Chapter 12: Hierarchy, Obedience, & Resistance

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Welcome to the Deep Dive.

You know, have you ever stopped to think about those invisible currents, the ones that sort of nudge us to fit in or sometimes push us to, well, push back our lives really from the office to, you know, global stuff are shaped by this basic human thing we organize into groups, hierarchies.

It's just what we do today.

We're diving into chapter 12 of Robert Sapolsky's amazing book, Behave.

It's called Hierarchy, Obedience and Resistance.

We're going to unpack the biology, the psychology, the social forces behind why we rank ourselves, how we deal with it and what makes us follow orders or, you know, resist.

Think of this as your shortcut to understanding some really fundamental parts of human nature.

We promised some aha moments about why we act the way we do socially.

It's pretty fascinating stuff.

Yeah, it really is.

So to kick us off, Sapolsky gives us a pretty clear definition of hierarchy.

He basically says it's a ranking system, right?

It formalizes unequal access to resources, prestige, things like that.

Unequal access.

Okay.

And this connects back to what we've discussed before, like how we make us and them groups.

Exactly.

Your position in the hierarchy can actually influence how you're categorized.

How so?

Well, Sapolsky mentions a study.

Imagine racially ambiguous faces.

People were more likely to label them as black if they saw them in, say, low status clothes like janitor's overalls.

Wow.

But they were more likely to see them as white if they were wearing a business suit, high status attire.

So status cues literally changed racial perception in that split second.

That's powerful.

It shows how tangled up status and group identity are in our heads.

It really is.

And, you know, for a long time,

the old textbook view, maybe from the 60s, painted animal hierarchies as these really stable linear things.

The alpha was seen as this, like, benevolent leader.

Right.

The strong alpha baboon leading the troop to the best food spots, fighting off predators, that kind of image.

That's the one.

Sounds good.

Almost noble, right?

But turns out it's mostly wrong.

Okay.

Debunk it for us.

Well, alpha male baboons.

They don't usually lead foraging.

Often it's the older experienced females who know where to go.

And the benefits of the hierarchy, they're more individualistic.

For the ones lower down, it's often just about avoiding getting hurt.

So less about group benefit, more about personal risk management.

Pretty much.

You know, a dominant male might just give a threat yawn, flashes canines, and that's enough.

Yeah.

The subordinate gets the message, avoids a fight over, say, the best shady spot.

No need for actual violence.

So it minimizes conflict.

But it's not just alpha versus everyone else, is it?

You're saying animals get the finer points of rank.

Absolutely.

They recognize gradations.

A baboon knows the difference between someone just one rank above and someone five ranks above.

And what's really amazing is their grasp of, like, social gossip.

Gossip.

Baboons.

Sort of.

Researchers played recordings.

Imagine this.

A recording of a low -ranking baboon giving a dominance call, followed by a high -ranking baboon giving a subordinate screen.

Whoa.

Like, the social order got turned upside down.

Exactly.

And the baboons listening?

Yeah.

They paid way more attention to that.

It's like their version of, did you hear what just happened?

That's incredible.

And Sapolsky mentions ravens, too, right?

Being interested in the hierarchy of other groups.

Yeah.

Ravens.

Super smart birds.

They track this stuff even in neighboring flocks.

It really underlines the cognitive horsepower needed to navigate complex social structures.

Okay.

So how do animals get to the top and how do they stay there?

It varies.

For female baboons, rank is often inherited, passed down to the mother's line.

For males, it's usually about fights, displacing the guy above you.

But staying there, that's not just about being the toughest.

No.

No.

It's heavily reliant on social intelligence.

Impulse control is huge.

Knowing when to pick a fight, when to let something go, who to form alliances with, it's complex maneuvering.

Which leads us nicely into the brain stuff, right?

Dunbar's hypothesis.

Exactly.

Dunbar's social brain hypothesis.

It's a really influential idea.

Basically, species that live in bigger, more complex social groups tend to have bigger brains, especially the neocortex that wrinkly outer layer.

So more friends, more complex relationships, equals more brain power needed to manage it all.

Like needing a computer upgrade for a bigger network.

That's a great analogy.

Yeah.

And there's evidence.

Sapolsky talks about a macaque study.

Monkeys living in larger groups actually showed thickening in parts of the frontal brain and the temporal gyrus.

And those areas are linked to social thinking, understanding others.

Precisely.

Theory of mind, understanding intentions.

It's like their brains physically adapted to the social demands.

Wow.

And it's even more pronounced in what are called fish infusion species.

Think chimps or some baboons.

Their groups split up and merge constantly.

That requires even more sophisticated social cognition, remembering who's who, who's allied with whom, who's dominant in the subgroup versus the whole troop.

And again, bigger neocortices.

Okay.

