Big Man

He then deploys this coterie to increase his status and influence. The result is multifaceted leadership: Prestige-based leadership may provide a foundation for the emergence of more formal, enduring systems for selecting leaders e. However, even in complex societies, prestige and prestige-based leadership play a central role: Even in modern organizations, where power is formalized, a leader's effectiveness often seems to depend on his or her prestige.

Of course, prestige-based leadership continues to play an important role in sports teams [ 24 ], informal working groups [ 27 ], political parties, emergency rooms, schoolyard cliques and academic departments. Our work complements existing lines of research that explore how individual differences e.

The goal is to see how much cooperation in followers and generosity in leaders it can generate without building in punishment, repetition, reputation, signalling or individual asymmetries except for informational asymmetries. Note, unlike some approaches that focus on how leadership can improve coordination [ 36 ], we have focused on n -person cooperative dilemmas because these best capture the real-world situations we want to explain, such as feasting, barbasco fishing, raiding, rabbit hunting, community defence, house construction, etc.

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In the following, we first sketch the theoretical background for our approach, and then develop a series of models to address our two key questions. Humans are a cultural species, entirely dependent on learning vast repertoires of techniques, skills, motivations, norms, languages and know-how from others in their social groups [ 21 , 35 ].

To understand this unique feature of our species, researchers have focused on understanding how natural selection might have given rise to our evolved capacities to learn from others—cultural learning—and how the emergence of this capacity subsequently gave rise to a second system of inheritance—cultural evolution—that has long interacted with, and at times driven, our genetic evolution [ 20 , 37 ].

Supporting this broad view, many lines of evidence increasingly suggest that culture—gene coevolutionary interactions are crucial for understanding human anatomy, physiology and psychology [ 21 , 38 ]. They argue that a second form of status emerged in humans in response to the new informational dynamics generated by cumulative cultural evolution.

As noted, this second form of status— prestige —emerged alongside a phylogenetically older form of status— dominance —that we share with many other species. Individuals are granted prestige when others perceive them to possess valuable skills and knowledge in locally valued domains. Aspiring learners pay deference to these individuals in return for more learning opportunities. By contrast, deference is granted to dominant individuals to the degree that others perceive them as willing and able to use physical force or other coercive tactics if deference is not paid.

Each type of status is associated with a particular suite of strategies, emotions, motivations and ethological displays, and each results in distinct sociological patterns [ 21 , 24 , 39 ]. On this account, the evolution of prestige can best be understood in three major evolutionary steps:. This approach predicts that learners use cues of success, skill and prestige—among others—to figure out who to learn from.

However, such cues do not tell learners what aspects of their model's behaviour or traits are causally linked to their model's success or skill. For many traits, the causal linkages to the model's success will be cognitively opaque or simply too costly to figure out. This means they will often copy many traits that turn out not to be causally connected at all with their models' success, skill or competence.

To see this, consider a young learner who is watching the best hunter in her community, with the aspiration of someday being a great hunter herself. Should our learner copy her model's practices of i departing early in the morning, ii eating a lot of carrots, iii saying a quick prayer prior to releasing his arrow, iv putting charcoal on his face, and v adding a third feather to his arrow's fletching? Any or all of these may contribute to the hunter's success. But our learner just cannot tell, so she copies most or all of these. Of course, some aspects of a model's behaviour may seem obviously connected to a models' success or competence, so these may be copied more readily.

But the products of cumulative cultural evolution possess crucial adaptive complexity that practitioners themselves do not comprehend, so strategies that restrict learners to only copying causally well-understood elements are evolutionary losers [ 21 , 38 ]. This theory, then, provides an explanation for many of the ethnographic patterns observed above. Highly skilled or knowledgeable individuals attract many followers because they are perceived to possess valuable cultural know-how, which learners can acquire if they hang around.

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Such individuals receive deference because learners need to pay prestigious individuals for access, for learning opportunities. Skill, success and expertise turn into prestige, as learners alter their views of others in response to the patterns of attention, deference and imitation they observe. Finally, prestigious individuals become highly influential and naturally persuasive both because others are broadly inclined to selectively learn from them over others biased cultural learning in bundles and as a means of paying deference.

Many predictions have been derived from this theory and tested in various ways, both in the laboratory and in the field [ 4 ]; [ 21 , ch. For example, psychological research using university sports teams shows that prestige and dominance form two distinct and uncorrelated status hierarchies with different emotional and personality profiles [ 24 ]. Paralleling Radcliffe-Brown's observations, prestigious individuals—in contrast to dominant individuals—tended to be kind, free from bad temper and sought out for advice on many topics.

