The Coolest Guy in the Room Aryan Sarparast p.

The Coolest Guy in the Room:

How prestige affects male-male competition, heterosexual attraction, & homosexuality
By: Aryan Sarparast PSY410: Evolutionary Psychology, Azim Shariff Humans, and most other sentient organisms, establish some form of social status among themselves. This construct known as status can be defined as a hierarchy of privilege that serves as a way to dichotomize the haves from the have-nots (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Those who have status also have access to what they want and are generally less resisted by those of inferior status. Yet, status can be gained via two differing strategies: dominance and prestige. Dominance provides the benefits of status (such as food, females, land) but does so via force and fear, in other words it is a way to push ones way to the top. Prestige, on the other hand, is much more passive and gains the same benefits from status as a dominance strategy. Specifically, prestigious individuals gain these benefits because others feel they have earned the right to access them, and thus they will willingly allow these individuals to reap such benefits. In humans, the gaining of status doesnt generally come from demonstrations or acts of force, instead they come from cues of prestige. An example of this is Stephen Hawking, a paraplegic who obviously couldnt threaten or intimidate others with violence, yet he is still considered a man of high prestige and excellent status. There are various cues that have been postulated to indicate prestige, and thus demonstrate high status. One could gain prestige by demonstrating skill or simply from being older in age. In fact, a study of indigenous Amazonians revealed that those within the community that were the most skilled hunters were regarded with respect (von Reuden et al., 2008). The same study revealed that the most influential attribute that increases respect was age. Evidently, 46 out of 69 societies display feelings of honor or respect towards the elderly (Simmons, 1945). This is very exemplary of prestige trumping dominance in gaining status, since the elderly cannot demonstrate force (much like the aforementioned Stephen Hawking example) yet are still esteemed and hold high status in the majority of societies. Furthermore, prestige rankings are socially transmitted, or in other words a society will usually agree upon the same individual being prestigious or not. This can relate to the fact that age-seniority is related to prestige, since the more senior individuals pass down culturally relevant knowledge (think about how your dad passed down to you how to ride a bike, and so shall you to your son, etc. etc.) and it is then in the best interest of a society to hold older persons to a high status due to their access to so much valued knowledge. Prestige is also valued by females, adding to the benefits of being a high status male. Specifically, women prefer a male with high prestige compared to one with low prestige, and

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significantly prefer prestigious males over dominant males (Snyder et al., 2008). The most likely reason for women valuing prestige is because, evolutionarily speaking, it increases the likelihood of survival for a womans potential offspring. In other words, having a prestigious mate means that he has access to highly desired resources, such as monetary wealth, which provides a safe and stable environment for raising a child. This ability to provide such an environment is valued by women since it demonstrates that a potential child would have a better outcome in this setting than a child reared in an environment provided by a male with low prestige and thus low wealth. This is further supported by evidence that states: social dominance also appears to be important for womens judgments of mens desirability for a serious relationship, over and above attractiveness and agreeableness (Bryan et al., 2011). It seems evident that not only does prestige provide access to tangible resources, but also provides access to one of the most valuable resources for a male: a mate. According to Buss, intrasexual competition consists of four components: skill in locating mates, producing effective mate-attracting behaviors, acquiring highly desired resources, and altering appearance (Buss, 1988). Competition among males was seen to be based on the ability to display or brag about ones resources to females, whereas altering appearance was mostly a female-female competition strategy (e.g. wearing provocative clothing to compete between females). All of the components of intrasexual competition proposed by Buss are related to prestige, excluding altering appearance since its exclusively seen in female-female competition. Acquiring highly desired resources is in fact the primary benefit of prestige. Hunting skill was a method of gaining prestige among Amazonians, and it is not farfetched to expect that skill in finding mates could be a method in modern societies to gain prestige as well. Also, flaunting resources was already seen to be an effective female-attracting behavior, and is a capability thats available from having prestige. Therefore, it is apparent that prestige underlies a significant portion, if not all, of male-male competition. So, the research shows that not only do females value prestige but males also seem to value prestige among each other. This could be because prestigious males have access to women, and thus males consider highly prestigious males to also be strong competitors in the game of finding a mate. Regardless, prestige greatly affects a males competitiveness for finding a mate and hence males must be able to identify prestige. The reason males must be able to identify prestige is dictated ultimately by the evolutionary goal of increasing fitness or, in other words, the goal of increasing the likelihood of effectively passing on their genes. Actually, in a study of the Tsimane villages of Bolivia, it was seen that prestigious men have higher fertility, lower offspring mortality, and overall higher lifetime reproductive success (von Reuden et al., 2011). Thus, prestige does increase male fitness and is clearly a competitive trait among men. Being able to identify prestige is key in assessing another males competitiveness. If a male is prestigious then he is out-competing lower status males, which is why von Reuben et al. states: prestigious men receive more deference from competitors, who may be ceding to their higher status peers simply to avoid the costs of contest competition (von Reuden et al., 2011). In other words, if you cant beat them, join them; rather than trying to compete with

