Recently I posted concerning Kathy Morgan's request for the earliest date for use of the term "alpha" to indicate the dominant individual in a group, as in "alpha male".
As I seem to be the only responder to this query, I continue my lonely quest. I pointed out that the OED cites as earliest use its occurrence in an article in _Science_ in 1954. But (for shame, OED) their citation is incorrect. I then noted the use of "alpha male" in an article by U. Cowgill in _Science_ in 1964, and an earlier one in a magazine called "Magnum Photos" in 1960. I can now go farther back, even before the OED's spurious 1954 claim. The new source is this: Greenberg, B. and G. Noble (1944). Social Behavior of the American Chameleon (Anolis carolinensis Voigt). Physiological Zoology, 17, No. 4 pp. 392-439. They use the term "alpha male" on three occasions, the first being this: "Later this same male mated with a smaller male, put into the cage to test the ability of the alpha male to distinguish sex" (p. 409). As once again they do not define the term, presumably it had already entered general use by this time. Further browsing suggests the term originated with the primatologist Clarence Ray Carpenter when working as a fellow of the Yerkes Primate Laboratories. He studied rhesus monkeys on the island of Cayo Santiago in the late 1930's, and the term "alpha male" occurs frequently in discussions of his work. For example, see Harding and Hintikka (2003), _Discovering Reality_ (2nd ed), p. 170 [available by searching in Google Books]. Montgomery (2005) has a recent review of Carpenter's work. While I'm confident that "alpha male" originated with Carpenter, I haven't been able to retrieve any of his papers to verify this. One place I think it might appear is in his 1942 article cited below. Assuming I'm right about this, there's still the question how a term which originated in a specialized, even obscure scientific field made its way into popular culture. One explanation is that Carpenter's work on Cayo Santiago was featured in Life Magazine, and this may have introduced the term to a wider readership (see p. 7 of Dolores Flamiano, Meaning, Memory, and Misogyny: Life Photographer Hansel Mieth's Monkey Portrait (2005) available at http://tinyurl.com/nkal3u ). Carpenter, C.R. (1942). Sexual Behavior of Free Ranging Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta). I.Specimens, Procedures and Behavioral Characteristics of Estrus. Journal of Comparative Psychology 33(1): 113-143. Montgomery, G. (2005). Place, Practice and Primatology: Clarence Ray Carpenter, Primate Communication and the Development of Field Methodology, 1931-1945. _Journal of the History of Biology_, 38: 495-533. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
