Alpha male death rate and war's effect on society

[sapperfitz82]

I am deciding wether to spend any time on a project to look at the relationship between wars, or periods of war, and societal change from the assumption that are best, most alpha type males are the ones who bear the largest burden of casualties. Might not be a water tight hypothesis, but it explains France.
Anyone heard of a similar study or have ideas on where/methodolgies of research? Its pretty subjective, I know. I would be grateful for thoughts.

Regards.

[Fuchs]

That would require a model, a statistical analysis including significance test. You would need to have metrics - death rate, performance/behaviour metrics and the model would also need to account for the temporal spacing between cause and effect (strength).


I am quite sure that you won't have enough datasets for statistical significance.

[Ken White]

who blames Type As for many ills of the world -- while acknowledging they are sometimes needed -- I think that would be interesting. I also think Fuchs is correct, it's probably going to be almost impossible to accrue meaningful data in sufficient quantity. Maybe not...

Good luck.

[defense linguistics]

I am deciding wether to spend any time on a project to look at the relationship between wars, or periods of war, and societal change from the assumption that are best, most alpha type males are the ones who bear the largest burden of casualties. Might not be a water tight hypothesis, but it explains France.

Beta dog + absence of Alphas = newly minted Alphas. Which also explains France. (Have you been to France? I've lived here for a decade and have noticed no absence of Alphas, actually. Maybe that's just because I work for the military.) Legend has it that losses among Napoleon's guard explains the lower average height of the population. But then my wife is 6 feet tall, so va savoir.

[Fuchs]

Napoleon's guard numbered thousands, while France already had many millions of inhabitants at that time. It was furthermore a veterans guard, not a "tall men" guard as the famous "Lange Kerls".

[OfTheTroops]

#1 problem set you can overcome that easily enough with clever writing
#2 Sample size millions a whole country maybe you could narrow it down to a village
#3 availability the target is dead do you do personality analysis on their french memoirs
#4 hypothesis dependent on hypothesis that modern society(values culture beliefs behaviors and attitudes) was directly and moreso by this than michael jackson shaped by loss shaky foundation
#5 Type A's probably survived the great wars better due to attention to detail and hygiene and obsession with control than Type b,c,d, f,g Since field san and such were the greatest killers.

Just seems in the very hard to do block.

You could always just write it as an editorial for the Times and not have to back up any of your claims with research

[ganulv]

as the dataset? From the abstract of Corley, Crang, and Deary’s 2009 article:

Male soldiers with a higher childhood IQ had a slightly increased risk of dying during active service in WWII. Men who did not join the Army had a higher IQ than men who did. Further research in this area should consider naval and air force personnel records in order to examine more fully the complex relationship between IQ and survival expectancy during active service in WWII.

[defense linguistics]

Napoleon's guard numbered thousands, while France already had many millions of inhabitants at that time. It was furthermore a veterans guard, not a "tall men" guard as the famous "Lange Kerls".

So much for the legend, then.

[sapperfitz82]

Goes in my favor these days, as the man said any editorial in the Times - or anywhere else for that matter - states wild claims with no proof.

Your thoughts are very helpful in forming this thought.

I am intrigued by the obvious dog pack conclusion that no alphas means betas become alphas. I will have to address that. I suppose that betas become alphas in relation to their own pack, but war implies the standard is interpack instead of intrapack. So the definition of "alpha" needs to be clear. I should like to make the claim based on the common understanding of manly honor and duty, sadly not so common; and thus my search for a cause, which led me to this hypothesis.

France is a good test, not least for an excuse to visit and do research there. Mostly because for centuries she held herself up, and was held up by others, as the martial state which typified the warrior caste. Forgive my antiquatedness but I equate that to manliness, in the virtue sense of the word. Maybe she has not lost her manly attributes.

In that same vein, Japan is an interesting study in the apprent collapse of bushido after WWII, maybe some link there.

I would postulate that whatever our current social -ism is, it is distinctly not manly (lack of desire to breed, inclusiveness to the point of submission, risk adverse malaise) in most societies being a product of our current culture and there I may be wrong. Of course that makes my whole arguement specious and a great many of my long held beliefs irrelevant so I'll take it as true and drive on for the sake of arguement.

The metadata is daunting. Perhaps it should be stated at the outset that all evidence is anecdotal. Probably never going to be Phd grade research anyhow. As I said, a good excuse to visit wine country.

[Fuchs]

The data set problem is quite insurmountable. You need at least 30 samples before a statistician will even consider relevancy.
Where do you want to find 30 countries with very high rates of wartime attrition during a short period?

