This process of self-domestication, she continued,

happens as groups of beta and gamma males (the less strong ones) work together to unseat alphas who exploit the community. They might ostracize him (the alpha male) but mostly they assassinate him. What that means is that slowly over time you get more egalitarian dynamics (such as the birth of democracy for example.

In the case of the former president, McDermott wrote:

Trump is a poster child for a “coercive alpha male” and frankly I have been surprised that more Republicans don’t try to take him on directly. I think part of it is that other potential Republican leaders are so narcissistic that they cannot band together in the kind of coalition that historically would have brought down a leader like this in one way or another. This depends on coalitional dynamics: men working together in cooperation, not against each other.

Democratic norms, according to McDermott

are one way the country has tried to constrain the negative effects of Trump through things like rule of law and elections (Biden won in 2020). But they have not been as strong as many would like or hope for, and I agree that this is partly (although not entirely) related to increasing polarization (i.e. the inability to form strong united coalitional bonds).

As far as “coercive alpha males” go, Trump is a bully, as demonstrated by his treatment both of competitors for the nomination in 2016 and of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida now; he boasts of his predatory sexual activity; and he lacks empathy, as reflected in his policies separating the children of detained immigrants from their parents at the border.

As the same time, Trump has a long and detailed history of violating the fundamental obligations of a true leader. He is both unreliable and a liar, repeatedly failing to pay bills for services, products and construction; defrauding students who paid to learn about real estate; distorting the truth repeatedly and extensively, about everything from President Barack Obama’s place of birth to the size of his inauguration crowd all the way on through to the results of the 2020 election; promising to “drain the swamp” only to preside over an administration rife with self-dealing.

On top of all that, Trump is often simply preposterous, more a late-night TV subject of ridicule, lacking character and the observable qualities of a credible leader, crude more than calculating, a con artist, huckster and hustler.

Even so, there are a large number of people who are not persuaded by Wrangham’s line of thinking. John Horgan, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, where he serves as director of the Stevens Center for Science Writings emailed his response to my inquiry:

I have a meta-objection to Wrangham’s use of biology to explain modern social behavior. It’s far too deterministic, it lets us off the hook, it reduces our autonomy. When Wrangham’s ideas seep into popular culture, they feed into peoples’ fatalism about hierarchies, inequality and militarism

R. Brian Ferguson, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers, responded to my inquiry regarding the Sarkar-Wrangham paper by first acknowledging that

I come from a very critical position. One foundational difference in perspectives is that my new book, “Chimpanzees, War and History: Are Men Born to Kill?“ is intended to refute current primatological consensus that chimpanzees have evolved propensities to “proactively” kill neighbors.

Ferguson continued:

I have been deeply involved in understanding war, conflict, and politics in tribal societies, and I do not recognize anything like their idea of alphas facing death because of sub-alpha elite coalitions, except in the notable category of segmental tributary chiefdoms and states, where there are rivals near the top ready to rebel, and usually then take over.

McAdams, the professor of psychology at Northwestern, does not share Horgan and Ferguson’s doubts about Wrangham. In an essay written in the first year of the Trump presidency, “The Appeal of the Primal Leader: Human Evolution and Donald J. Trump,” Ferguson argued along lines similar to Pinker’s that

If angry extraversion and disagreeableness characterize his temperament style, narcissism captures Trump’s underlying motivational agenda. Although some dominant leaders subscribe to an overarching set of values and goals, Trump has no political philosophy to speak of, and his central goal in life is, and always has been, to promote himself. In Trump’s case, narcissism seems to play well with the authoritarian dynamic.

Trump, McAdams continues, “harkens back to an older evolutionarily paradigm for achieving status in primate groups. It is the paradigm of brute dominance, an atavistic proclivity whose primal appeal never seems to fade.”

Why, McAdams asks, “did 63 million Americans elect a president of the United States who was repeatedly described during the campaign, by both Democrats and Republicans, as a serial liar, a sexual predator, a swindler, a narcissist and a bully?”

McAdams answers:

No U.S. president in recent memory, and perhaps none ever, has tapped so effectively into the primal psychology of dominance. None has so effectively cultivated an authoritarian dynamic with his followers.

In addition, according to McAdams,

Trump’s unique personality profile — the high extraversion and low agreeableness, the narcissistic motivations, the “warrior” life story — seems perfectly suited to assume the authoritarian mantel at a time in American history when many Americans crave the security and exult in the excitement that such a mantel seems to confer. Even as he creates chaos, Donald Trump — as president of the United States — confidently assured Americans that he would deliver them from chaos. We will be standing safe and strong in the end. We will win. We will dominate.

To some, Trump is less a cause than a symptom of the pervasive contemporary undermining of the American commitment to democratic values.

Kevin Smith, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska, argued by email that there is no doubt that there has been a weakening of democratic norms and that this erosion

has loosened the constraints on what counts as behavioral red lines for political leaders. This is almost certainly true for “coercive alpha males,” but I think it is broader than that. As those norms decay there is simply more room available for a range of personalities to get their swagger on in the political arena, as it were, aggressively and openly seeking power to aggrandize themselves and punish those who stand in the way.

Smith pointed out that there are no “gender limits here (think of Marjorie Taylor Greene).” In addition, in Smith’s view, the issue goes to the heart of “the corroding of what’s considered beyond the behavioral pale.”