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a prestigious male, it is much more effective to associate with him. Considering the highly proliferative nature of prestige-seeking behavior (Yasuo, 2008) and the aforementioned fitness-benefits of prestige, it is not surprising that males associate with the prestigious to attempt to gain the same benefits they have. Perhaps a males identification of prestige is not a conscious decision, but rather heterosexual males are overtly attracted to prestigious males due to an ultimate-evolutionary desire to gain the fitness benefits of prestige. Being attracted to a prestigious male need not be a sexual or physical attraction, instead it is a mental attraction. Imagine this scenario: a male is mingling during an office party when he spots his boss. He feels an attraction to his boss in the form of respect and admiration; perhaps he will even admit that he likes his boss. So he feels compelled to talk to his boss and take the opportunity to be in his presence. This isnt an uncommon scenario, and it is a common occurrence among heterosexual men, though this attraction is a mental, and not a physical or sexual one. What is meant by ultimate-evolutionary desire is that identification of prestige is consciously displayed as an attraction while the biologically-driven reason to try and associate with a prestigious individual is to gain an increase in likelihood of passing down ones genes ( fitness). Think of sex, for example, the proximal reason for having sex usually is the good feelings that it brings about, whereas the ultimate evolutionary reason is to increase the likelihood of passing down your genes via offspring. Similarly, this overt attraction for prestigious males is due to the ultimate evolutionary reason of association with that prestigious male to become successful in passing down ones genes. Furthermore, the attraction to a prestigious male by another male may be a form of prestige bias, which is defined as: copying the successful based on the principle that if we can copy the ideas or the behaviours of a successful individual, we are more likely to increase our own chances to succeed (Bechlivanidis, 2006). So, the association with prestigious men is also followed by exploiting that association to copy behaviors that if mimicked may increase ones own prestige and increase their fitness. The reason to desire association with a prestigious male is clear: the costs of competing with that individual are much higher than befriending or associating with that person and mimicking prestigious behavior to gain fitness. But perhaps this idea can be extrapolated further to describe homosexual tendencies. It could be that an atypically intense desire to associate with a male more prestigious than oneself may tip-over into a desire for intimacy and thus homosexuality. It was mentioned earlier that there is a typical heterosexual attraction for prestigious men, and also that this led to a desire to associate with those type of men. In this theory for homosexuality, it is possible that the pre-existing attraction for prestigious men may become more intense to the point in which the desire for association becomes a desire for intimacy or a homosexual relationship. This may seem counter-intuitive since media portrayals of homosexual men are that of sexual role-reversal, where preferences in heterosexual and homosexual men in a partner are stark contrasts. Actually, this is not the case and evidence shows that homosexual mate preferences are not opposite or reversed from heterosexual mate preferences, and in fact the preferences of homosexual men for a romantic partner are

