Study: Being Alpha Is Not Enough. Being Alpha + Prosocial Is

Being an alpha male is supposed to get you girls. Right? So why are so many “alphas” dating fat girls – or alone? It’s because “being alpha” is NOT enough!

Way back in the 2000-naughts, the seduction community talked frequently about “alpha males” as obstacles to overcome when picking up. These alpha male guys – the top dogs of mixed male and female groups pick up artists would approach – had to be dealt with properly if you wanted to take up a girl from their groups.

Somewhere in the late 2000-naughts, the idea of “alpha males” got picked up by the nascent manosphere. Except, rather than alpha males being obstacles you had to overcome to get the girl, alpha males transmogrified into heroic exemplars of whom you should aim to become yourself to excel with women and in life.

I did my best to try to stem the tide of this trend even as early as mid-2011, but growth of “alpha male mentality” was inexorable at that point. Today it’s accepted wisdom among a plurality (perhaps even a majority) of Western men that “you’ve got to be alpha” if you want to succeed socially, in business, and in love.

There’s just one problem: plenty of “alpha males” barely get laid, make little money, and have few decent friends. How do we explain this?

To understand it, we have to go back to before the alpha male craze began – back a few decades, in fact, to a study conducted in 1995.