Several comments on my previous post lead me to want to include some references.
1. My views indeed are derived from books by Joseph Henrich and Kevin Laland. I see humans as particularly evolved to learn from one another, and I view prestige hierarchies in that context.
2. The distinction between prestige hierarchy and dominance hierarchy did not originate with me. I think I got it from Henrich, but I believe I also had read Kevin Simler, to whom a commenter linked. Another commenter linked to Scott Alexander’s reply to Simler.
3. I don’t think that prestige requires low-status people to suck up, as Simler implies. As a chess player (I’m not, but let’s pretend), I don’t have to suck up to Magnus Carlsen. But I recognize the reality that he is above me in the hierarchy. If you want to study chess games, you should study his rather than mine.
4. So why do humans express admiration for skilled people? As an example, think of me expressing admiration for my doctor. My motive is not to suck up to the doctor. I want my friends to take advantage of the doctor’s skills. I may think that the doctor deserves more business. I want my friends to value my judgment, and so my incentive to be honest is stronger than if I were just trying to do what Scott A calls coattail riding.
5. I go back to my contention that prestige hierarchies tend to be positive-sum. Yes, you may be jealous of somebody who has more prestige. Yes, you may waste resources trying to acquire signals of prestige. Yes, to the extent that contests to acquire prestige are set up to reward the wrong skills, the outcomes are going to be non-optimal. But that is the crux of the issue. As long as a contest rewards the right skills, then a prestige hierarchy is of great social value.
The link to Alexander is wrong, the correct link is to Slate Star Codex
Thanks for the clarification. This sort of back-and-forth discussion with timely clarifications helps to make this a great blog.
Since I drew attention to the partially correlated phenomenon of “competence,” here’s another thought.
Competence, and in particular reliable competence on demand, tends to be rewarded in the market. Being a competent plumber is economically rewarding but not prestigious. Ditto for skilled nursing. Many mundane craft skills seem to fall into that class of occupations. It would be interesting to see a 2×2 table (matrix?) with income on one axis and prestige on the other.
For what it’s worth, C. Wright Mills was a big fan of making 2×2 tables on the fly to clarify thoughts. It’s in the appendix to his book _The sociological imagination_. Methinks the title of the appendix is “On intellectual craftsmanship.” Hat tip to Deirdre McCloskey for the pointer to C. Wright Mills.
I love the Kevin Simler article and the wonderful information about the Arabian babbler, a social bird species. On self-reflection, I don’t understand why Kevin Simler’s blog somehow missed being added to my RSS feed which is especially frustrating since he seems to be a good source for research I find interesting such as Amotz Zahavi’s.
Before getting to my own criticism/discomfort with the Prestige Hierarchy, let me address Scott Alexander’s criticism. This criticism mostly focuses on Celebrity Fandom which Simler uses as an example of the Prestige Hierarchy and Alexander rightly demonstrates that it does not fit the model well. The problem is not the Prestige Hierarchy model, it is the Celebrity Fandom phenomena which is different. I think Scott Alexander’s list of underlying causes all contribute to the phenomena but he misses what I think is the primary cause. Fans of celebrities and their art is more about self-identity; we become fanatical about things that are exceptional examples of what we value ourselves and therefore express our identity.
In terms of my own criticism/discomfort with the Dominance vs. Prestive model, I feel the same way about it that I do about Milton Friedman’s Shareholder theory: they both are sorely needed advancements over the mainstream narrative they replace/criticize but they both seem to proxies for a deeper truth that gets lost in their narrative. Friedman rightly overthrows the misguided belief that corporations have a responsibility to act like a selfless citizens but his focus on maximizing shareholder value misses the underlying truth; shareholder value is an easy to calculate proxy for customer value which is ultimately the lifeblood of all corporations. Increasing shareholder value at the expense of customer value is a fatal strategy for a corporation and I think Friedman would agree with this view.
I don’t have a clear understanding of the truth underlying the Dominance vs. Prestige model other than the difference between Common Chimp and Bonobo societies captures the difference. Bonobo society is not about prestige. Bonobo’s differ slightly in their feeding behavior and their sexual behavior. Their feeding behavior is more gorilla-like where leaves are the staple of the diet that is supplemented by fruits and, like gorilla society, both males and females stick together in a single group as they feed. Common chimps only eat leaves when no other food sources are available and the males split into separate feeding groups that hunt for animal protein to supplement their fruit diet. It is these hunting groups that also patrol the perimeter of their territory and will attack and kill stray males from neighbouring troops; Demonic Male behavior.
It is wrong to think of the common chimp male hierarchies as pure dominance hierarchies. They are very complex and are internally much more about positive-sum alliances and coordination than about physical rank. And though physical dominance hierarchies still underly the common chimp male hierarchy, the female hierarchy involves more prestige elements.
What makes bonobo society so different is the sexual behavior. Other than us, bonobos are the only example that comes to mind of a species that exhibits sexual behavior rather than simply “mating behavior” and the behavior is primarily driven by the females. Rather than “prestige”, bonobos flip the order of the key variable that ranks members in their society. Rank in most mammal species is Dominance oriented with physical strength/size acting as the simple ranking heuristic. Physical strength/size is still important in bonobo society but it has become secondary to a new form of currency, sexual pleasure.
I think the focus on Prestige Hierarchies is a good proxy for any society that promotes one or more variables other than physical size/strength as a key determinant of rank. Prestige, however, is not the only variable that works this way. This is also true for human societies which passed through stages that were much more dominance oriented, big man societies, chiefdoms, etc., compared to the more egalitarian forager tribes. The Dominance Hierarchy of a Big Man Society was much more positive sum than the more Prestige oriented egalitarian forager tribe. We can’t focus only on our current hierarchy while ignoring the key social organization templates that came before.
While my excessively long post awaits moderation, I forgot to mention what the “Dominance vs Prestige” model replaces, namely, the Reciprocal Altruism model that was popular in Evolutionary Psychology circles.
By conflating prestige with competence you ignore the fact that people want to associate with hierarchy leaders regardless of competence. For example, top actors playing doctors get asked to testify on medical issues in Congress. Or people impressed by boxers will support them irrationally when they run for high office regardelss of their competence.
The prestige needs to be tied to competence. But humans respond to prestige in and of itself and it leads to more dominant hierarchies as mass support whether by elites or the masses leads to more sustainable dominance hierarchies.