In The Nurture Assumption Judith Rich Harris spends many pages on detailing the ethnographic results from a study of a children’s social hierarchies. I believe she stated that male hierarchies tended to be more stable than female hierarchies. I remember thinking at the time that “masculine” forms of impersonal and somewhat simplistic pecking orders with relatively static grades would “scale” more efficiently than nuanced female social systems which have more fluidity and detailed texture. My recollection of the ethnographic literature also suggests that hypergamy where females move up the social ladder tends to be more common than the reverse (see Trivers-Willard Effect).
Posted by razib at 01:37 AM