“Alpha” and “beta” originated from a crappy study on wolves, where the researcher was researching hierarchy in wolf packs, but it was not a wolf pack but random groups of unrelated captive wolves. They came to the conclusion that there are “alpha male” wolves hierarchically above the “beta male” wolves. The study, despite being retracted by the publisher and denounced by the researcher, is widely viewed as fact. (source)
The toxic “masculinity” crowd then took this and started using “alpha male” to refer to “masculine” men and “beta male” to “insufficiently masculine” men. The neologism “sigma” was created in parody of this, with people claiming to be a “sigma” and thus above “alphas”.
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“Alpha” and “beta” originated from a crappy study on wolves, where the researcher was researching hierarchy in wolf packs, but it was not a wolf pack but random groups of unrelated captive wolves. They came to the conclusion that there are “alpha male” wolves hierarchically above the “beta male” wolves. The study, despite being retracted by the publisher and denounced by the researcher, is widely viewed as fact. (source)
The toxic “masculinity” crowd then took this and started using “alpha male” to refer to “masculine” men and “beta male” to “insufficiently masculine” men. The neologism “sigma” was created in parody of this, with people claiming to be a “sigma” and thus above “alphas”.