So how much of this translates to us humans?

We definitely form groups and ranks.

There are strong parallels.

Our typical social group size around Dunbar's number of 150 fits the pattern.

And the size of our social brain regions correlates too.

But humans add layers of complexity.

Well, for one, we belong to multiple hierarchies, often specialized ones.

Sapolsky uses the example of Joey Chestnut, the hot dog eating champion.

He's at the absolute pinnacle of one very specific hierarchy.

Ha.

Okay.

I see.

So we can be top dog in one area and way down the ladder in another.

Exactly.

And we tend to mentally prioritize the hierarchies where we excel.

We also have internal standards.

Get this testosterone.

It's often linked just to aggression.

Yeah.

That's the common idea.

But Sapolsky points out it tracks individual skill -based wins more closely.

It's not just about winning.

It's about you succeeding based on your standards and something you care about.

That's a huge insight.

So what's the real -world impact of all this ranking?

You mentioned unequal access.

It has big consequences.

Sapolsky cites a study across 37 countries.

Higher income inequality correlated strongly with more bullying among pre -adolescents in school.

Wait.

So societies with harsher economic hierarchies have kids who enforce their own playground hierarchies more brutally.

That's the finding.

It suggests the broader societal structure can filter down even to that level.

It's quite sobering.

Definitely.

And how quickly do we even figure out someone's rank?

Incredibly fast.

Like 40 milliseconds.

That's all it takes for our brains to distinguish a dominant face direct gaze from a subordinate one averted gaze.

It's almost unconscious.

40 milliseconds.

That's faster than a blink.

Pretty much.

And it seems baked in early.

There's this cool infant study Sapolsky describes.

Toddlers watch big and little squares moving on a screen.

If a big square seems to lose or back down from a little square, the toddlers look longer.

They're surprised.

Because it violates their expectation.

Big should dominate small.

Exactly.

It suggests an innate grasp of hierarchy, not just physics.

They expect the big guy to win.

And our brains are humming along, processing all this.

Oh yeah.

Frontal areas, the prefrontal cortex, decision -making hubs, they light up when we're assessing dominance.

And those theory of mind areas, like the superior temporal gyrus, they couple up with the frontal bits when we think about dominant individuals.

We're trying to figure out what they're thinking.

What's really fascinating, though, is how your own rank changes your brain, right?

Yes.

In macaques, gaining rank boosts dopamine in the reward pathways.

And that same study linking group size to brain structure.

It also found that higher ranked monkeys within those groups showed greater expansion and connectivity in those social brain regions.

So does the brain change cause the rank?

Or does achieving rank change the brain, the classic chicken or egg?

It's likely both.

Sapolsky suggests evidence points in both directions.

It's probably a feedback loop.

Okay, let's tackle testosterone again.

The common wisdom is high rank equals high T, right?

Yeah, but that's often wrong, especially in stable hierarchies.

In stable groups, it's often the low ranking adolescent males, the ones constantly challenging and scrapping for position who have the highest levels.

Interesting.

So it's more about the struggle.

Kind of.

This leads to the challenge hypothesis, which is a really key idea, Sapolsky explains.

Testosterone doesn't just cause aggression or dominance behaviors, it responds to challenges to your status.

How does that work?

It facilitates whatever behavior is needed to maintain that status in that specific context.

So if maintaining rank requires aggression,

T might ramp that up.

But Sapolsky jokes, if status depended on writing beautiful, delicate haikus,

testosterone would facilitate that.

Huh.

So it's flexible.

It fuels the status -maintaining strategy, whatever it is.

Exactly.

It's a manager, not just a blunt instrument.

Okay.

What about stress?

There used to be that idea of the executive stress syndrome, right?

The boss having all the stress.

Ah, yeah.

That came from a flawed monkey study back in the 50s.

Turns out the monkeys weren't randomly assigned.

The ones chosen as executives were already more stressed out.

So what's the real picture?

Generally, it's the subordinates who are more chronically stressed.

They tend to have higher baseline stress hormones, like glucocorticoids.

Their stress response system is sluggish to turn on and slow to turn off.

And that has health costs, presumably.

Big time.

In baboons, lower rank correlates with higher blood pressure, worse cholesterol profiles, weaker immune systems, a whole cascade of negative effects.

But it's not always clear -cut.

Alphas can be stressed too.

Absolutely.

Context matters hugely.

An alpha male constantly having to defend his position or keep rivals away from mates, he can be incredibly stressed.

So the meaning of the rank is crucial.

Does the subordinate have ways to cope?

Can the dominant displace aggression onto someone else?

Is there social support?

And personality plays a role too.

Definitely.

An individual's temperament, how they react to novelty, for instance, modulates the stress effects of their rank.

It's complex.

And for humans, this translates into SES, socioeconomic status.

