Comprehensive essay on the presence of human hierarchies - university level dissertation

1. David You 1
Do human societies necessarily have to be hierarchical? Discuss with reference to at least
two case studies.
With the rise to prominence of the post-truth era and social constructionism prevalent in
mainstream media, hierarchies hardly enjoy good press. Academics and consultants
regularly forecast new, egalitarian institutions' imminent replacement of hierarchies. Since
the early 1910s, consultants have predicted that future businesses would be modelled upon
a model without intermediaries or assistance. More than a decade later, former
Pennsylvania Governor Pinchot proposed that hierarchal organisations 'based on dominance
and submission' would soon replace communities more appropriate for our high-tech times
and postmodern selves. We are in a constant struggle against hierarchies and lament the
organisational sloppiness of governmental bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, the truth remains that in almost any large organisation, the boss's whims, no
matter how absurd it may seem, become the 'law.' Thus, we must understand that
hierarchies remain the basic structure for most ongoing human organisations. There have
been many partial explanations for why hierarchies persist or even strive. Perhaps those in
organisational pyramids have proven to be in charge, or hierarchies have constantly been
evolving. Nevertheless, at a fundamental level, hierarchies provide and deliver practical,
psychological value to our society.
The intrinsic nature of hierarchies
To understand our need for social hierarchies, we must understand the psychological,
neurological, and evolutionary foundations of our neurological perceptions of statues.
Contrary to popular belief, hierarchies are not social constructs but innate and endemic in
our evolution, sustaining our survival within groups. Strong evidence suggests hierarchies
arise from necessity, and their existence overwhelmingly benefits social groups. While social
hierarchies may vary in specific details, there are shared, distinctive features that can be
applied more broadly. Habitually, hierarchies across societies can be characterised by
ranking group members who vary in physical or intellectual capacities through rapid and
spontaneous formation, with functional and adaptive value to the existence of social groups
with our sociocultural cues like job titles or educational attainment. Indeed, this lies at the
heart of human and collaborative interactions, as it provides the basis for stratification for
the workings of our society. Without hierarchies, it would be inevitable for us to descend
into anarchy and pandemonium, as science is precise that following the establishment of
hierarchies, humans exhibit a decline in aggressive interactions and, instead, an increase in
cooperative behaviours, suggesting that we accept these determined roles or positions.
First, the inherent nature of hierarchies is the stratification of group members ranked along
a value dimension, with some individuals being superiors while others are subordinates. This
value dimension is a behaviour that can signify dominance, such as the ability to overpower
in a physical conflict or possessing a trait or skill considered ideal by the group. Social
hierarchies are often highly multidimensional when considering an individual's standings
within a hierarchy. Though it is not entirely dependent and determined by their successes in
agonistic contests, it is primarily and commonly founded upon a composite of the group
members' perceptions of their personal properties. Typically, possession of assets and
individual qualities are indicative and help establish a person's relative standing.
Importantly, these qualities, which formulate our conception of rank, are not limited to the
actual observation of traits but rather perceived through either direct or indirect interaction