Germany 18+ and 45+, France 1918+, Soviet Union 1945+, Paraguay 1860's+, Cambodia 1979+, Imperial China (shortly after the Taiping civil war in 19th century) ... more?
The you an ditch Paraguay, for its losses were not really related to risk-taking by 'alpha males', but just general mass dying. Quite the same for Soviet Union.

The Germany samples will ruin your sample set anyways...


You'd also need to show that other, correlating factors (such as PTSD, wartime malnutrition) are not responsible for the outcomes...

[ganulv]

I would postulate that whatever our current social -ism is, it is distinctly not manly (lack of desire to breed, inclusiveness to the point of submission, risk adverse malaise) in most societies being a product of our current culture and there I may be wrong.

I think in our current society most of us breed just fine, or at least have the strong desire to do so. Whether we do well at childrearing (not the same as overall fertility, of course) is another question.

The data set problem is quite insurmountable. You need at least 30 samples before a statistician will even consider relevancy.
Where do you want to find 30 countries with very high rates of wartime attrition during a short period?

You could do a case study of a single nation. I personally think that coming up with an operational definition may be the insurmountable issue. A USMC Private and Bill Clinton both can probably be put into the alpha male category, for example.

[Fuchs]

You could do a case study of a single nation.

That would be statistically totally insignificant and irrelevant, though. You need statistical significance to find a correlation - otherwise you're merely discussing a random result.

Few serious people will consider a study interesting if it lacks statistical relevance.


He can formulate a hypothesis, of course. He just cannot test it properly without obeying basic statistical principles. Anecdotical evidence can easily be countered with conflicting anecdotical evidence - which means that anecdotical evidence is useless.

[ganulv]

That would be statistically totally insignificant and irrelevant, though. You need statistical significance to find a correlation - otherwise you're merely discussing a random result.

Few serious people will consider a study interesting if it lacks statistical relevance.

He can formulate a hypothesis, of course. He just cannot test it properly without obeying basic statistical principles. Anecdotical evidence can easily be countered with conflicting anecdotical evidence - which means that anecdotical evidence is useless.

I myself uphold the double blind study as the Gold Standard in research design, but I still think the case study has its uses. Human social life rarely unfolds in a double blind fashion, after all!

[Fuchs]

Double blind would require to have dozens if not hundreds of pairs of identical countries, send each one into a terrible war and then look at them again after a few decades.

The key problem is that you need a high quantity to rule out random effects.
Once you've got statistical relevance you still need to defeat the problem that correlation doesn't always equal causality.

[ganulv]

Double blind would require to have dozens if not hundreds of pairs of identical countries, send each one into a terrible war and then look at them again after a few decades.

The key problem is that you need a high quantity to rule out random effects.
Once you've got statistical relevance you still need to defeat the problem that correlation doesn't always equal causality.

If it helps illustrate my own methodological leanings, I find the vast majority of evolutionary psych “findings” to be absolute ####e.

[sapperfitz82]

What about identifying key indicators of society that support the contention. These would have to be proven of course, or at least supported. Then show their change over time and note the change following periods of massive casualties. Take the US from 1830 to present, France 1760 to present, Germany 1550 to present (Thirty Years War will obviously have dubious casualty figures), etc. Trends over time can be useful as well, no?

[sapperfitz82]

I think in our current society most of us breed just fine, or at least have the strong desire to do so. Whether we do well at childrearing (not the same as overall fertility, of course) is another question.

Not to get too deep into the weeds, but the birth rate in most European nations, especially when controlling for non-Europeans, is dismally low. Take from the 1.5 or less birth rate what you will, I figure the women just aren't impressed enough with the men to rear their young.

[OfTheTroops]

Prosperity and selfishness is a much more likely culprit for robbing the world of manliness.

For the USMC PVT, He is not the alpha by a sight maybe he was in Boomstick, AK but not in the Army.

As for the statistical significance why couldnt you do 30 subset of villages or 30 subset of family within 30 villages i dont think it has to be a worldwide phenomena to be valid

[motorfirebox]

I think most of the work here is going to be in defining the question. What exactly defines an alpha male? Are these characteristics inborn or nurtured (to the degree that any characteristic can be accurately typed either way)? How do you test for these characteristics?

Answering these questions accurately is going to be pretty challenging on its own, without making broad assumptions like low birth rate being linked to unimpressive men.

[tequila]

Not to get too deep into the weeds, but the birth rate in most European nations, especially when controlling for non-Europeans, is dismally low. Take from the 1.5 or less birth rate what you will, I figure the women just aren't impressed enough with the men to rear their young.

Falling fertility rates are a worldwide phenomenon. As living standards rise, the need for children falls.