Yes.

And this is critical.

Sapolsky emphasizes that subjective SES, how poor you feel, how you perceive your rank, is at least as powerful a predictor of health outcomes as objective SES, like your actual income.

Wow.

So feeling low on the latter is physiologically damaging, regardless of the actual bank balance.

To a large extent, yes.

It's the chronic psychological stress.

And income inequality makes it worse.

The steeper the hierarchy in a society, the stronger the link between SES and poor health, especially for things like cardiovascular disease and mental health issues.

That's incredibly important.

Okay, shifting gears slightly.

Humans sometimes choose leaders not just based on dominance, but for the common good, right?

That seems unique.

It does seem distinctly human, this idea of selecting leaders based on perceived fairness or benefit to the group, not just who's toughest.

And how do we make those choices, consciously and unconsciously?

Both.

We look at competence, experience, sure.

But we're also swayed by things like physical attractiveness, how masculine a face looks, especially when we feel threatened, like in wartime.

Even how leaders talk using we and us influences us.

And kids can pick winners just from faces.

It's remarkable.

Studies show kids aged 5 to 13 can predict election outcomes based only on candidate photos, with accuracy significantly better than chance.

Something about perceived competence or dominance in the face resonates early.

Okay, this next bit is fascinating.

Political views.

Sapolsky argues they're not just random opinions, but form these consistent packages.

Yeah, like ideological styles.

He mentions that New Yorker cartoon, Does This Dress Make Me Look Republican?

It captures how deep these orientations run.

They often predict views on things that seem totally unrelated, like art preferences or views on littering.

So what are the underlying factors?

Sapolsky breaks down a few.

One is intellectual style.

On average, people leaning right tend to be less comfortable with ambiguity,

preferring clearer, simpler answers.

People leaning left often show more

integrative complexity.

They're more likely to see multiple causes for things, shift from gut reactions to more situational explanations.

Think about explaining poverty, for example.

And being tired or stressed affects this?

Hugely.

Cognitive load, being tired, rushed, hungry, distracted.

Even having a high blood alcohol level tends to make people lean more towards conservative judgments and experiments.

The parole judge example really drives that home.

It's stark, isn't it?

Judges granting significantly more parole right after a food break compared to right before.

Basic physiology influencing major decisions.

Then there's morality.

Hates moral foundations.

Right.

Jonathan Haight's work suggests different moral palates.

Liberals tend to strongly prioritize care, fairness, and liberty.

Conservatives value those, too, but give much greater weight to loyalty, authority, and sanctity, the binding foundations.

This explains differing views on things like group criticism or tradition.

What about emotions?

There are differences there, too.

On average, conservatives tend to perceive more threat in ambiguous situations, show more dislike for novelty, and exhibit more parochial empathy.

Empathy focused more on their in -group.

There's also terror management theory.

Reminders of death can make people lean more conservative.

Interestingly, studies often find right -leaners report higher levels of happiness.

Why might that be?

The reasons are debated.

Maybe simpler answers are more comforting.

Maybe system justification, believing the current system is fair, reduces angst.

It's complex.

And biology.

Disgust sensitivity.

Yeah, this is wild.

The insular cortex in the brain is involved in disgust.

Both physical, like rotten food, and moral disgust.

Sapolsky mentions a study where simply being in a smelly room made subjects slightly more socially conservative in their judgments.

Seriously, a bad smell.

Yep.

And generally, conservatives tend to have lower thresholds for disgust and are less likely to use cognitive strategies to downplay disturbing images.

This links to the problematic wisdom of repugnance idea.

If it feels gross, it must be wrong.

But, you know, whose gut feeling wins?

What about brain structure?

Some studies, though needing more replication, suggest links.

Liberalism associated with a larger anterior cingulate cortex involved in error detection and empathy.

Conservatism with a larger amygdala, the threat detector.

And greater amygdala activation to threats or disgusting images.

And genetics.

Twin studies suggest political orientation is maybe around 50 % heritable.

But Sapolsky adds big caveats, replication issues, small effect sizes.

It's not deterministic, but suggests some biological predisposition.

Okay, let's move to obedience and conformity.

Following authority versus following the group.

Right.

And Sapolsky stresses these are value -neutral concepts.

Conforming to traffic laws is good.

Conforming to a lynch mob is terrible.

Obedience can build societies or enable atrocities.

It's deeply ingrained, isn't it?

Even in animals.

Oh, absolutely.

Chimps copy the way the alpha solves a puzzle, even if they find a better way themselves.

Vervet monkeys learn to avoid certain foods, just because others do, long after the food stops being unpleasant.

Our brains seem wired to get along by going along.

It happens incredibly fast.

And what happens in our brain when we don't conform?

When we realize we're the odd one out.

