It seems clear in all your replies here that you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’, and as a somewhat relative term (like, my boss is an alpha to me, and a beta to their boss). Given your definition, of course it’s obvious that it apples to many facets of human society. Leaders and followers are all around us.
But in popular discourse there’s also a sense of ‘alphas’ getting into their position by violence or assholery that I think your definition is missing.
Even in scientific discourse, there is the idea that ‘alphas’ must gain their position by dominance - not by other methods (prestige, age, etc).
People use words in different ways, so in a way your definition is as good as any other, but (as with anything language related) you can’t really insist on it if others think it means something different and you want to have reasonable conversations with them (ironically, insisting on your definition seems like an attempt to assert dominance).
Edit: removed some snark, sorry. But I’ll also add: the article uses the scientific usage I mentioned above: wild real wolf pack ‘leaders’ aren’t ‘alphas’ because they don’t maintain their position by dominating the other wolves.
The claim that "alpha" is defined as requiring violence or assholery is incorrect, and this is backed by scientific studies, dictionary definitions, and leadership psychology research. Here’s why:
1. Official Dictionary Definitions
Oxford English Dictionary (OED):
Alpha (in social contexts):
"A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Oxford English Dictionary - Alpha Definition
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Alpha (as in 'Alpha Male/Female'):
"The most dominant, powerful, or assertive person in a particular group."
Merriam-Webster - Alpha Definition
Nowhere in these definitions does it state that an alpha must use violence or aggression to gain dominance.
2. Scientific Studies on Leadership & Alpha Behavior
Study: Dominance Hierarchies in Social Animals
Dugatkin, L. A. (1997). "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies." Behavioral Ecology, 8(5), 583-587.
"Dominance hierarchies in animal and human groups are often established through social signaling, resource control, and cooperation rather than brute force."
Dugatkin, 1997
Study: Leadership Without Aggression in the Animal Kingdom
Smith, J. E. et al. (2016). "Obligate Sociality Without Cooperation: Insights From Other Taxa." Behavioral Ecology, 27(1), 1-14.
"Alphas are often those who exhibit superior social intelligence, cooperation, and decision-making ability rather than reliance on aggressive behaviors."
Smith et al., 2016
These studies explicitly state that alphas do NOT require violence to gain or maintain their status.
3. Leadership Psychology: Alphas Lead Without Coercion
Goleman, D. (1995). "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." Bantam Books.
"True leaders, or ‘alphas’ in human social dynamics, are those who possess high emotional intelligence, resilience, and ability to influence without coercion."
Goleman, 1995
Bass, B. M. (1990). "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision." Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.
"Successful leadership is based on vision, respect, and strategy. Coercion and force are indicative of weak leadership rather than true dominance."
Bass, 1990
These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
4. Debunking the Claim That "Alpha" = Violence
L. David Mech (1999). "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs."
"The term 'alpha' is often misunderstood. In both animals and humans, successful leadership is based on intelligence, decision-making ability, and social bonding—not brute force."
Mech, 1999
This refutes the claim that alpha = inherently violent.
Final Conclusion: The Definition of "Alpha" Does NOT Require Violence
Dictionaries define "alpha" as dominance through leadership, not necessarily aggression.
Scientific studies show that dominance in social animals is often achieved through cooperation and intelligence.
Leadership psychology research confirms that true human "alphas" lead through respect and influence, not assholery.
The idea that "alpha" = "violent dictator" is a pop culture myth, not backed by science or formal definitions.
> These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
No? Look:
Your Merriam-Webster quote (although I can't find it online)
"the most dominant, powerful, or assertive person"
That's not becoming a leader by being helpful and getting people's trust.
It's instead dominance and assertiveness, that's something else.
I think you mistakenly what to have the word "alpha" mean the same thing as "leader". But I think that's not how people in general look at these words.
I just checked your #2 Dugatkin. I am only able to access the abstract [0] (though interested in the full article as you appear to be quoting from part of it which is not publicly available).
It does not at all represent itself as even taking a specific side on the meaning of "alpha" let alone testify to an academic consensus of any decisive proof one way or the other. It doesn't even have anything to do with the study itself at all.
The line you quoted seems more like an aside. The study was apparently about a simulated game theoretic model, and even refers to the units in the simulation as "combatants". It is an attempt to model and simulate "winner effects" and "loser effects" in tandem over time. It's mostly interested in contrasting this approach with models that only deal with "winner effects" or "loser effects" but not their simultaneous dynamics.