Finally, anthropological research among the Tsimane' in the Bolivian Amazon reveals that both prestige and dominance are associated with higher fitness, though this is achieved via somewhat different routes [ 3 , 41 ]. Much evidence suggests that the answers to all three questions are yes. To the first question, several lines of empirical work confirm that individuals do use cues of success, competence, skill, knowledge and prestige in figuring out who to learn from. In the laboratory, this is well established in infants [ 42 , 43 ], children see reviews in [ 44 , 45 ] and adults [ 4 , 46 ] across a range of domains.

In the field, the construction of cultural transmission networks on Yasawa Island, Fiji [ 47 ] shows that individuals aggregate a wide range of cues to better target their cultural learning, including cues related to success, knowledge and age. On the second question, evidence also indicates that individuals use cues of success and skill across many domains e. In the laboratory, young children reveal cross-domain effects when they use a model's accuracy in the domain of object labelling as a cue in copying what the model does with novel artefacts [ 48 ].

Such work also reveals that children watch their models for cues of confidence, and deploy these in multiple domains [ 49 , 50 ]. Among adults, a long history of experimental work shows how information about a model's expertise in one domain influences their persuasiveness in other unrelated domains see reviews in [ 4 , 46 ] , and recent work indicates that adults, like children, also use cues of confidence or pride displays [ 51 ] to target their cultural learning.

In the fieldwork just discussed, cultural transmission networks reveal that Yasawans' perceptions of a model's success in one domain influences their willingness to learn from that model in other domains [ 47 ]. For example, perceiving someone as the best yam grower increases people's willingness to learn from them about yams by seven times, but similarly increases people's willingness to learn from these individuals about fishing and medicinal plants by between two and three times, even after controlling for learners' perceptions of their success or knowledge of fishing and medicinal plants as well as many other factors like age.

In the modern world, the power of celebrity endorsements e. In one recent well-studied case, the celebrity actor—director Angelina Jolie—who is neither a physician nor a medical researcher—wrote a New York Times OP-ED about her decision to get a double mastectomy after finding out that she had a genetic variant associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.

This flood continued for over six months. Finally, much evidence indicates that humans use cultural learning to acquire costly social behaviours. In the laboratory, opportunities to observe prosocial models increase i n -person cooperation [ 54 — 57 ], ii altruistic giving the extensive literature reviewed in [ 58 , ch.

In field experiments, cultural learning opportunities increase people's willingness to i help stranded motorists [ 60 ], ii volunteer [ 61 ], iii give blood, iv not jaywalk [ 62 ] and v donate to charity [ 63 ]. In both children and adults, these cultural learning effects are often large, and emerge in both naturalistic anonymous settings and one-shot economic games as well as in repeated economic games. To explore whether prestige can promote the evolution of cooperation, we constructed a culture—gene coevolutionary model.

We assume an infinite population in which a small fraction of the population are high status, and thus capable of pursuing leadership opportunities, such as hunting a turtle, cutting a canoe or leading a raid on another group. The remainder are low status, and thus potential followers. They may step forward and seize the reins of leadership, but if they do, no one follows them, so nothing happens.

Individuals undergo the following life cycle:. Existing work has revealed that prestige and leadership are complex, multifaceted phenomena. This mathematical model seeks to abstract away all that complexity and gain insight about just one unintuitive but potentially important dynamic: Intuitively, it is not obvious why followers would ever pay personal costs to blindly mimic a leader when they could benefit by defecting.

Our model illuminates how, even in the absence of punishment, coordination benefits, efficiency or opportunity differences, or any other individual-level motivations to cooperate, the intragenerational dynamics of cultural learning can still cause societies to become steadily more cooperative once prestigious leaders exist. Consequently, in our model, groups are randomly composed every generation and interactions are one-shot though leaders go first, and followers can then copy , to intentionally remove all effects of repeated interactions, genetic relatedness by common descent and intergroup competition.

Our first step is to develop a baseline model for the cultural evolution of cooperation, which assumes all genetic traits are fixed. For convenience, we define the net cost C to an actor as: The bracketed term in 3. The large bracketed term R is composed of two parts that represent two different phenotypic relationships weighted by their relative contributions. The first term in R captures the association between leaders and followers created by the tendency of followers to copy their leader's behaviour. The second term, which involves p 2 , is the relationship between followers within a group created by the tendency of each follower to acquire behaviours from their leader.

