Is Alpha Male Myth or Truth, and if it does exist, is it desirable?

… So the common belief among alpha-male theorists is that the males with dominant personalities are desired by women.

Related to interpersonal relationships, specifically cross-gender relationships, there has existed for quite a while this rather popularly accepted ideal called the Alpha-Beta male philosophy. This way of thinking has more or less gained a level of influence in terms of defining how females see males as well as how males see themselves. In this article we will try to use a more scientific approach to scrutinize this idea a little and break it down to find out what is factual and what is not about the mythical creature that is human alpha male.

1. The concept of alpha male in popular culture

Alpha and beta male were originally terms of biology, which had only managed to gain popularity among the academia since around 1950. A search for the term on Google Scholar would point out that between the 1900–1950 only 10 studies mentioned the term “alpha male”, while in the following period of 1950–2000 this number had skyrocketed to a whopping 2520 [1].

In pop culture, alpha male began to gain its popularity thanks to the book The Wolf (David Mech) in 1970 about wolves, and another book called Chimpanzee Politics (Frans de Waal) in 1982 about chimpanzees. Both books portrayed how alpha males in the two said species brute-forced their way up the hierarchy and the pop culture created for itself the concept of human alpha male with the same image in mind.

In pop culture, the term ‘alpha male’ refers to the male individual who rules over others, with that success being credited to the said individual’s natural qualities; while specific qualities can vary across cultures, the quality of dominance always sits in the center of the equation. In order to highlight this quality in alpha males, pop culture also created the concept of beta males as an antithesis of Alpha males. Beta male refers to the men who are spineless and submissive (the opposite of dominance).

These terms are the favorite punchlines for most of the ‘man-up guru’ organizations out there like Alpha Art, Red Pill, Pick Up Artist (PUA), whose philosophy is indeed very clear: alpha-dominant individuals are good role models, beta-submissive individuals are bad role models, so be alpha.

2. But then even in the scientific world where it originated from, the idea was already refuted, and by none other than its coiner.

As we mentioned earlier, what first brought the idea of human alpha male into pop culture was the studies on wolves and chimpanzees dated around 1970–1980. So now we will see what nowadays’ science has to say about the cases of these two species.

About the wolves.

In 1947 Rudolph Schenkel published his research conducted on a captive wolf pack in the zoos of Basel and Zurich. The studies showed that the wolves would start to form packs in early winter, and for some unexplained reason each of the pack would only have one female. The males in the pack would engage in some bloody tooth to nail fights against each other for the right to mate with the female. The final victor would leave the pack along with the female, while the losing wolves will suffer the lack of mate. That is to say, the wolf was a monogamous species, meaning that the male would only mate with one same female, and vice versa, for the entirety of their life [2].

In 1970, after a good number of years of studying captive wolves in various parts of the world, David Mech had a given birth to the book The Wolf where he reported the phenomena similar to those observed by Schenkel, and thus popularized the term alpha male. However, in 1986, Mech found himself the opportunity to research wild wolves in Ellesmere, Canada. He spent 13 summers here from 1986 to 1998, and had thus found out a lot of variation in behavior between wild and captive wolves.

So in 2000, Mech published his studies with the following implications. Wild wolves were monogamous and the packs had the structure of a small family: father, mother and the children. The parent wolves stayed together for life and shared the responsibility as the pack’s leaders, and the lower ranked members were all their children. Once the children wolf reached 1–2 years old, or sometimes 3 years old, they would leave the pack and find themselves a mate in another pack. They would then become another couple of parent wolves and the cycle repeated.

The ranking in a pack was identified by feeding priority: the parent wolves would eat first, and then the children. However, among the children wolves, the cubs, a.k.a. the weakest ones in the pack, were actually the ones to get prioritized; during pregnancy, the father wolf would prioritize the mother wolf by giving her a better portion than himself. And mating priority in the pack was not even a thing because, as found out by the studies, the wolves never inbred.

So the bottom line is, there wouldn’t be any kind of competition among the pack unless the pack did add an outsider wolf and the parent wolf somehow both died; in such case the outsider wolf may attempt to contest for the vacant leader position, but there were so few cases like that happened in the 13 summers of the studies that the possibility felt negligible.

