heard that X-sperm lives longer, Y-sperm swims faster and male embryos die more often due to recessive X-chromosomal mutations. That when and how much sex a couple has influences their chances of having a male or a female child (even if they don't try to influence it) thus sounds plausible.

Jono wrote:
How does men becoming uglier make sense though. If attractive people (including men) are the ones that have the most sex, then doesn't that mean that people of both genders should be becoming more attractive?


Everywhere where proper contraceptives are available amount of sex doesn't necessarily have a direct impact on number of children.
Without contraceptives it'd probably also only have a huge impact if unattractive couples had very little sex but having sex every day would probably not make a pregnancy much more likely compared to three times a month but shortly before or shortly after ovulation. The more daughters in attractive couples effect would at least cause an imbalance in the number of attractive males and attractive females in each generation.
But yes, attractive males probably have easier access to one night stands and can more easily cheat on their wife and people are not always careful not to accidentally produce a baby. Thus if attractive males are overall more likely to have a lot of children humans as a whole would probably become more attractive.

How much impact which of these things has on human populations would depend on society and circumstances. I don't think the women getting more attractive and men not would take place everywhere at every time.
(Well, actually I wouldn't know anything about this particular paper. I've not read it after all.)

Jono wrote:
I do recall reading somewhere that people are becoming both more attractive and smarter though, because people tend to choose partners that are both attractive and intelligent (and/or highly educated).


Yes, but intelligent women don't tend to have more children than the rest of them. Higher education usually means starting to have babies later and for women time is a limiting factor. Some might also choose not to have children or to only have one child because they want to focus on their career.
However, I think I've read somewhere that successful men indeed have more children because they can more easily get women. Quite a few start a new family once the children of their first wife are grown up and they get more chances to cheat on their wife.



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06 Dec 2016, 3:54 am

Aspie1 wrote:
YippySkippy wrote:
The short answer is that Aspie1 has no evidence for anything he's saying. He said so himself a couple posts back.
There is evidence, only it's not available through any mainstream channels. Perhaps I phrased it wrong earlier. The reality is, mainstream scientists are afraid to say the "wrong" things, because the truth is not politically correct. Kind of like it's "wrong" to say that Middle Eastern refugees are becoming a burden on Germany and Sweden. (Also other countries, but most refuges prefer those two.) So when scientists do study the human sexual selection process, their findings get relegated to PUA-type forums, where they don't garner much respect from the society at large.


Okay, so you say mainstream science doesn't have any evidence for the hypothesis you support due to the reasons you listed. You still need to have a reason to believe these things or is it just because someone on a PUA-type forum said so and you believe everything they say. You haven't yet named any reason why you think humans have a strict genetic 20%/80% divide into alpha and beta males except for PUA forum say so.

Scientist usually research things where they think they have a chance of getting interesting results. Without anything that points towards the existence of an alpha-male-gene the reason why they don't do any research on it might simply be because there are reasons why it likely doesn't exist and without reasons for it's existence they would waste time on something that almost certainly doesn't get them any publication.

I'd agree that scientific studies about politically sensitive topics need to be treated with caution because they are sometimes designed to produce the wanted result - and thus something about their design or the interpretation of the results is faulty.
Yet, human sexual selection process isn't that an extremely sensitive topic. Of course it's a topic that could be influenced by what scientists want to find out but overall they do research on it and it's not all badly done research.

One thing that comes to my mind right now is that women are subconsciously influenced by smell in their partner choice (no not the obvious if someone stinks you won't have sex with him kind of smell). Some part of people's smell correlates with their MHC-complex (important for the immune system) and women tend to choose men whose MHC is somewhat similar to their own but not extremely similar. This increases the odds that the children have a good immune system.
The thing is, this predisposes women to choosing men of their own race. If someone wanted to they could conclude that women are racist (sexual preferences are actually not racism). Of course women choose due to many different traits not just due to a man's immune system and how important which one is can vary from woman to woman. Thus interracial couples are of course possible.



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06 Dec 2016, 4:15 am

Aspie1 wrote:
There is no female counterpart of the alpha/beta male divide.

Females in a number of species, including humans, form clear hierarchies, just like males do. These hierarchies are generally independent of the male ones, so you have both alpha males and alpha females.

