this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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A lot of women find empathy sexy. The women who only go for alpha males are the ones you usually want to avoid.
Alpha male isn't even a thing. Not even in nature. People who call themselves that are mostly delusional assholes no-one likes.
No, they are biologically real, despite it being obsolete nomenclature iirc. Alpha doesn't equate to "good" though. Just dominance.They exist in most if not all tournament species, but not so much in pair bonding apecies.
You can determine what category species fall under just by looking at average size differences of male and female skulls/other bone.
This provides a ton of information about mating habits, intersexual aggression, likelyhood of infidelity, role of males in raising kids and whole lot more.
Humans are in am evolutionary transition period from tournament to pair bonding.
All that being said, the traits selected to determine alphas can be about aggression and dominance and they can be about beauty, collaboration and territorial. Thia gets complex in birds and primates.
Alao, whatever strategy has the best chances of successfully reproducing and surviving through time does not automagically become legitimate, valuable or desireable. You need an extra ingredient for that. Priorities, which require value.
To add onto that, the guy that originally published the "alpha male" study spent a lot of time trying to correct public views and publish corrective studies because he discovered the behavior was only in wolves kept in captivity. IIRC.
It's kind of a thing in certain animals, but not wolves like originally claimed. The certain animals here being mostly primates, so it's even more applicable.
That said, the politics of social primates are notoriously complex and many cultures have unique behaviors within the species, so there aren't really any universal rules particularly among the most social groups.
TBH, Silverbacks are actually good role models: Big, bulky, sit around grooming the troupe, know everyone, emotionally support everyone, when someone wants to start a fight, intervenes, "You wanna fight? Yeah, fight me! Both of you at once, if need be!" -- and then suddenly the others lost interest in fighting.
Proverbial gymbro speaking softly and carrying a big stick, far from a tyrant, you know the type. Chimpanzees are the closest to us, with warfare and everything. Bonobos are... well, they are what biologists start talking about when they want to get into your pants. Let's just say there's a reason you don't see them in zoos, parents don't want to hear kids asking those kinds of questions.
Isn't it weird that for humans, sex is a private matter? Completely singular among all the animals. And that's independent of social status, like a smaller sea lion seducing a female one while the big hunk de jure leading the pack isn't looking, it's universal. Even if sex is a group activity, then that group itself is putting up layers of privateness and propriety. Swinger clubs with fancy dress codes, doesn't matter if you end up naked but you have to start out in suit and tie.
If a scientist would, today, discover humanity and describe their behaviour they'd be laughed out of any conference, "did you get your notes mixed up". "Next thing you want to tell us camelopards are real".
Most people can pull a trigger.