Dominance wasn’t a thing for the wolves either. Because in the pack the parents would be the only skilled hunters, as any of the wolves that had grown strong enough would leave the pack, while the ones remaining in the pack had not. The parent wolves work to feed their family, and even when they shared the food they would prioritized the weaker ones among the children, instead of asserting dominance so they could gain more for themselves [3].

After the publishing of his new research, David Mech tried his best to correct the wrongful idea that was the existence of alpha wolves, because we would never be able to assess the nature of the wolves when they’re held captive; that wouldn’t be any different from trying to assess the nature of humankind by assessing that of prisoners. He had also, for countless times, requested for a suspension of his 1970 book’s publishing as a lot written in that book turned out to be wrong, but the publishers continued to print more of it anyway [4].

About the chimpanzee.

In 2009, a group of researchers published their findings after 10 years of observing the chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. They were looking into how the male chimps worked their way to become the head of the community, and how they retained that position along with the privileges of food and mating attached with it. That is to say, in a lot of mammal species, the males were known to punch their way up to the top.

The research showed that, besides the big, strong males who used violence to gain and maintain dominance, the smaller males could still become the leader by having friendly, supportive gestures toward other chimps. The studies focused on the 3 alpha males that had rule the community from 1989 till 2003, and showed that the strongest, biggest alpha out of the 3 was especially ferocious, he preferred to rule by violence and thus rarely ever had friendly behaviors like grooming others. The smallest alpha, on the other hand, seemed to have the exact opposite strategy for ruling, it would actively go around to groom both the males and females in the community, and thus gain their support. The last one, who were the average-sized among the 3, used a mix of the 2 said strategies [5].

The studies showed that there were a variety of ways in which a male chimpanzee could make his way to the top of the community. There were dominant-alphas who always forced other ones to serve him while rarely served them in return, but then there were also submissive alpha who always served others to get on their good side, and in turns also won some benefit for themselves, and the submissive approach were just as successful as the dominant one the alpha males among the chimps were by no mean the dominators only.

And lastly on how the concept of beta male were actually used.

In biology, beta male is actually the second-in-command to the alpha, who will succeed the alpha if he somehow can no longer maintain the leader position; so, in terms of ranking, the beta male is actually only second to the alpha. Meaning the beta male is entitled to a lot of privilege as well, compared to the rest of the packs. For example, in a baboon troop, the betas can sometimes mate with the females when the alpha allows them to [6].

So the beta male were never an antithesis of the alpha male, in fact it was a nearly-close version of alpha. So the term used by science for the weakest individual, opposite to the alpha, is the omega. Alpha is the first character of the Greek alphabet, and beta is the second; logically the opposite of alpha should instead be the last character in the alphabet, and that role belongs to the omega — and thus science picked it up.

So the pop culture’s using the beta as an antithesis of the alpha most likely stemmed both from the lack of understanding of the original meaning of these terms, as well as from the lack of capacity to coin a better term by themselves.

3. On the social level, this philosophy is actually betraying its purpose.

So the common belief among alpha-male theorists is that the males with dominant personalities are desired by women. And there seems to be no better way to verify this by survey for women’s opinion on the matter in studies.

In 1987, a team of 3 researchers performed an experiment by showing women a description of two different male role models, the dominant one and the submissive one, and asking them which one they find more attractive as a partner. The following descriptions were used.

The dominant John:

“[John is 1m77 tall and weighs 75kg. He has been playing tennis for a year and is taking an intermediate tennis course. Even though not practicing as much, he has become a very capable player, with a 60% win-rate for all the games he played.] He has very powerful services and returns. Apart from his physique, John’s personality also seems to point toward a great tennis career. He can be relentless and ruthless even against more experienced opponents. Everything about him feels dominant and in control. He likes to get to his opponents and cause them to underperform and make mistakes.”

The submissive John (the part in brackets were kept):

“[John is 1m77 tall and weighs 75kg. He has been playing tennis for a year and is taking an intermediate tennis course. Even though not practicing as much, he has become a very capable player, with a 60% win-rate for all the games he played.] He had moderate-force, precise services and returns. Even though he clearly has talents, he plays more for the fun of it than for winning. He is not as competitive and tends to show respect to the more experienced player. He also tends to feel pressured when the opponent is overly forceful. Intimidating opponents may get into him and cause him to underperform. While he loves tennis, he also tends to avoid tense situations in the game.”

