- The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society
- About the Editor
- About the Contributors
- Introduction: Evolution, Biology, and Society
- Divergence and Possible Consilience Between Evolutionary Biology and Sociology
- Sociology’s Contentious Courtship with Biology: A Ballad
- Edward Westermarck: The First Sociobiologist
- Discovering Human Nature Through Cross-Species Analysis
- The Neurology of Religion: An Explanation from Evolutionary Sociology
- Reward Allowances and Contrast Effects in Social Evolution: A Challenge to Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity
- Sex Differences in the Human Brain
- The Savanna Theory of Happiness
- How Evolutionary Psychology Can Contribute to Group Process Research
- The Genetics of Human Behavior: A Hopeless Opus?
- DNA Is Not Destiny
- On the Genetic and Genomic Basis of Aggression, Violence, and Antisocial Behavior
- Genetics and Politics: A Review for the Social Scientist
- Genes and Status Achievement
- Peer Networks, Psychobiology of Stress Response, and Adolescent Development
- Stress and Stress Hormones
- Social Epigenetics of Human Behavior
- Physiology of Face-to-Face Competition
- Evolutionary Behavioral Science: Core Principles, Common Misconceptions, and a Troubling Tendency
- Evolutionary Family Sociology
- Evolution and Human Reproduction
- Evolution, Societal Sexism, and Universal Average Sex Differences in Cognition and Behavior
- Evolutionary Theory and Criminology
- The Biosocial Study of Ethnicity
- Human Sociosexual Dominance Theory
- From Paganism to World Transcendence: Religious Attachment Theory and the Evolution of the World Religions
- The Evolutionary Approach to History: Sociocultural Phylogenetics
- Why Sociology Should Incorporate Biology
Abstract and Keywords
Face-to-face competition for rank in human status hierarchies is similar to “dominance competition” in other primate species, particularly the African apes. Each individual has signs or signals showing that it has or ought to have high or low status. Group members may accept these signs at face value, or one individual may challenge another for high rank. Among apes and humans, such dominance contests are usually nonviolent, often taking the form of an exchange of stressful signals. Eventually, one contestant withdraws or concedes the higher rank, thus lowering the stress level. Serious competition with important stakes is influenced by a physiological substrate of the hormones testosterone and cortisol and the enzyme α-amylase. Among humans, language is an important channel for exchanging dominant and deferent signals. Apart from the physiological substrate, instantaneous stress responses underlie status allocation. These mechanisms are illustrated with recent experimental results.
Allan Mazur , a sociologist and engineer, is Professor of Public Affairs in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He is author or co-author of 10 books and nearly 200 academic articles, many on biological aspects of social behavior. He also studies the sociology of science, technology, and environment. Mazur is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His most recent book is Technical Disputes Over Public Policy: From Fluoridation to Fracking and Climate Change (Routledge, 2017).
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