Four Fundamental Drivers of Social Hierarchy
This article introduces four fundamental drivers underlying the gene-environment complexities of our social hierarchies.
These complexities are deep-rooted in the clash of right and good, a fundamental problem of social cooperation and well-being.1 ‘Right’ typically means legally or morally correct where ‘Good’ typically means something valuable, beneficial or desirable.2
The Gene-Environment Paradox: Human differences in cognition, behavior, moral judgments and social preferences emerge from the interplay between genetic propensities and environmental conditions.3 The result is a paradox–the paradox of the right and the good–what is considered “right” or “good” varies due to the gene-environment complexities of the interplay.4
This isn’t mere disagreement…it reflects genuine genetic and neurological differences as to how people compute fairness, risk and moral judgment.
People have different talents, abilities, life course goals, desires and outcomes shaped by an interplay between their genetic propensities and environmental conditions (e.g., social, political, economic, natural and biophysical).3
Fundamental to these differences are social conflicts over resource distribution and well-being due to differences between individuals in their social, political, economic and moral assessments of ‘right’ and its relationship to what is considered ‘good’.
The paradox leads to a competition to create, arrange and select into environments that more closely align with one’s genetically-shaped social preferences.3
While individuals naturally attempt to select into environments that align with their genetic propensities, those that sit at the top of the hierarchy can use their income, wealth and power to monopolize and institutionalize their own optimal environments, structurally trapping those in the lower socioeconomic tiers of the hierarchy.5,6
Furthermore, because conflicts over political beliefs and resource distribution are partly heritable they are biologically rooted, not merely superficial disagreements.7 Instead, these conflicts are shaped by how heritable variation interacts with social experience, influencing how individuals weigh fairness, efficiency, loyalty and risk.
System-Justified Harms: Since the emergence of the first cities and states 5,000+ years ago,8,9 social hierarchies have weaponized this variation through system-justified harms (harms that function as social and moral goods)…coercive acts such as punishment, exclusion and inequality that are framed as necessary, fair or even virtuous because they preserve the dominant group’s moral order and access to well-being. As the articles explain: When a harm functions as a social and moral good, the harm is turned into a morally right, fair, just and fully deserved punishment.
Equality Exclusions (EQEXs): System-justified harms become institutionalized through Equality Exclusions: rules, laws and policies that embed inequality into the very infrastructure of society. EQEXs make it fair, just and prosocial for individuals and groups in the upper levels of the social hierarchy to extract resources and quality life years from descending levels of the hierarchy.
The Jack-in-the-Box-Pattern: When a social hierarchy rises it is only a matter of time until it begins to fail, and when it does, another one jumps up like a jack-in-the-box to start the process all over again.12
Complexity scientist and cliodynamics pioneer Peter Turchin documents repeating historical patterns where rising inequality degrades social, political and economic structures across generations, often resulting in severe social crises and breakdowns.13 Historian Walter Scheidel describes how these crises and breakdowns compress inequality such that when the shocks subside, inequality returns… starting the process all over again. According to Scheidel: “…ever since the dawn of civilization, ongoing advances in economic capacity and state building favored growing inequality but did little if anything to bring it under control.”10
While historians explain materialistic and demographic aspects of dynamic inequality, they do not explain how or why institutions designed and optimized for a particular generation of elites systematically generate pools of dissatisfied counter-elites in future generations. In that context, the articles on this website introduce the dynamic interplay of genes and environments.
Jack includes the gene-environment stresses of socioeconomic inequality, ethnocentrism, racism and the clash of political, cultural and religious differences, stresses that can become biologically embedded within a lifetime through epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation.11
This can lead to a form of genetic determinism by default for the marginalized.
What does this mean?
All of these drivers operate within a single framework — the interplay of genes and environments — converging on a single outcome…genetic determinism by default.
While genetic variation is expressed in interactions with environments, which is why strict genetic determinism is indefensible, institutions designed as if the gene-environment interplay does not exist allow genetic determinism by default to sneak through the institutional door.
Genetic determinism by default is discussed in greater detail in the article ‘The Gene-Environment Roots of Inequality.’
Hierarchy is the work of institutions deciding what inherited variations will be favored or disfavored.5,6 Heritable human variation is universal and morally neutral with injustice entering only when institutions decide to convert some of that variation into advantages for a few. The problem is in the social sorting, not in the DNA.
A just society is one whose institutions stop penalizing people for the traits they happen to inherit.
Last edited 8-10-2026