The findings of this studies were that out of the 2 abovementioned male role models, the dominant one was rated by the women as more sexually attractive [7]. However, it was soon realized that there were problems with the way this experiment was structured, so in 1999, another team of researchers performed another research with the same descriptions of John.

The 1999 research, the team showed women 3 different descriptions: the dominant John, the submissive John (similar to the ones we showed earlier), and the just-John (the description only consisted of the part in the bracket). The results showed that out of the 3 Johns, the dominant John was 2nd, the submissive John was 3rd, and the just-John was most preferred out of the 3.

The researchers realized that the problem the 1987 research had was that it was navigating the women’s opinion toward a binary choice, so it could certainly be the case that the dominant-John role model was more popularly preferred in that research only because it was the lesser of the 2 evils, not because it was desirable. The findings of the 1999 research had proven just that, as the just-John won by a landslide; because even though less information about it was shown, the just-John had the freedom of not being confined to a certain type of character.

Following that, in order to find out what qualities in men that women truly desired, the researchers added a few more details in the descriptions of the dominant- and submissive-Johns. In the latest personality test, it was learned that dominant John possessed the following 5 notable personality traits of “aggressive, uncompromising, confident, austere, dominant” (5 personality traits normally associated with dominant character type). The submissive John had the 5 traits of “easygoing, quiet, sensitive, shy, submissive” (5 personality traits normally associated with submissive character type). The women were then asked to choose which.

For the dominant male role model, the results showed that only 2% of the women surveyed were willing to pick a man with dominant traits for a date and as a partner in a romantic relationship. The four other traits were ranked in following order based on their pick rate: confident (picked by 72% for dating and by 74% for a partner), uncompromising (48% for dating, 36% for a partner), aggressive (12% for dating and for a partner), austere (0%).

For the submissive male role model, the two overwhelmingly desired personality traits were sensitivity (picked by 76% for both dating and for a partner), easygoingness (68% for dating, 64% for a partner), silence (4% for dating, 2% for a partner), shyness (2% for dating, 0% for partner), submissiveness (0%) [8].

The results gave us the following implications: Firstly, the dominant personality trait ranked only 4th out of 5 personality traits associated with the dominant role model, and it (the dominant trait, which desired by only 2% of the women surveyed) was ranked only above the austere trait (picked by none). It means that having the trait of dominance actually hurt a man’s chance in landing himself a date, because so few women (2%) actually found this trait desirable.

Secondly, the in which women assess a man’s potential as a partner actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the dominance-submissiveness binary value system, because the results showed that each of the 2 role models had 2 particular personality traits that were overwhelmingly desired by women. The 4 desired traits were namely (ordered by level of desirability): sensitivity (76%), confidence (72%), easygoingness (68%), uncompromisingness (48%).

Thirdly, regarding the 4 said desirable traits, I believe that most men would have already heard directly from women in daily life how they adore those traits in any person, because they all seemed to be the very fundamental cornerstone for any wholesome relationships, not necessary in romance alone. It also proved this simple truth: To be attractive to women, you can simply be decent just by the general humankind’s standard for decency.

Another thing worthy of mentioning is that if some of you have seen there were some girls in life loved to partner themselves with some of those dominant-type bad boys, those girls do indeed exist, and it’s been kind of a norm as suggested by statistics. But that group has never really made up the majority among women. What’s more, according to studies, the women who had a past of being abused or an unsecured childhood are often the ones to have preference for dominating male as partner (as well as to exhibit worse hostilities and gender discrimination) [9]. “Women like bad boys” or “Nice guys finish last” were also found to be delusions, which we will seek to debunk in another article, if the circumstances allow.

So, up next, we will tell you why the model that is human alpha male basically doesn’t exist in human society. And there are two main reasons for that.

The first is that the human society is simply too large and specialized. In the case of chimps, they often have around a few tens of individuals in a community, and the set of skills they have is often limited to fighting, helping each other, finding food, and an alpha can become the best at all those 3 skills in his tiny community. But human society extends to millions of people and has such a high level of specialization that no individual can be the best at everything there is to do. Thus it is to be expected that an alpha in this particular group can be an omega when in another group (that’s specialized in another field) in the same day.