It ends with a modest expression of hope to spur future similar studies and is not even pretending to venture anything like a final definition of "alpha", let alone represent the full weight of academic consensus on that question. Citing it for that purpose feels like drive-by quote mining.
Dugatkin, "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies" was an interesting read this morning. Thanks for the reference.
The main thing I take away from the paper is that (in computer simulations) bigger winner effects and bigger loser effects lead to strongly defined hierarchies. Fewer subjects have ambiguous positions.
I'm not sure the paper speaks much to which strategies (e.g. violence vs cooperation) are more common or effective.
Right, it seems to entirely abstract away the nature of the interactions themselves, and is modeling how changes to position in hierarchy unfold over time with repeated wins or losses. It's not speaking to the nature of the interaction itself, and so not really taking sides on whether it does or doesn't involve such things as force, toughness, etc.
Violence is an effective strategy. One of many. It's not stable but it has been used successfully in human history. The thing is you can't have a society that's constantly violent all the time forever and ever. Those tend to self select via natural selection.
You can have societies be temporarily violent like how Americans slaughtered and killed Native Americans and took over the continent. The formation of the USA comes from this type of effective violence. Who would be the alphas in this case? the native americans? Or the ones that invaded? I know I'm a bit on the nose here, but this is just reality.
Violence is like a key on a piano. You were born with it. You can choose not to play that note, but it is always there, it is never not there.
You can choose to play great melodies without the violence note. You can choose to play melodies with the violence note. You can be forced in a corner and have no option but to hammer the violence key until the strings scream.
> Official Dictionary Definitions Oxford English Dictionary (OED): Alpha (in social contexts): "A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Do you have a link for this definition? I'm unable to find it or the one you attribute to Merriam-Webster on their websites.
(Their websites are shit. I'm curious about the dates around those definitions.)
I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stands. There are ample examples in nature of dominance hierarchies, even if wolves aren't one of them.
Of course, as you note, looking to these examples as a basis for a personal ethos for tough guy psychology is error riddled in so many ways you could write a book unpacking it all. (E.g. why choose other animals remote from the lineage of apes to which we belong, why for that matter not just study humans in the first place, why hitch any ethos to what happens in nature, why not look at what it says about people who seem to need to indulge in this search, etc.)
It's good to show that this argument fails on its own terms with its own chosen example, but getting into that kind of back and forth risks implicitly agreeing that it would be right to think that way, should such an example be found in nature. And those examples do exist in nature even if not necessarily with wolves.
But as you noted that doesn't have anything to do with better or worse, right or wrong, and is completely lacking in self-awareness about the actual psychological dynamics that causes people to need these kinds of narratives.
> first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas
Better ones are chickens and horses. (Females, I believe, in both cases.)
Gorillas have a variety of social structures, only one which involves the Silverback fighting for dominance [1]. With lions, meanwhile, the females eat first [2].
> are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders?
Leaders, yes. Hotheads, no. The “alpha” hypothesis states that the most aggressive rises to the top.
Of course. Nobody argued aggression isn’t effective. The argument is it isn’t the effective strategy, just one among many.
> See here on what an alpha is
You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
> Also for chickens, I've raised chickens
Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
As your sources show, that isn’t necessary for leadership.
>You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
I cited two dictionaries as well.
>Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
Analogies were never part of the equation. You know they weren't. You were talking about animals explicitly not animals as an analogy. I feel you're trolling.
Those are point-in-time snapshots. The Wikipedia article expands on the term's etymology [1].
(If you can provide links to those definitions I'll help look up when they were adopted. I couldn't find the definition you quoted on Webster's website [2], for example.)
> Analogies were never part of the equation
The term is an analogy. That's the point. There was a term in animal ethology that was popularised to the point it entered mainstream use. Synonymising alpha to leadership, moreover, is even more recent and mostly occuring in American English (and now, with partisan flair).
The thing is that when someone has to work hard to seem Alpha they are instead revealing their insecurity--the need to compensate to hide vulnerability.
Some people play into that game, others see through it.
Alphas are just leaders. Whether they have vulnerabilities is orthogonal to the fact that they control and lead the pack. Whether it’s through force or pay.
Do you have a good boss that you like who’s a good person? He’s an alpha. You’re a beta if you’re under him. Do you have a boss who’s an ass hole who got pegged and raped by his uncle when he was a kid and now he’s taking all that pent up humiliation on you? Yeah he has a big vulnerability. But. He. Is. Still. An. Alpha.
