Subject: 
        Re: [evol-psych] The Trouble With Self-Esteem
   Date: 
        Thu, 7 Feb 2002 00:07:55 -0800
   From: 
        "Ian Montgomerie" 
     To: 
        [email protected]




On 6 Feb 2002, at 15:40, [email protected] wrote:

> In a message dated 2/6/02 12:04:11 AM, [email protected] writes:
> 
> << Throughout the evolutionary 
> history of man and primate, social status was a reproductive 
> advantage to males, but often required risky aggressive behavior and
> violent retaliation to maintain it - the social status competition is
> not a positive-sum game, so maintaining status means being able to
> defeat or deter challenges to it.  "High self-esteem" is a high
> opinion of oneself, leading to risk-taking and aggressive behavior
> because of confidence in one's abilities to succeed in the face of
> adversity.  >>
> 
> I'm not so sure of these absolute statements, in regard to great apes
> including man.

I'm not sure what you think is "absolute" about my statements.  
Plain and simply, maintaining status in primates and humans does 
involve the ability to defeat the put-downs and challenges of others. 
 It's not the _only_ thing involved, of course, and defeating 
challenges doesn't always mean massive retaliation, but it means 
being able to get the psychological advantage - which often involves 
being able to get the physical advantage, because enough people 
are willing to be physically aggressive.  It's as evident on the 
modern schoolground or in the modern bar as it is in a tribe of 
chimpanzees - starting fights isn't always the best way to get 
status, but finishing them is a very good way.  And some of it also 
involves being psychologically aggressive/assertive with others, out 
of a confidence that one can come out on top if they retaliate in 
some way.

> I believe Paul Gilbert and others have discussed the
> importance of attraction, social attractiveness, rather than overt
> "I'm ready to fight" aggression as a road to high status.

Aggression tends to lead to actual fights only after many rounds of 
escalation.  The escalation is pretty likely, however, when two 
people are both trying to take at least a somewhat socially 
dominant position toward the other.  Those who have less reason 
to fear the eventual consequences (or are more confident, 
regardless of objective support for it) tend to be more willing to 
escalate at each stage.  That doesn't mean that they attack people 
on a hair trigger.

> << One would expect high self-esteem to be correlated with higher
> social status, and/or with the pursuit of a "risk-taking" social
> strategy independent of one's status.  One would thus expect it to be
> tied into aggression, and into retaliation against perceived threats
> to one's status - these are the bread and water of a "high- status
> male" approach to life.  >>
> 
> Again, this seems to be based on the competitive (as opposed to
> cooperative) perspective on life, and therefore may miss the "whole"
> picture for ours along with other highly social species.

The "perspective" in question simply emerges from the sexual 
dynamics of human evolution, particularly among males.  Certainly, 
people are a highly cooperative species - but each individual still 
competes with the other individuals of their sex to get mates.  They 
compete enough for it to be an important dynamic in human 
evolution (just as in most other species), and it is especially 
important among males for whom winning out in the mating 
competition with other males brings disproportionate reproductive 
benefits.  This leads to significant gains to risk-taking behavior (and 
being aggressive with other males, and willing to fight rather than 
back down if challenged, is plenty risky).

Aggression/retaliation, willingness to escalate rather than back 
down, don't have to be (and aren't) the only ways to succeed.  But 
as long as they are at all significant, there is a tendency for them 
to be disproportionately used as a strategy by people who are 
more likely to succeed by using them.  Those who are more likely 
to succeed are those who have been succeeding already 
(especially those who have been behaving aggressively and 
generally coming out on top).

It doesn't require one to ignore the value of cooperation in human 
life to say that, evolutionarily speaking, one would expect a 
correlation between self-esteem and aggression.  Far from it.  If 
aggression were always the best strategy, everyone would be 
aggressive all the time.  But it actually happens that taking an 
aggressive/dominant approach to others can be a big success for 
the minority of those who, due to whatever personal qualities, can 
succeed consistently at it, whereas it can be a big failure for those 
who would not succeed consistently.  Thus, high self-esteem 
people who are more aggressive, low self-esteem people who are 
more cooperative and more likely to back down.  Because while 
cooperation isn't as "good", reproductively speaking, as being one 
of the winners in the dominance game, it's much better than being 
one of the losers.  In fact, in humans relative to other primates, 
social cooperation appears to have grown a lot in reproductive 
advantage relative to being physically aggressive.