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and gossip as a product of group consensus, of reputation, which is inferred through
observations of social interactions as an assessment of their access to group resources and
peer perceptions.
Second, social hierarchies form spontaneously among groups of living animals. Evidence
from several findings suggests that positions of superiority or deference are identified
through asymmetrical displays of dominance. Thus, unfamiliar humans automatically display
asymmetries in dominant behaviours in social interactions, either adopting the dominant or
submissive posture to complement the other. Moreover, further evidence suggests humans
are tacit when attributing status information to others and arrange themselves into
hierarchical structures rapidly and spontaneously.
Crucially, a hierarchy, whether formal and institutionalised or informal and tacit, is critical in
serving as an adaptive function that benefits the group. When essential resources are
limited, hierarchies serve as an efficient way to divide goods and labour among the group.
Thus, the function of hierarchies may be to define social roles and allocate limited
resources. Another function of hierarchies may be to increase the survival of high-status
members, who possess the most favoured trait of the group, asserting more significant
influence over members. This is crucial for humans, as we tend to learn from those
'successful,' or individuals who inhabit higher positions of status, as we revere the success of
others with our desires to elevate our social standing, to relish our access to social,
informational, and material resources to preserve and protect our self-interests.
The ecological anthropology examination into hierarchies
Social primates are sensitive to a similar suite of behaviours and traits to establish and
emanate status, although some features are distinctive to human hierarchies (primarily
social and reputation). Commonalities across the species indicate an evolved origin for
attaining high status and recognising the status of others, hinting at a potentiality of the
existence of a status determiner in our minds dedicated to neural processing networks of
status discernment.
Among nonhuman primates, relative dominance and submission establish one's rank within
a group. Dominant actions such as biting, chasing and open-mouth threats, along with
physical characteristics, are often associated with high rank in primate social interactions.
Physical size and domineering behaviours are often reliable predictors of status attainment
throughout primates, as they provide an obvious advantage when seeking to dominate or
overpower an opponent. In addition to size, neurotransmitters and hormone levels can
indicate or predispose one to attain higher social standing. Studies of lobsters using
serotonin found that they became more dominant as they became less defensively
aggressive and irritable.
Human perceptions of statuses are often analogous to our primate ancestors, as physical
attributes associated with body size and upper body strength are also used to recognise the
status of others. For instance, male height is often a factor predictive of status, as taller
males are perceived as more dominant and preferred as reproductive partners. The positive
relationship between height and dominance may underlie the finding that US presidential
candidates are likelier to receive a more popular vote. Similarly, taller men are likely to earn
more than short men. A deeper delve into accessing the behavioural traits associated with
dominance between humans and primates brings exciting findings. Like animals, human
asymmetries in status can be inferred through body postures to convey dominance or
submission. When observing the one-on-one interactions of couples, their behaviours

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complement the finding that one partner would express more dominant behaviours while
the other is more submissive.
However, there are notable distinctions exclusive to humans. Based on accrued knowledge,
humans can use a range of non-perceptual cues to appraise social status. Indeed, the
findings by Dalmaso demonstrated the gaze-cueing effects, that reputation and labels carry
information and are used to make judgements, as participants followed the gaze of high-
status individuals more readily. This shows that information regarding skills and career
success is used to learn the status of unfamiliar individuals when nothing else is known.
Similarly, when participants were asked whether to help someone with a high-status career
title or low status, they favoured the former.
These findings show that social hierarchies form spontaneously in human and nonhuman
primates. Admittedly, social hierarchies in human adults are more complex, with status cues
more dependent on context, group processes and cultural values, which could value career
or reputational success. However, these overlaps across species imply a common origin, as
the nature in which hierarchies form motivates the evaluation of underlying cognitive and
neural mechanisms, giving us a good understanding of how status can form our social
interactions and perceptions.
The emergence of hierarchies in Societies
The different perspectives on why hierarchies emerge and persist across various non-
identical ecological and cultural contexts converge between social and evolutionary science,
as differentiation in societal roles often facilitates the necessities of collective actions.
Humans generally have an aptitude to participate in collaborative actions that benefit all
involved parties more than if they were to act alone. However, collaboration within a group
can often be undermined when individuals known as 'free-riders' or 'defectors' act selfishly
to reap the benefits of a group's collective effort without contributing. The way to tackle
this is by conferring specific individuals with disproportionate social influence on either
direct group efforts and monitoring the actions of others or by rewarding individuals who
have contributed to the collective effort with social or material incentives. Through this
process, community members with the necessary qualities or abilities can benefit other
group members more judiciously through heightened social influence and greater access to
essential resources. Of course, the values of these qualities or abilities may vary across
socio-ecological backgrounds. However, whilst the particular attributes or abilities may
differ, they would have been interpreted to provide functional benefits for all group
members in their socio-ecological settings.
It is also important to note that status hierarchies rely not entirely upon competency but
somewhat arbitrary distinctions. Individuals are often better when calibrating their
behaviours when rules uphold social interactions or behavioural regularities (conventional
behaviours). In the same way, language is a convention that facilitates collective action;
social hierarchies facilitate societal conventions. Hence, societal hierarchies may be entirely
arbitrary and based upon cultural conventions rather than being adaptive when responding
to a particular aspect of society.
In many instances, the individual's status is not entirely attributed to their ability to benefit
others but rather as markers of their perceived ability or competency of correlation or the
individual's social worth. Admittedly, this creates an asymmetry between individuals who
rose because of competency and those who rose due to society's normative evaluations of
their worth. For instance, a poet can be highly skilled but whose works will not be judged on