It’s not a game. Games are for friend groups and kids. I’m talking about the economic engine that builds civilization itself. That engine is made up of a hierarchy of alphas and betas.
(Dominance-related) insecurity is being pathologically averse to being seen as weak, which leads to preferring dominance as form over dominance as function. If the meek hippie gets everything he wants from his wife, his neighbors, his peers, etc., and the physically impressive traditional man is ignored and rejected, then the hippie is more dominant (i.e., leading and getting what he wants) than the traditional man (even if he is abusing his wife the whole time she laughs at him).
The actually effective strategies are available to the insecure but shunned and rejected because they cannot be tolerated, creating a self-imposed impotence.
The word alpha, in almost every context I've observed, is used exclusively to refer to such dominance as form, especially in substitution for dominance as function. i.e., it is applied almost exclusively to people who are definitionally not dominant.
The only exception I have encountered is women-focused kink literature which, being fantasy, maintains that dominance as form is dominance as function so as to make sexual fantasies seem more real.
In short: you are describing a kink, not real life. Though I consider that you might be joking too; I really can't tell.
Literally you can go to the dictionary yourself and look up the definition to see how baseless your argument is.
I don't know why you people are just pulling this bs out of thin air. It can't be just BS is several people are coming from your angle despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Maybe it's just shared victimhood. Were you bullied by these types of people before?
I call it a kink because I attract women with the kink.
I'm referring to pragmatics not semantics; the use of dictionary definitions is a category error.
No, I was not bullied. People like I describe would posture, I would raise my eyebrow and wait, and then they would treat me nice and pretend it didn't happen. Dominance as form outside the bedroom is remarkably ineffective. That's why I call it dominance as form.
"When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat. —Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)
These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’ each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not very competent ones). However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. How is this possible? What’s the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what they manage to communicate? These are some of the questions that pragmatics tries to answer; the sort of questions that, roughly speaking, serve to characterize the field of pragmatics."[1]
If you redefine alpha to just mean "leader", then the claim that CEOs are alphas is obviously true, but also meaningless.
But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders. There's no "redefinition" going on here at all. What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I attempted to jump that gap for you, but you're not able to see it.
>But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
And he applies that to humans without considering alphas in other animal hierarchies. He implies that the entire theoretical concept of alphas comes ONLY from wolves and once he debunks wolves (with no citations) he debunks the entire concept of what an alpha is. Riiggght.
> There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders.
Yes, there is a redefinition. The context of Alpha Wolf was based on the notion of a dominance hierarchy, which does occur when unrelated wolves are put together in a confined space. In the wild though, they function more like a family, with no acts of dominance. The breeding pair still lead the pack, but not through dominance.
> What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I literally just pointed out that if you are defining alpha to mean "leader" then it's meaningless to then claim that leaders are alphas. That was the comment.
> Could you elaborate what is the meaning of “alpha”?
There isn't a fixed definition [1]. Most definitions reference dominance, e.g. Merriam-Webster [2]. (Annoyingly, dominance also has different meanings in anthropology, animal ethology, sociology and common use.)
But due to the term being relatively new, adopted from animal ethology, co-tiopted by the memeverse and now being politically charged, you're basically walking into semantic ground zero by using the term.
Have you actually read the article? He does give a citation to the same author who initially coined the term alpha wolf.
And redefining alpha to just mean leader is a redefinition, as written in the article the term originates from the alpha wolf who achieved dominance through overtly aggressive behaviour (which does not match with how wolves behave in the wild).
It's ironic that you bring up CEOs etc as proof that there's alphas, when the whole premise of the article is that recent structuring of human society is based on an this wrong view that the aggressive dominance is "natural" and what is required for leaders
No they are not. There are plenty of leaders who are not alphas and they lead organizations that achieve good things.
Alphas are generally just assholes who want to be leaders. They usually lead self selected friends who crave their validation and people with healthy boundaries just nope out of those systems.
The only colloquial usage I've seen is that it is someone who has the ability to demand that others perform a public display of obedience to them. Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "alpha," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "alpha," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
> Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "your leader," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "my leader," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
I think same sentiment persists when alpha->”your leader” replacement is made.
Right but the term here is used to categorize human/animal hierarchies/behavior in an objective context. No one is here projecting their alphaness onto others. Clearly.
The article isn't wrong about captivity/freedom, although alphas are certainly thing.
Hierarchies are naturally born out of confrontations and how they're settled, and captivity (ie scarcity) breeds confrontations. If two separate entities have opposing wants which cannot be satisfied simultaneously (ie are mutually exclusive), how do you determine who get's what they want? Well, naturally some kind of fight happens. Which either involves displays of intimidation, threats, arguments, or acts of violence (ie aggression).