> The ability
> to attract others, to create or maintain a cooperative environment may
> be central in the maintenance of high status.  de Waal will certainly
> be able to speak with authority on this issue in regards to
> chimpanzees and bonobos, (i.e. I would like to know what he thinks
> here).

Being dominant among primates in many situations (not so much 
amongst chimpanzees in the wild though, as far as I know) can 
involve a significant aspect of "popularity".  But it still involves a 
significant aspect of dominance as well.  And the "popularity" 
usually tends more towards the politics of being able to maintain 
favor among enough other high-status individuals, rather than being 
universally popular.

> I can say that in my interviews with zookeepers very familiar
> with their chimpanzee groups, I have heard on several occassions of
> the alpha male maintaining his alpha position only through the support
> of high ranking females. In one instance I heard about the alpha "I
> don't think he even really knows how to fight, that's not what he
> does.."  Now I know this is very anecdotal so perhaps not worth much.

It has been widely observed that chimpanzees in zoos display a 
muted dominance hierarchy, because lower-status individuals 
(particularly females) are more likely to band together and throw 
their support behind someone they like in the competition to be 
alpha.  This does not, however, keep aggressiveness from being a 
significant factor in social success.  (One must also keep in mind 
that the benefit of aggression as a strategy has something to do 
with one's competence at other strategies - a brilliant older 
politician can win the respect or fear of others without fighting 
them, a strong young male with much less in the way of charm or 
experience faces a different situation).

> But it makes me wonder. In addition, I believe I read McGuire speak to
> this issue, of high status in males being acheived and maintained by
> female support, in some species of monkey.  And I don't think in
> general that female support is acheived through frequent expression of
> aggression.

Sure it is.

Notice how I am often using "aggression/retaliation" together.  By 
"aggression" I do not necessarily mean "picking fights".  Leaving 
chimpanzees aside, one type of man who tends to capture the 
attention of human females is the kind of guy who is "assertive" 
(but not violent or extremely pushy), and who is capable of 
defending himself if "pushed".  I am a pretty careful people-watcher 
sometimes.  Observing human interactions, let's say you classified 
psychological assertiveness/attempts to exert social dominance of 
others on a scale from negative (usually backs down or bends in 
conflict), to neutral, to positive (tries to take control, at least up 
until some level of resistance is seen).  And let's say that you 
classified willingness to retaliate, and to retaliate physically against 
provocation, on a similar scale from negative (usually slow to 
retaliate, willing to lose face rather than join a fight, will back down) 
to neutral to positive (willing to retaliate, will often escalate a bit if 
only from their biased perceptions leading them to overestimate the 
provocation and underestimate the response).

I hold, from extensive personal observation (not that I think it takes 
much observation at all, or any knowledge of evolutionary theory) 
that as a generalization, the guys who have the easiest time 
getting the girls are noticeably not near the neutral point, and 
definitely not toward the "not assertive, de-escalates conflict" side.  
Their average is noticeably on the "at least a bit pushy toward 
others, at least somewhat likely to escalate" side.  Most women 
are quite put off by very pushy or noticeably violent men, or men 
who will lose their temper at minor provocations.  This doesn't 
mean, however, that they seek the neutral point - (on average) they 
avoid the extreme, but still prefer men who are socially dominant 
and will not back down from a challenge.  (In theory, "not backing 
down but not starting a fight" sounds like neutrality, but in practice 
it's not - this "neutrality" leads to escalation because of biased 
perceptions, each party is biased toward seeing the other party as 
more unjustified and more aggressive, and themselves as more 
justified and responding more in kind).

> In our species, the aggressive high risk-taking personality is by no
> means necessarily the high status person.  Perhaps we shouldn't assume
> that "high status" and "high self-esteem", particularly as Baumeister
> seems to view self-esteem, are equivalent.

I don't assume that high status and high self-esteem are 
_equivalent_.  They are substantially correlated - success leads to 
higher self-esteem.  The whole point of Baumeister's argument, 
which I think I mentioned, is that the NON-equivalence of social 
status and self-esteem is critical for understanding who becomes 
violent.  The most violent people are those whose high self-esteem 
is not matched by a similarly high social status.  They are 
predisposed to using a "dominant" strategy, being willing to 
retaliate and escalate in the face of perceived slights - and they will 
perceive that people often slight them by treating them with less 
respect than they "deserve" (since they have a high opinion of their 
own worth and deservingness, but in other peoples' eyes they do 
not have a high status and so are not deferred to in the way that 
someone with high social status would be).