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significantly similar to those of heterosexual men (Kenrick et al., 1995). Evidence also indicates that gay men seem to prefer sex-typical features like straight-appearing and masculine as opposed to feminine-traits, which is much different from the portrayal of homosexual mate preferences in popular culture and media (Bailey et al., 1997). So if homosexual men value masculinity and straight-appearing men, then it is entirely feasible for a gay male and a straight male to both be attracted to the same prestigious individual in the room. The gay male and the straight male are both ultimately are predisposed to desire the benefits of associating with a prestigious male, but the gay male is romantically attracted to the individual. It may be that males, as was suggested earlier, are evolutionarily predisposed to find prestige attractive in other males, and those males who are homosexual still carry the remnants of this predisposition but they are intensified into a form of romantic attraction. The following portion of this paper will discuss a potential design for a study testing if homosexuality is indeed an over-extension of the typical attraction heterosexual males feel towards prestigious males. The study will use two subject pools, one heterosexual male subject pool and one homosexual male subject pool. Participants will be randomly selected for the study, and will be assigned to each pool based on their response to a participant survey which will ask participants how they sexually identify themselves (homosexual or heterosexual). Each pool will be presented with two written prompts each, as well as two questions based on the prompt. Prompt A will be a written scenario describing an individual of high prestige and prompt B will describe an individual of low prestige. These prompts will be carefully written and will avoid use of weighted wording as well as have no content indicating the individuals physical appearance. After subjects have completed reading prompt A they will be asked: would you want Man A as a friend? Why?, then they after answering the first question the second question will be revealed, would you want Man A as a romantic partner? Why?. After both questions have been answered, the subject will be shown prompt B (the low prestige individual) and after reading it will be prompted with the same questions: would you want Man B as a friend? Why?, would you want Man B as a romantic partner? Why?. The responses will then be coded based on if the why was based on the individuals prestige, attraction, romantic interest, or something else (coded as other). It should be emphasized that the study must be extremely careful in the wording of the prompts. This is because the study aims to present only information pertaining to prestige, otherwise a subject may read the prompt and answer the questions on the basis of a description of physical attributes or other confounding variables. The why question also serves as a way to assess if the subjects response is due to romantic attraction (asked by the would you want Man __ as a romantic partner? Why? question) or due to platonic attraction (asked by the would you want Man __ as a friend? Why?). The study also should present one question at a time, but half of each pool should present the questions in one order and the other half should be presented with the opposite question order. This will then show if subjects answers are at all influenced by the order of the question. For example, if one half of the heterosexual pool is more likely to say they desire friendship due to respecting the individual and the other half desires it due to wanting to become prestigious by association, then it would be clear that question-order is

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important and must be accounted for. It isnt expected that this will happen, but it is important to still split each pool and present the questions in differing orders to be able to adjust the study for future trials if data hints towards an order-bias for the presented questions. In summary, the study provides information about an individuals prestige level and then asks homosexual and heterosexual men to respond if they have a platonic attraction for the individual or a romantic attraction. Asking why will show whether they base that attraction on prestige or other factors. The expected results are that heterosexual men will want a platonic relationship with individuals with high prestige and homosexual men will want a romantic relationship with individuals with high prestige, but both homosexual and heterosexual men will overtly state that the reason for their choice is because of some form of attraction to the person. Homosexual males will likely state a more exaggerated attraction while heterosexual males will display signs of milder attraction (such as a desire to be associated or friends with the individual). If such results are found, then it can be established that homosexual men and heterosexual men both show a form of attraction to prestigious men, but homosexual men have a more intense attraction than heterosexual men. Such findings would support the idea that, regardless of sexual orientation, men have a predisposition to find prestigious men attractive which is ultimately driven by the desire to gain the benefits of prestige-association. Also, the expected results would who that homosexual men take the aforementioned predisposition to a more intense level of attraction. Of course, whether or not the attraction to prestigious men is actually to gain the fitness-benefits of association is a extrapolation even in the light of the expected results. But, evolutionary psychology is speculative in nature, and concrete evidence for why we are driven to behave in a certain manner would require nothing short of access to the minds of humans living in the ancestral environment thousands of years ago. In the event of creating a Michael Crichton inspired time machine capable of transporting a full fMRI scanner and several astute researchers, then perhaps these speculations can become certainties, but until then humble speculations will have to suffice.

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