The term p 2 is the probability that in any randomly selected pair both individuals copied the leader. To see the importance of the prestige-bias and how it creates assortment, consider what happens when p approaches 0. The bigger p is, the wider the range of conditions favouring cooperation. Now, let us consider what happens in 3. With this assumption 3. As the group expands, the leader becomes merely one among many, so her direct contribution to R is negligible compared to the associations she produces among her followers.

Here, R reduces to just p 2 —the relationship between any two followers created by the fact that they both copied the leader. First, note that n matters a lot when the prestige effect is weak i. For example, when p is less than about 0. However, at the other end, when prestige has a big effect on followers p is large , the size of the groups makes little difference and cooperation spreads under a wide range of conditions.

When p is greater than about 0.

Conditions for the spread of a cooperative cultural trait. The figure plots the regions specified by equation 3. Of course, it is plausible that p and n are linked such that p necessarily declines as n increases. Does the size of the global population necessarily diminish Angelina Jolie's prestige effects?

This is one reason why we did not make p a function of N. We return to this issue in the discussion. Or, alternatively, some fraction of the prestige effect p may be merely an act of deference to a high status individual e. That is, the follower copies either cooperation or defection from their leader for their action in the moment, but they later revert back to what they learned growing up, and pass this trait onto the next generation in proportion to their payoffs.

This applies equally to both cooperation and defection. Adding this to the Baseline Model, the condition for the spread of a cooperative trait via cultural evolution becomes. This is similar to 3. This shows that intergenerational transmission is crucial for the evolution of cooperation, especially for cooperation in groups larger than a few individuals. This also means that deference to high status individuals, whether it is derived from prestige or dominance coercion , is the minor player in these models.

Now, letting s increase from zero, we can examine the effect of sticky prestige-biased cultural transmission. But, before turning to the plots, let us examine inequality 3. Together, the plots show that the stickier prestige-biased transmission is the bigger s is the broader the conditions favouring cooperation.

However, in small groups with relatively low p -values, s has little impact on the conditions favourable to cooperation. By contrast, when n or p are large, increasing s substantially expands the range of favourable conditions. The effect of stickiness s on the conditions for the spread of a cooperative trait. As we have shown, cooperation can evolve culturally because of how prestige effects create correlated phenotypes.

This pattern opens the door for natural selection, operating in the wake of cultural evolution, to spread genes that make leaders more likely to adopt or express cooperative traits. Such a genetic variant spreads because by cooperating, prestigious leaders can cause their groups to become more cooperative—and they get an equal share of those induced benefits. Thus, we can now ask: We begin by assuming this variant only expresses itself in leaders. Under these assumptions, more cooperative genetic variants will spread when.

Note that this condition is less strict than those derived above for the cultural evolution of cooperation 3. So, in this situation, if cooperation evolves culturally, then genes favouring more cooperativeness in prestigious leaders will always be favoured. Then, the condition for the spread of a cooperation-inducing mutation is. The area above those curves is the region in which the cooperative mutation will spread. Each panel depicts a different value of n: The conditions for the spread of genetic variants that promote cooperation among prestigious leaders.

That is, cooperation-enhancing genetic variants that facultatively express only in small groups will be favoured. The intuition here is that in large groups many mutant followers suffer the costs of cooperation while only one leader benefits from his or her cooperative action. Meanwhile, in small groups, relatively fewer followers suffer. Finally, we framed this as being about a genetic variant. However, it could also be thought of as a cultural trait, such as a story script, that is acquired early, and evolves more slowly.

In developing these ideas, we assumed that learners were constrained from figuring out whether various elements in their model's behavioural repertoire were causally connected to their success or prestige. That is, to some degree captured by our p parameter , individuals have to copy prestigious individuals across many domains, including in the social dilemma used in our model. If they do not copy broadly, we assume they will miss out on learning some important fitness-enhancing traits.

Thus, we have constrained natural selection from sharpening learners abilities to accurately pick out only the fitness-enhancing traits possessed by their models. While this assumption is plausible [ 21 ], it is nevertheless worth relaxing this constraint to see if selection in our model will favour reducing p , or even drive it to zero. To study this, we take our Baseline Model and ask whether genetic mutants with smaller p -values can invade the cooperative equilibrium.

Note we make the conservative assumption that our mutants can do this without fitness penalties for retasking existing brain tissue or for inefficiencies introduced into their learning in other domains. The result is simple. Mutants with lower p values are not favoured by natural selection. Instead, such genetic variants are selectively neutral. To see why, realize that at the culturally evolved cooperative equilibrium, cooperation is favoured and common. Mutants will tend to already have the cooperative cultural trait, having acquired it via payoff-biased cultural learning during childhood.

