Dominance Hierarchy
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Dominance Hierarchy
Introduction
Eva Jozifkova1 and Martina Kolackova2 1 Department of Biology, J. E. Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem, Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic 2 Immunology Department, Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Kralove, Charles University, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
The term dominance hierarchy (McFarland 1981) refers to hierarchical ranking of individuals in a society (in a group, a family, a clan, or a pack). Terms such as social hierarchy, social dominance hierarchy, and peck order (McFarland 1981; Manning and Dawkins 2009; Veselovsky 2005) have similar meaning. The concept of dominance hierarchy is widely used and has been explored in depth in animals, including primates. In humans, the same feature is expressed by socioeconomic status, social status, or power. The dominance hierarchical rank influences the probability of an individual’s survival. The likelihood of getting food, space to rest or hide from predators, the chance to mate, or the quality of a sexual partner – all these facts depend on the hierarchical rank. An individual’s rank within the dominance hierarchy strongly influences the life of both humans and animals.
Synonyms Peck order; Social dominance hierarchy; Social hierarchy
Definition Dominance hierarchy is a social structure of a society or a family. Within this structure some individuals are more dominant than others and as such have access to greater (or better) resources (i.e., food, mates, etc.). Dominance hierarchy enables to decrease number of conflicts between individuals because some give way to the others and let them have resources without fighting. This behavior is mostly based on their experience from previous interactions. Moreover, the higher ranking ones restrict the lower ranking individuals.
How it Works Dominance hierarchy refers to the way the society or the family is organized (Veselovsky 2005). The relationships in a dominance hierarchy are called dominance-subordination relationships, or dominance-submission relationships. The higher ranking individual is considered a dominant
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Shackelford, V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2534-1
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individual, while the lower ranking individual is called submissive or subordinate (Jozifkova 2014). Individuals are frequently ranked and named according to the Greek alphabet. The most dominant individual is titled the alpha (a); the second highest ranking individual is the beta (b), followed by the gamma (g); and the most submissive one, subordinate to them all, is the omega (o) (Veselovsky 2005). The rank ordering decreases the number of conflicts between individuals (Manning and Dawkins 2009) and increases the cohesion between members of a group (Veselovsky 2005). When individuals compete for the same resources, conflicts arise. Even genetically related individuals are not spared from mutual conflicts in the competition for the resources. However, the conflicts are costly (the indivi
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