The Baboon Troop that Mellowed Out After the Alpha Males Died

I got an email last night from a former student (thanks Hendrick!) who wanted to let me know that Stanford's Robert Sapolsky had done a WNYC radio show called "New Normal?" (listen here) where he described his 2004 article with Lisa Share on a troop of baboons -- which became more peaceful (or at least less nasty) after the alpha males died.  It is amazing stuff, and more evidence that being a jerk and having power go hand in hand.  Here is a link to the original academic article (which I was able to download for free). It is short and quite accessible, and just astounding stuff:  Here is how I described it in The No Asshole Rule:

Biologists Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share have followed a troop of wild baboons in Kenya for over 20 years, starting in 1978.  Sapolsky and Share called them “The Garbage Dump Troop” because they got much of their food from a garbage pit at a tourist lodge.  But not every baboon was allowed to eat from the pit in the early 1980s:  The aggressive, high status males in the troop refused to allow lower status males, or any females, to eat the garbage. Between 1983 and 1986, infected meat from the dump led to the deaths of 46% of the adult males in the troop. The biggest and meanest males died off.  As in other baboon troops studied, before they died, these top-ranking males routinely bit, bullied, and chased males of similar and lower status, and occasionally directed their aggression at females.

But when the top ranking males died-off in the mid-1980s, aggression by the (new) top baboons dropped dramatically, with most aggression occurring between baboons of similar rank, and little of it directed toward lower-status males, and none at all directed at females. Troop members also spent a larger percentage of the time grooming, sat closer together than in the past, and hormone samples indicated that the lowest status males experienced less stress than underlings in other baboon troops. Most interestingly, these effects persisted at least through the late 1990’s, well after all the original “kinder” males had died-off.  Not only that, when adolescent males who grew up in other troops joined the “Garbage Dump Troop,” they too engaged in less aggressive behavior than in other baboon troops.  As Sapolsky put it “We don’t understand the mechanism of transmission… but the jerky new guys are obviously learning: We don’t do things like that around here.”  So, at least by baboon standards, the garbage dump troop developed and enforced what I would call a “no asshole rule.”

I am not suggesting that you get rid of all the alpha males in your organization, as tempting as that may be at times.  The lesson from the baboons is that when the social distance between higher and lower status mammals in a group are reduced, and steps are taken to keep the distance smaller, higher status members are less likely to act like jerks.   Human leaders can use this lesson to avoid turning into mean, selfish, and insensitive jerks too. Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is ran, and to what customers really think about their company’s products and services.  As “The Garbage Dump Troop” teaches us, the key thing these leaders do is to take potent, and constant, steps that dampen rather amplify the power differences between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company). 

Any reactions? What do you think the implications for implementing the no asshole rule?

P.S. I seem to have a bit of an obsession with power dynamics  in baboon troops, you may recall this post called Of Baboons and Bosses, on how lower status troop members glance at the alpha male every 20 or 30 seconds.

Comments

[alpha male]

Wow Impressive! Your blog is very informative. However, it is pretty hard task but your post and experience serve and teach me how to handle and make it more simple and manageable.Thanks for the tips… Best regards.

[Deborah Preuss]

Any chance the shift came from a pheromone shift? I mean - maybe all the alpha males were high-testosterone, and incited the troop simply thru smell?

[Thorne]

RE: "I think there are clear lessons to learn from this."

Don't trust your next PR campaign to baboons?

[Cecelia Ghezzi]

That is funny how the no asshole rule applies even in the animal kingdom. The group got along much better after the alpha assholes were gone, just like in a work enviornment. Overbearing, aggressive people (and monkeys) will have detremental effects on others that surround them.

[Ergoboy]

I think the baboon troop that I used to work with mellowed out once they got rid of their "alpha male".
And ironically, this alpha male was the instrument of his own demise.

[Jan]

I think there are clear lessons to learn from this. Having said that, there is a big difference in the missions between a tribe of baboons, and an organization that delivers world class products and services. All the mechanisms that promote survival in a hostile environment (baboon case), is not suitable for a company that wants to deliver products of high standard. My own thesis is that these old mechanisms of survival mess things up when we try to build great computers or great societies. The things that were suitable for 100 000 years ago, are not that suitable today. There are different threats to us today in the form of constant stress, brain deceases, and not getting child care, than survival amongst predators on the savanna.

[dblwyo]

The really key, nay critical, question (at least imho)is to relate a more socially resilient organization to higher and sustainable performance. It's one thing to argue for a more congenial environment but the missing magic ingredient seems to be what's the result? We wouldn't be having these little chats if we didn't all suspect that better performance results. Now can it be explicitly linked? And then can it be designed?
On the answers to those questions rests the value of better workplace environments.

[marc cenedella]

The question might be "why do jerks arise in the first place?" Presumably other troops at other times throughout the ages have had their Alpha males die off, leaving the kinder baboons to mellow.

The continued presence in modernity of jerk baboons implies that, in the wild, there are benefits to the behavior that outweigh the costs.

So I think the larger lesson here is that even when selection favors it, jerk-ness can die out, at least temporarily, among primates.

Interesting implications for us...

[CareerAnnie]

I think it's ironic that the alpha males were the instruments of their own demise.