It triggers an error signal.

The amygdala flares up anxiety, unease.

The insula, too.

And a network involved in reinforcement learning basically signals.

You're different, therefore you're wrong.

It feels bad to be out of step.

And this can even change what we think we saw.

That's one of those startling findings.

Studies show conformity can literally alter activity in the visual cortex.

It's as if your brain revises your perception to match the groups.

You don't just say you saw what they saw, you kind of believe you did.

Which brings us to those classic, disturbing experiments.

The big three, yeah.

You have Ash's conformity studies.

Where people agreed with obviously wrong answers about line lengths, just because everyone else did.

Exactly.

Then Milgram's obedience studies.

The shock experiments, 65 % going all the way to the maximum voltage, just because a guy in a lab coat told them to.

Chilling.

Deeply chilling, and essential for understanding how ordinary people can participate in terrible things under orders.

And finally, Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment.

Right.

Randomly assigned students becoming brutal guards or passive prisoners within days.

Zimbardo's takeaway was, the bad barrel, the situation itself corrupts.

But these studies aren't without controversy, are they?

No, definitely not.

There are ethical concerns, questions about how much the researchers influenced the outcomes,

potential biases, and who volunteered.

And later studies haven't always found the same results.

Correct.

The BBC prison study, for instance, tried to replicate the SPE setup, but didn't get the same automatic slide into brutality.

The prisoners actually resisted, the guards were ineffective, and the system collapsed.

It's suggested that individual differences like authoritarian personality traits, the bad apples, matter more than Zimbardo initially argued.

The guards who eventually did try to impose harsh rule scored highest on authoritarianism before the study.

So where does that leave us?

Sounds complicated.

It is.

But Sapolsky pulls out two key truths.

One,

a disturbingly high number of perfectly normal people can be pressured into doing awful things.

The power of the situation is real.

Okay.

But, and this is crucial, there are always people who resist.

Even in Milgram's studies, 35 % refused to go all the way.

There's what's been called the banality of heroism.

Ordinary people choosing to do the right thing, even under pressure.

What helps people resist that pressure?

Several things reduce conformity and obedience.

The authority figure matters.

Are they seen as legitimate?

Are they physically present?

Do they have prestige?

Compliance drops if the authority is distant or seems unqualified.

What else?

Avoiding gradual escalation, what Sapolsky calls incrementalism.

It's easier to say no to a big awful request than to the tenth tiny step across a moral line.

Also, preventing the diffusion of responsibility.

If everyone feels responsible, like at a firing squad where no one knows who fired the fatal shot, compliance is easier.

Countering anonymity helps too.

Uniforms, masks, they make it easier to shed personal responsibility.

And the victim's role.

Hugely important.

Compliance plummets when the victim is individuated.

In Milgram variations, if the teacher had to physically hold the learner's hand onto the shock plate, obedience dropped dramatically.

Making the victim real, not abstract, is key.

And when victims define themselves.

Yes.

When they seize their own narrative.

Sapolsky uses the example, say it out loud, I'm black and I'm proud.

When people assert their own identity, rather than letting an authority define them as other or lesser,

it disrupts the power dynamic and makes compliance harder.

Are there personality traits linked to resistance?

Some evidence suggests people lower in right -wing authoritarianism and maybe higher in social intelligence are more likely to resist.

But perhaps the most powerful factor.

Alternatives.

Meaning.

Just having one other person dissent.

In Asch's studies, if just one other confederate gave the correct answer, the subject's conformity rates dropped massively.

Seeing that you're not alone is incredibly galvanizing.

It breaks the spell of unanimity.

Wow.

One person can make that much difference.

It seems so.

It turns dissent from a lonely act into a potential coalition.

Okay.

Let's try to wrap this up.

We've covered a huge amount.

We have.

We've seen how hierarchies are deeply embedded in us, sharing roots with other species, but also creating uniquely human pressures like socioeconomic status, which can really impact wellbeing.

And our political leanings, our social attitudes, they aren't just opinions floating in space.

They're connected to, well, surprisingly deep biological and psychological pattern.

Right.

Influencing how we see the world, how we judge others, even how happy we feel.

And then there's that constant tension between going along with the group or authority and resisting.

Exactly.

The pull to conform and obey is incredibly strong, biologically rooted even.

But that capacity to resist, to act heroically even in small ways, that's also fundamental to who we are.

It's not just for superheroes.

So the final thought for you, our listener,

as you navigate your own social worlds, maybe think about those pressures, not just what you might do in a situation, but why?

How aware are you of these often invisible forces, the pull of the group, the weight of authority, the subtle influence of status, and maybe consider what circumstances, what tiny shifts in context might nudge you towards actions you wouldn't expect, whether for better or for worse, something to ponder.

Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.

We'll catch you next time.