Human status is socially learned like language, not animal instinct

Evidence

This thinking can go too far, however: the right-wing psychologist Jordan Peterson points to hierarchies in lobster communities as proof that humans evolved an “unspeakably primordial calculator, deep within you, at the very foundation of your brain, far below your thoughts and feelings” that “monitors exactly where you are positioned in society.” These parallels between dominance hierarchies in the animal world and human status structures are far too simplistic. Grade-school bullying may resemble pecking orders, but status hierarchies tend to be based more on esteem rather than raw power. Status is more akin to language, argues Cecilia Ridgeway: “a social form that is deeply cultural and socially learned.” We are not “status monkeys” any more than we are “song birds.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 62

Categorization

• XREF: Directly rebuts the popular Jordan Peterson lobster-hierarchy argument, framing status as cultural rather than evolutionary. — connects to: Conventions, not instincts or rationality, best explain much human behavior — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 186; Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals; Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness #corroborates (0.92)
• Humans were selected for behavioral malleability, not fixedness #expands (0.90) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 178
• Humans were evolutionarily selected for learnability, not behavioral fixedness #corroborates (0.88)
• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517
• Theorizing instinct as socially produced can accidentally naturalize existing social conditions. #complicates (0.80)
• Symbols are elaborated socially like language, not inherited from a mysterious unconscious #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals #expands (0.78)
• Identity is constituted through social action and language rather than merely reflected in behavior #corroborates (0.76) — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 19
• Language frees humans from stimulus-response and enables self-consciousness #expands (0.72) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 86