Among the great apes – chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas — the female hierarchy has a greater impact on reproductive success than the male hierarchy. As I pointed out earlier: alpha, beta and gamma males tend to have about equal mating success. But, alpha females get more help in raising their offspring from the other females in the troop, beta females get slightly less help, and so on down the chain, until those females at the bottom of the hierarchy get no help or are actively rejected by the other females. As a consequence, the offspring of high ranking females have a much higher survival rate than those of low ranking females.

If anything, the hierarchy among females is much more important for reproductive success than the hierarchy among males. Females are often much nastier and more vicious in establishing and maintaining their place in the hierarchy, and status is much more strongly enforced. Comparatively, males are generally quite easy going about the whole thing.

Human females seem to follow the same pattern, though to a lesser degree. Of course, modern medicine and technology means that raising offspring without the support of other females is no longer quite as dangerous as it used to be.

Humans have a predisposition to form hierarchies. Put a group of young males together and they will sort themselves into a hierarchy, with the one who ends up at the top obviously being the alpha. What's interesting is, if you take the alphas from a several different groups and the put them all together into a new group, they sort themselves into a new hierarchy, filling all the standard positions in that hierarchy. Who fills which niche in the hierarchy seems to be as much a matter of chance as of personality, though things like height have an influence.



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06 Dec 2016, 4:17 am

goldfish21 wrote:
Amaltheia: That's the best comic I've ever seen posted on here. 8)

Thank you. I like it. I was seriously thinking of using it as my avatar, but I went with Bast instead.



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06 Dec 2016, 1:06 pm

Quote:
One thing that comes to my mind right now is that women are subconsciously influenced by smell in their partner choice (no not the obvious if someone stinks you won't have sex with him kind of smell). Some part of people's smell correlates with their MHC-complex (important for the immune system) and women tend to choose men whose MHC is somewhat similar to their own but not extremely similar. This increases the odds that the children have a good immune system.
The thing is, this predisposes women to choosing men of their own race. If someone wanted to they could conclude that women are racist (sexual preferences are actually not racism). Of course women choose due to many different traits not just due to a man's immune system and how important which one is can vary from woman to woman. Thus interracial couples are of course possible.


It would be interesting to study whether men who prefer to date outside their race tend to wear more cologne, deodorant, etc. than other men. If so, it might indicate that they are reacting on some level to women's preferences, and masking their natural scent.



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06 Dec 2016, 2:19 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Wow Northwind, I am impressed :lol: -you remind me of Quora users who post very serious and long posts such as this.

One part of your post rings a bell:
I recall there was a paper claiming that good-looking couples are more likely to have daughters than sons by 30% - and as a result women are becoming more beautiful while men are getting uglier over the generations
I don't remember why exactly but I think it was related to the frequency of having sex and attractive people tend to have more sex (if I recall right X sperma live longer in the womb).


Would love to see the paper if you have it :)

It would be interesting because that goes against accepted birth gender ratio. Boys are more commonly born than females due to female fetuses being more likely to be aborted by the body.

XX sperm are a minuscule amount larger due to increased genetic information. However there is no proven survival difference between the sperm

In fact there is one study that suggested more males were born because in vitro Y sperm are more function and live longer
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract



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07 Dec 2016, 3:28 am

NorthWind wrote:
Jono wrote:
I do recall reading somewhere that people are becoming both more attractive and smarter though, because people tend to choose partners that are both attractive and intelligent (and/or highly educated).


Yes, but intelligent women don't tend to have more children than the rest of them. Higher education usually means starting to have babies later and for women time is a limiting factor. Some might also choose not to have children or to only have one child because they want to focus on their career.
However, I think I've read somewhere that successful men indeed have more children because they can more easily get women. Quite a few start a new family once the children of their first wife are grown up and they get more chances to cheat on their wife.


The thing is, even if intelligent and successful women have children later (in my experience, it's mostly in their late 20's or early 30's), most men who are highly educated are more likely to choose them as a long term partner than someone who is uneducated. Besides, successful offspring doesn't always mean having the most children because to pass on your genes successfully, those children have to be able to survive long enough to have children of their own. In modern society, uneducated and homeless people might have more children but mostly they also end up homeless and some might even starve to death. Highly educated people, men and women, might choose to have fewer children but on average they are much more likely to become educated themselves and start families of their own.

Also, it's not always the case that women who want to focus on their career can't also have a child. I know at least one who's husband focuses more on care-taking by being a semi stay at home dad (he still does work).