Secondly, the extensive specialization of human society has led a lot of individuals to develop into experts in their fields. Once having reached that stage, their condition for happiness in life would no longer be bounded to the concerns like how to feed my mouth as much as possible or how to fuck as many females as possible. They become scientists and thinkers and sometimes all they need for their life is to be left alone to work on their things with just enough daily life convenience so they could continue working.

An inherent mistake of the alpha-beta philosophy is that it tries to frame humankind inside its binary way of thinking and association, it cheapens humans with its default assumption that human existence is all about savage needs, and it lower human society to the level of that of animals, which were the only places where the alpha role model could work. Though perhaps it wasn’t a mistake, if seen from the perspective of those certain groups who are trying to popularize this idea to reap some benefit out of it.

But, nevertheless, working to identify its origin as well the delusions existing within this philosophy is still a necessary step, as it helps us identify which part of it are scientific facts, and which are complete nonsense that was fabricated by pop culture. And with that you can have a clearer evaluation of yourself and the relationships that you have, without being clouded by the interference brought by this philosophy. And last but not least, it helps bring you to this simple truth: Any woman’s image of an ideal partner does not have to be, and in fact will never be, the dominant type. It is something else, much more fundamental and common: A decent man.

While I cannot say with certainty what makes a decent man, I can be so damn sure that the worshipers of the alpha male philosophy, whose every brain cells are invested in scheming easy ways to get into girls’ pants or to dominate people that they consider weak, are not the most decent type.

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References:

[1] “Google Scholar.” Scholar.google.com, scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22alpha+male%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

“Google Scholar.” Scholar.google.com, scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22alpha+male%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0.

[2] Rudolph Schenkel. Expression Studies on Wolves — Rudolph Schenkel, 1947. Internet Archive, 1947, archive.org/details/SchenkelCaptiveWolfStudy.compressed. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

[3] Mech, L David. “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs.” Canadian Journal of Zoology, vol. 77, no. 8, 1 Nov. 1999, pp. 1196–1203, 10.1139/z99–099.

[4] “Wolf News and Information.” Davemech.org, davemech.org/wolf-news-and-information/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

[5] M.W. Foster, I.C. Gilby, C.M. Murray, A. Johnson, E.E. Wroblewski, A.E. Pusey. Alpha male chimpanzee grooming patterns: implications for dominance ‘style’. American Journal of Primatology, 2009; 71 (2): 136 DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20632.

[6] Holmes, Bob. “Why Alpha-Male Baboons Allow Subordinates Sex Treats.” New Scientist, www.newscientist.com/article/dn18366-why-alpha-male-baboons-allow-subordinates-sex-treats/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

[7] Sadalla, Edward K., et al. “Dominance and Heterosexual Attraction.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 52, no. 4, 1987, pp. 730–738, 10.1037/0022–3514.52.4.730.

[8] Burger, Jerry M., and Mica Cosby. “Do Women Prefer Dominant Men? The Case of the Missing Control Condition.” Journal of Research in Personality, vol. 33, no. 3, 1999, pp. 358–368, www.scu.edu/media/college-of-arts-and-sciences/psychology/documents/Burger-Cosby-JRP-1999.pdf, 10.1006/jrpe.1999.2252. Accessed 9 Jan. 2020.

[9] Bohner, Gerd, et al. “How Sexy Are Sexist Men? Women’s Perception of Male Response Profiles in the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory.” Sex Roles, vol. 62, no. 7–8, 25 June 2009, pp. 568–582, 10.1007/s11199–009–9665-x.

Olderbak, Sally G., and Aurelio José Figueredo. “Life History Strategy as a Longitudinal Predictor of Relationship Satisfaction and Dissolution.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 49, no. 3, Aug. 2010, pp. 234–239, 10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.041. Accessed 13 Oct. 2020.

Hall, Jeffrey A., and Melanie Canterberry. “Sexism and Assertive Courtship Strategies.” Sex Roles, vol. 65, no. 11–12, 20 Aug. 2011, pp. 840–853, 10.1007/s11199–011–0045-y. Accessed 19 Apr. 2020.