Men’s Pathways to Success in the Modern World: An Evolutionary Perspective on Prestige and Status Striving

Men have evolved to seek status and recognition in a niche that is valued in the wider culture (e.g., a respected warrior or physician) and through this obtain some level of social potency and access to resources (e.g., cows, cash) that are important in that culture. Men who excel in a culturally important niche are more likely to marry and have children than are men who do not find and excel in such a niche. The relation between gaining status in a valued niche and marriage prospects is unique to men, that is, this relation is not found for women. In hunter-gatherer and other traditional contexts, gaining status typically involves developing competencies, such as hunting skills, that important in that culture. These men then earn prestige and are afforded respect and status based on their contributions to the group. In these contexts, the pathways to prestige were limited and boys enter them through observing successful men in their life and often through the tutelage and direction provided by these men. In other words, most boys and young men need to understand the pathways to cultural success and be guided to them by men in their community. 

Economic development creates many pathways to prestige, but when combined with individualistic mores, can also lead to confusion as to the best pathways for individual men. Moreover, rapid economic development, such as loss of manufacturing jobs, compounds these difficulties by closing off some traditional pathways and creating new ones. The new paths might or might not be good fits to boys’ and men’s comparative advantages, that is, their cognitive abilities and interests that are strengths. For many boys and men, these strengths are in visuospatial areas and mechanical reasoning and are associated with an interest in how things work. These competencies are well suited for white collar (e.g., engineering) and skilled blue-collar professions that involve working with things, although there are also boys and men with comparative advantage in reading and language abilities that would lead to success in more people-oriented professions. The career paths and routes to gaining prestige and respect likely differ for boys and men with these different comparative advantages. 

Getting boys on a productive path will require determining their comparative advantages relative to the job opportunities in the broader culture and starting focused skill development in adolescence. But, this is not sufficient. As in more traditional contexts, many boys and young men will do better in the long run if they are integrated into a male-focused network that includes older men who are successful in these domains and will provide guidance for their career and personal development.      

David C. Geary received a BS in psychology from Santa Clara University in 1979, an MS in clinical child/school psychology from California State University (East Bay) in 1981, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside, in 1986. He’s currently a Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri. His work spans topics ranging from children’s mathematical cognition to the evolution of sex differences. He’s written five sole authored books: Children’s Mathematical Development (1994), Male, Female (3 editions, 1998, 2010, 2021), Origin of Mind (2005), Evolution of Vulnerability (2015), and The Evolved Mind and Modern Education (2024). He also co-authored one book, Sex Differences (2008), co-edited a five-volume series on Mathematical Cognition and Learning, and a volume on evolution and human development. He’s  published more than 385 articles and chapters across psychology, education, and biology. He served on the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel and was appointed by President G. W. Bush to the National Board of Advisors for the Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Among other honors, he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, and a recipient of the G. Stanley Hall Award for Lifetime Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology.