Seniority Versus Age as Causes of Dominance in Social Groups

Abstract

Seniority systems are fundamental organizing mechanisms of most social groups, but seniority is often confounded with chronological age. An analysis of male dominance orders in troops of Japanese and rhesus macaques showed that seniority within the macaque troops was clearly more predictive of dominance than was mere chronological age. Some quasiexperimental datafrom a sample of humans also revealed that seniority was more important than chronological age in determining employee layoff rankings. The Japanese macaque data camefrom Norikoshi and Koyama 's study of two wild butprovisionedtroops ofmonkeys, each containing 26adult males. The multiple regression of dominance rank on seniority and age produced standardized multiple regression coefficients of .65 and .35 for one troop, whereas thefiguresfor the other troop were .82 and .41, respectively. A secondary analysis of Hill's rhesus macaque data showed that seniority had a standardized multiple regression coefficient of .66, but the coerficientforage was only .16, supporting the Japanese macaque data. Finally, new data from a sample of humans showed a similar pattern When subjects were asked to establish a layoff ranking of hypothetical employees described by seniority and age, their rankings were determined primarily by seniority: The coefficients were. 75 and.10, respectively.