For decades, scientists believed that early hunter-gatherer societies were largely egalitarian, with strict social hierarchies only emerging alongside farming and complex civilisation.
However, new research from Arizona State University (ASU) challenges this view, suggesting that inequality in influence — choosing who to listen to and copy — may be hardwired into human nature.
In a study involving computer models and 800 participants, researchers found that humans have an evolutionary instinct to follow “prestige hierarchies”. Unlike dominance hierarchies seen in primates, which rely on aggression and strength, human hierarchies are built on a “talent marketplace” where people gain status because others believe they are skilled or knowledgeable.
“At some point in our past, humans became reliant on culture,” explains Thomas Morgan, an evolutionary anthropologist at ASU. “We don’t solve problems on our own; we have to work as a team and learn from each other. In this context, people who are really skilled, intelligent, or charismatic are valuable… if you have a skill, you can leverage that into status.”
The snowball effect
The researchers found that this search for skilled leaders creates a “snowball effect” that rapidly generates inequality.
To test the theory, the team asked 800 volunteers to analyse groups of coloured dots and identify which colour appeared most frequently. After making a guess, participants were required to copy someone else’s answer. They were given two pieces of information about their peers: how often that person had been right in the past, and how often other people had already copied them.
The results were stark. Participants did not copy randomly; they gravitated toward those who were already popular.
“As you might expect, people cared about how accurate their group-mates were… But they also cared about how many times their group members were copied by others,” says Morgan.
This behaviour meant that, very quickly, a small number of people came to shape the group’s decisions. In some cases, people followed popular individuals even more than those who were objectively more accurate.
Evolutionary shortcut
Robin Watson, a lecturer at the University of Lincoln and visiting researcher at ASU, explains that this mechanism serves as a mental shortcut.
“The more people follow one individual, the more influential that person becomes,” Watson says. “This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If those with influence have useful information, then prestige provides us with an accessible shortcut to help us decide who to learn from.”
The study suggests that this instinct — monitoring who others defer to — helped early humans survive by quickly identifying good role models. However, it also explains patterns seen in modern workplaces, politics, and social media, where influence can become concentrated in the hands of a few, regardless of their actual expertise.
“Understanding this tendency doesn’t mean hierarchy is inevitable or always good,” the researchers conclude. “But it does suggest that inequality in influence isn’t just a feature of modern societies — it may be part of how human groups have always worked.”