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competency but instead judged upon by conventional sociocultural assertions of their
worth.
This cultural aspect of hierarchies is critical to understanding the culmination of civilisations.
In eastern civilisations, the overarching trend is for the state to wield and exalt overarching
control positions. However, in Western nations, the possibility of an exertion of total control
by the government is limited. This is not necessarily to say that Western nations are innately
more egalitarian. However, the beneficiaries of hierarchies are certainly disparate, not by
least the ecclesiastical figures in pre-industrial Europe of theocracy or holistic state or of
tycoons in a high crony capitalistic system. Thus, it becomes clear that hierarchies serve a
distinct purpose in our societies, which depends on the values and utility of their pertinent
cultural beliefs.
However, whilst many forms of social hierarchy benefit collective action, the extent of
inequality within such hierarchies may need to be more cohesive and problematic. In many
cases, those with low relative standings will receive little to minimal benefits, with upward
social mobility impractical. Such hierarchies are often absorbed by individual self-interest
and inflict harm only to benefit those who reach the relatively high ranking. Indeed, this can
be seen in China, a nation with great historical grandeur, and certainly in India, a new
civilisation following years of British colonisation up until the 1940s.
Case Study: Caste system of India
The caste system in India, which heightened during the British Raj, is undoubtedly an
anachronistic practice that originated nearly 3000 years ago and is certainly a manifestation
of the detriments of a highly unequal social hierarchy. The paradigmatic, ethnographic
classification of Indians into castes originated in ancient India but was transformed by the
ruling elites. The collapse of the Mughal era with the entrance of the British Raj saw the rise
of powerful men associated with higher-status members. Between 1860 and 1920, the
British Raj furthered the development of the caste system into a rigid, administrative
organisation incorporated into the system of governance, granting administrative jobs only
to people in certain castes.
By stratifying the Indian populace into four castes: the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas,
Shrudras and the untouchables, Dalits. Each set had a pre-determined and distinct role in
society, as dictated by the Rigveda, a collection of ancient Indian hymns, the Brahmins. The
Brahmins, the highest of the four castes, enjoyed partisan prestige and many advantages
and tangible privileges. The indictment of high social and economic discrepancy is an
unconscionable violation of man's fundamental rights and accentuates the immoralities of
Indian society.
However, despite this unsavoury example of a tyrannical hierarchical society, it would be
wrong to entirely dismiss the need for such hierarchies for human society and interaction.
As humans, our desires for the furtherance of collective action in hierarchies are due to our
need for order and stability and our craving for social recognition. This has gained more
traction as we move to civilisation from our hunter, gatherer, and nomadic years. Under this
context, the Ming dynasty was able to formulate a successful social hierarchy to fully
incorporate and transform China from an archaic tribal organisation to an agrarian
civilisation of a communal and collaborative society.
Case Study: Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues of the Ming Dynasty

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The ideals of Confucianism have always been profound and prominent in Chinese society in
determining its societal values and setting guidelines or regulations regarding how a country
was to be run morally. The three bonds emphasise monarchs' unquestioning dominion over
subjects, the paterfamilias over wives and of patriarch over son, and the five constant
virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith. While this may be seen
as anachronistic in this political climate, it was esteemed back in its time, with some parts
still applauded nowadays. Its primary purpose was to vindicate and uphold probity in society
by devising these virtues to conserve fundamental ethical and moral cultivation and set a
political agenda that was morally upstanding.
Epilogue
Understanding the prevalence of hierarchies is pivotal in understanding human evolutionary
behaviour and the formalities of present-day institutionalised hierarchies. Hierarchies are
and will remain a defining feature of human communal interactions and, therefore, will
remain constitutive of the complexities of our existing web of human reciprocities and
interactions.

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Bibliography
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494206/
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0440
https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/are-power-hierarchies-inevitable-in-human-society
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0440