In response to Kathy Morgan's query, I had rashly asserted that the term "alpha" to indicate the dominant animal in a group must have originated with the primate studies of C.R. Carpenter. I suggested that Carpenter might have used the term as early as 1942 in an article in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. To which David Kreiner helpfully replied:
> Stephen, first the good news. I was able to access the full text of Carpenter > (1942). The > bad news: no use of the term "alpha male." Uh-oh. Another case of a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact. I was led astray by comments such as those by Haraway (1978), on Carpenter removing the "alpha male" from his group and then observing the remaining animals. But after David's bad news, I was able to get to a book of Carpenter's published and unpublished papers dating from the 1930's.(Carpenter, 1964). He never said "alpha male" there or elsewhere in his writings, instead using such phrases as "most dominant male", "no. 1 dominant male", and "supremely dominant male". Clearly, Carpenter needed but was unaware of the succinct and memorable term "alpha male". On the other hand, William Scott set me on the right track by noting the use of the term "alpha cock" and "alpha mouse" by the zoologist W.C. Allee as early as 1942. The phrase appears even earlier in Allee's book, _The Social Live of Animals_ (1938), where it seems to be close to a definition, namely "A hen which is otherwise the _alpha_ [italics in the original] bird in the pen may be pecked with impunity by some low-ranking member, although the latter is in turn pecked by many birds over which the _alpha_ hen has a clearly established social superiority (p. 179). " So my current candidate for the originator of the phrase is W.C. Allee. Interestingly, Allee does not use the phrase in an even earlier paper (Masure and Allee, 1934), instead referring to the "despot" of the flock, an unsatisfactory and anthropomorphic term. Two final points: In searching the web, I came across an essay by Robert Ardrey on "The alpha fish" in his book _The Social Contract_ (1970) [ http://www.ditext.com/ardrey/4.html ], where he discusses the history of research on the alpha animal. He suggests, although "not sure", that it was G.K. Noble who originated the term as "the alpha fish". In my second post, I did cite a 1944 paper by Noble using this term, but nothing earlier. So I'm sticking with Allee in 1938. Second, I was already familiar with Allee through his delightful, brilliant, and disgusting (1933) study providing an early demonstration of the social facilitation effect, that things go better when performed in front of an audience. If I recall correctly, he showed that cockroaches, when in the presence of a bleacher section of enthusiastic roach supporters chanting, "Go, roach, go!", performed better on a simple maze than did solitary cockroaches. I am not making this up (ok, maybe just the chanting). Stephen Haraway, D. (1978). Animal sociology and a natural economy of the body politic, part I: A political physiology of dominance. Signs, v. 4, p. 21-- Carpenter, C.R. (1964). Naturalistic behavior of nonhuman primates. Pennsylvania State University Press. Masure, R., and Allee, W. (1934). The social order in flocks of the common chicken and the pigeon. Auk, 51, 306-327 Gates, M. F., & Allee, W. C. (1933). Conditioned behavior of isolated and grouped cockroaches on a simple maze: Journal of Comparative Psychology Vol 15(2),331-358. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