He's also a genuinely awesome and caring guy that naturally inspires others. The main character, Eren, looks up to him as his Big Brother Mentor and mentions wanting to be more like him. The fact that he's genuinely such a nice guy makes him a Tragic Villain , once he's revealed to be The Mole. Jean thinks he's this , at least until things turn south and the majority of his squad is eaten alive under his command , which causes him to reevaluate his position. Parodied in Peanuts with Snoopy's "Joe Cool" persona. There was also a one-off strip in which his persona was actually called "Big Man on the Campus".

In Robin at the fifth high school Tim attended one of the tennis players was incredibly kind, attractive, talented and got decent grades and was quite popular as a result. In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! His performance on the entrance exam as the highest scoring student in the history of the school instantly puts him in the spotlight and his classmates are happy to discover that he's extremely kind and humble.

Izuku doesn't like the attention and would much rather be treated like everyone else, but he admits that it feels good to be admired like this. Paul Metzler of Election He's one of the few nice characters in the story, as well as The Ditz. Troy Bolton in High School Musical is this, but he could be viewed as a deconstruction since the films show how much pressure everyone puts on him and the emotional stress he suffers as a result.

The same actor in 17 Again. He provides the page image. He's verbally possibly physically abusive to his girlfriend, whom he dumps temporarily for Marcia, and is only interested in Marcia because he wants to sleep with her. Will Wagner in Avalon High. Not so surprising, since he's the modern reincarnation of King Arthur. Subverted in the Stephen King novel Rage , where the local BMOC proves to be almost as messed up as the guy who just shot two teachers and is holding the rest of the class hostage. The latter is a Chick Magnet , and just generally likable. Viktor Krum also seems to be this at Durmstrang, as he's already an international athlete in his final year.

He doesn't seem too happy about it, however, lamenting that all the best girls are already taken. Harry himself repeatedly cycles between this and Hero with Bad Publicity , depending on whether someone is trying to slander him that year or not. He finds being popular nearly as much hassle as being un popular. Harry's dad James and godfather Sirius were considered "the height of cool" in their own schooldays, to hear it from others. James in particular was apparently always seen as the noble, intelligent and athletic one although unlike Harry and Cedric, it's never specified if he was a Quidditch captain.

Harry is a bit dismayed to learn that this meant they could be, in Sirius's own words, "arrogant little berks" to people they disliked - most famously, his mutual hateship with Severus Snape. In A Separate Peace , there are two: Brinker, the intelligent class politician with an attitude. Phineas commonly called Finny by the student body , the best athlete in the school who is friendly to everyone and has a magnetic charisma. Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell is handsome, well-liked, and has enough charm to do well in school despite not taking any of it very seriously.

Of course, he's also the protagonist, so we're expected to root for him no matter what. Never mind that he's been a senior for five to six years by the time the series ends. Greg, in the last two seasons. Other one-off characters tried — but ultimately failed — to come close, including Doug Simpson who turned out to be a jerk.

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Finn prior to joining glee club on, well, Glee. A phrase so full of exotic meanings can be risky, so if you use big man in any way other than its literal sense, you should be confident in your relationship with the people you are talking with. Since the exact meaning will be determined by tone of voice, facial expression, and body language as well as the emotional, relational, and social context of the situation, there is a lot of room for misunderstanding.

Big Man is a complex word because it is always used metaphorically. It differs from literal big man, i.

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It can be used to acknowledge accomplishment eg "you solved the sum all by yourself? Since Big Man is mostly used in situations where power is at play, it is susceptible to irony with its meanings fluctuating between mockery and praise. For example, since the Big Man is the supposedly powerful and richer one in an interaction, you can never really know if people who interact with him call him Big Man out of respect or if they use it to mock him.

Calling him Big Man but with a smirk on your face, "yes Big Boss" but inside you are hurling obscenities. Big Man is almost always used in its pejorative sense when its used to refer to authoritarian rulers and other politicians who abuse power. To sum it up, a man can only become big if he performs his bigness, this means that he must do something before someone and these someones must be awed by that action. The more people that are awed the bigger the person gets, in no time the man's identity might consolidate as that of the Big Man. But to maintain the status, he has to keep on performing his bigness and wowing followers.

Little Big Man

This explains why Big Men tend to have loyalists, sycophants, and the like. Big Man is a playful word and I agree with the previous post -- know the person and understand the context before using it. By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service , privacy policy and cookie policy , and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies. Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered.