March Hare has requested a definition of an alpha male. March can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming the point of this objection is "if you can't define alpha male then you need to abandon your claim that there is status-seeking behavior in the realm of sex and reproduction." I don't think that is correct. First, this is a blog not a philosophy journal. I already write long posts and I don't want to lose even more readers by providing necessary and sufficient definitions for concepts that are intuitively accessible to everyone.
And as Wittgenstein pointed out, no one has created a satisfactory definition of a game, but that doesn't mean that we can't meaningfully talk about games, or that there is no such thing as a game. As the Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart pointed out, "I don't know how to define pornography but I know it when I see it." Both men and women can make the same claim about alpha males. As long as sexual attractiveness is non-randomly distributed in the male population then there exists an alpha male. Defining it is a tougher job. But let me take a crack at it for the same reason that I spent time trying to create a necessary and sufficient definition of a game (not to be confused with "Game", which I define as a deceptive signal of social status). Creating definitions is fun.
One method is to give an operational definition. (1) Alpha males are those who have more sexual partners than average. Or (2) Alpha males are those who are rated as more sexually attractive than average. A less useful operational definition is that alpha males have a higher social rank than others, but this is skewed by the "stone age brain inside a modern skull" effect. The tall and well-built man in the mail room may be low status in his career but high status out with his buddies on Friday night.
I think the real definition of an alpha male is that they have better genes. That is the root cause of why women like alpha males. Or that alpha males have produced a costly signal of this high genetic quality. Some of those signals are highly developed male secondary sexual characteristics like height, big muscles, a deep voice, and a square jaw. I think you could probably quantify those traits and use that to create a reasonable definition that corresponds to our intuitions.
Reality and Polling
8 hours ago
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2 comments:
My objection was more along the lines of "you keep commenting on alpha males but women have different views on an ideal man."
You have run into exactly the problem I thought you would. In past times you'd be entirely right, however 100-400 years past an alpha was a male born into a high-ranking family. Genetic goodness was actually being bred out by inbreeding among the socially higher-up families.
"Better genes" just pushes the problem back to what is "better"? If we take the common idea of tall, chiselled, strong then while that may appeal to certain base parts of women's brains, however when it comes to selecting partners and fathers the alpha male in that situation tends to be more intelligent or at least wealthy. Few women want to work two jobs to keep their trophy husbands at home because they know said guys will go looking for other women while they are at work. On the other hand, a rich man will work extra because he thinks his trophy wife is financially (more if they have children) tied to him.
I have a problem with both your definitions:
1) Alpha males could be rapists or a beta male with really low standards and no shame.
2) Physical attractiveness is a small part - important initially - but conversation and personality are important too, as is confidence.
Or, looked at another way, I know people who are much less good looking than me (and I'm no alpha) but are really witty, funny and cheeky and sparkling conversationalists, they have women eating out of their hands, women who are way out their league and who I couldn't get.
I guess that's my real problem with your definition of alpha - I thought I knew what you meant, and I did, but I have seen too many charming men wander off with beautiful women they had no right to on a purely physical (or genetic) basis. And I have seen way too many women flirt, sleep with and even marry men because the man is rich, successful or famous, not because he is good looking.
This is the only important point: unless sexual access to females is randomly distributed in the male population, my case stands. Everything after that is just having fun, like trying to succeed where Wittgenstein failed and defining a "game".
So with the understanding that my running points about status seeking behaviors and arms races stand, here I go.
Inbreeding Inbreeding doesn't damage genes. In fact, quite the contrary. It lowers phenotypic quality because of matching recessives, but since it also removes unhealthy recessives those children that do survive are relatively pure genetically. In any case, once you start outbreeding the differences become moot.
Alpha husbands. As someone who does not take Roissy's worldview as normative (quite the contrary), I freely admit and in fact champion the monogamous side of human nature. I want to see those traits that make people husbands valued highly. I want to see those traits that lead to good quality sperm discounted.
I don't disagree with you here. Rather, my point is that the more emphasis put on the "alpha male" instead of "good husband" route, the more energy that gets wasted in the arms race over positional goods like social status and sexual access to females.
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