Naturally, living organisms value life and consider risks which threaten their livelihood, and so, these situations are always an assessment of wants, such as "is my want for the last piece of food, greater than my want to avoid fighting my opponent?" Or, "Am I willing to risk dying for this? Do I need this food, do I need to fight this opponent or can I get food elsewhere before dying of starvation?".
As so, animals typically use violence as a last resort for settling disputes, unless the risks are so low as to be play (ie you're certain to win). It should therefore not be surprising that captive animals (or animals backed into a corner) feel obligated to fight, as they have few alternatives to avoid confrontation. Whereas, non-captive animals, by being more free, are better able to avoid a direct confrontation, and therefore exhibit less acts of aggression.
An alpha, just happens to be those who win disputes repeatedly, and opponents or potential opponents have learned to be intimidated by them, and so cede disputes to them when they arise without fighting. A hierarchy is thus naturally formed from repeated disputes.
when companies are big enough (to where CEO actually has meaning), shareholder rights kick in, and there are many additional legal requirements; none of those require a CEO
If CEOs are the alphas, then why are some of them so submissive recently to a certain someone? The alpha male mythos tells me that these men have huge amounts of agency and power and yet...they make a big show of turning themselves into lapdogs? The Internet says thats not alpha behavior!
It's almost as if reality is more nuanced than what 4Chan taught us: CEOs have people they need to answer to, people they're scared of, and that's part of what it means to be a human.
That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.
That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich.
Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
> That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.*
That's a myth.
Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though.
There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though:
I would argue that the wealthy which hold loans based on stock collateral are holding debt and not credit. US banking laws are just hiding the fact. So a number of rich people you define as alpha are not really alpha because of debt vs credit imbalance.
This means the person spending money while going through Disney World are alpha.
Bro I define an alpha as someone who leads and controls others. Someone people follow whether by will or by force or because they are paid a salary.
You’re just being pedantic. I don’t need to explain to you why people intrinsically know Elon musk is an alpha and the person going to Disney world is a beta.
To me the Alpha Mentality is just stupidity in another Yes-Man form.
Seems you hold the alpha mentality deeply and respect those you seem as alpha. By your own logic, cult leaders are alpha and should be respected.
Respect can only be earned, continuously reinforced, and lost in a single moment. Respect cannot be demanded or forcefully requested.
Watch the first episode of "Band of Brothers". Who would you want as a leader, the alpha, one with power, Captain Herbert Sobel or 2nd Lutenaint Richard Winters, the one without power?
Sure HNers hate Elon for various reasons. But overall some random dude who goes to disney world versus A billionaire who caught a rocket and makes stupid tweets online.... Let's be real here about what "society" defines as alpha, not some HNers backwater opinion.
ANd even that HNer knows his contrary opinion is backwater. Trump and Elon get a lot of hate, but they are leaders on the apex of the human status hierarchy.
When I think of “leaders of the human status hierarchy”, I do not think of a man who spends his entire day online trolling people, regardless of whether he is worth billions or not. Similarly, I don’t picture a guy that wears lifts because he is ashamed of his height, or who paints his face orange, to be that “apex” either.
For some public companies retail share holders also have to be groveled to.
I don't have an overall point here other than that power isn't as simple as some people want it to be. You command a ship until there's a mutiny. There are hierarchies, but that's only one way of slicing things. It's more about a set of several feedback loops that nobody explicitly understands.
Of course it’s not simple. But alphas and betas are intrinsic to society and that’s my point.
You will see that society converges towards alphas. There have been attempts to make everything egalitarian but it doesn’t last and alphas pop up everywhere. Heck you can’t even make a purely voting society where society votes on everything. Instead everyone votes for an alpha. Aka trump.
I don’t like your tone. When you say not everyone behaves like Americans you sound like you’re implying superiority as if Americans don’t behave well and I have to conform to your version of good behavior. Change your tone or I won’t continue with you.
For a good primer on hierarchy dynamics in human systems, I recommend Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
In what Logan calls stage 3 leadership, organizations cluster around individual “rockstar” people - and this is the vast majority of human organizations.. they estimate 80%.
In Stage 4, it’s all rockstar people organized around values vs. a person.
You certainly still have people who have authority through competency, but people aren’t granted authority based purely on “position”.
Stage 4 culture are the best in the world, and learning how to build them is a worthwhile skill.
bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here
the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
