The Social Dominance System & Emotions that Drive this System in Loving Relationships & Life
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The Social Dominance System, as I prefer to call it, also referred to as the Dominance Behavioral System (DBS) in the brain - is a fundamental biological and physiologically-based system that governs behavioral components including motivation, and the drive for power, status, control over resources critical for survival, and social positioning. This system evolved to help humans navigate living in tribes or groups in response to power, to create a hierarchy to allocate resources, to reduce constant physical conflict and navigate competition. While dominance is often misunderstood as aggression, the Social Dominance System primarily functions to assess rank, regulate and develop social confidence, and shape behavior in social environments.
At the neurological level, the Social Dominance System involves coordinated activity between the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hypothalamus, and striatum. The amygdala plays a critical role in scanning social environments for status-related cues such as threat, submission, challenge, or alliance. It rapidly evaluates whether an individual should assert, yield, remain neutral or collaborate in a given interaction.
It is a complex system and part of why modern civility may be heavily focused on individual gain, more so than collaboration. The drive for dominance makes people focus on financial security, and status, and protective towards family and friends. This system is why politically leaders often seek power over other countries for economic motives, and national security.
This is an important system to understand self, and others. Aspects of this system include personal motivation - the personal drive and effort an individual possess to seek social influence, power and also, for most men, the driver for admiration from others. Healthy personal behavior manifests as the actual actions taken to achieve or maintain a dominant position including: fatherhood, motherhood, a family, business ownership, a career, financial independence, leadership and collaboration. Unhealthy personal behaviour can occur due to personal insecurities and inabilities to self-actualize in a moral sense including: control, aggression, hostility, intimidation, punishment or crime.
Humans create a subjective personal assessment of power of themselves that is set up usually as a self-concept in childhood, or other situations that challenge power. This includes self-perception, beliefs and embodied emotions like pride or injustice. Self-perceptions, limiting beliefs and embodied emotions can be changed via coaching, EMI, EMDR or psychotherapy.
The hypothalamus is another core structure in the Social Dominance System, as it links social perception to hormonal release. When dominance or a challenge is perceived, the hypothalamus activates neuroendocrine pathways that influence fight or flight including: posture, voice tone, eye contact, and readiness for action or to fight for oneself. These physical signals communicate status to others, often much more powerfully than words.
Loving Relationships
The Social Dominance system is highly activated in the dating phase. Here, individuals are assessing the viability of a partnership, and possibly building a family. As a loving relationship deepens and moves past the fantasy bond phase, couples fall into roles, and expectations around status, and nervous system responses set up mostly in childhood. This deeper phase needs to be navigated with advanced communication skills and abilities to succeed with love.
Sometimes couples enter into a loving relationship in the fantasy bond phase and are unconsciously colluding - meaning their are financial or status gains going on that are hidden, and not verbalized with honest conversations. An example of this is someone who seeks power from another person in a loving relationship. This is an attempt to hide their own fears, inadequacies, lack of confidence, pain or unresolve trauma. These loving relationships often fail, as the loving relationship is built on an insecure, needy or dependant unspoken foundation. As Carl Yung said ‘Where power predominates, there love is lacking’.
A securely attached loving relationship is built on mutual respect and not power. It is a balanced reciprocal partnership that is about caring for each other and appreciating and supporting each others strengths. Male and female social dominance roles play out in loving relationships, which is a good example of the Social Dominance System. This may change as humans evolve as a species, but is partly due to cultural evolution and that men are physically stronger.
Primary Brain Chemisty
Testosterone is the primary hormone associated with the Social Dominance System. It does not simply increase aggression; rather, it enhances sensitivity to status, confidence, motivation to compete, and willingness to take social risks. Testosterone levels rise in response to perceived status gains, and can fall dramatically, following social defeat. This dynamic feedback loop allows the brain to adjust dominance to social situations.
Dopamine is another key chemical driver of the Social Dominance System. Dopamine fuels motivation, goal pursuit, and reward anticipation. In the context of dominance, dopamine reinforces behaviors that lead to increased status, recognition, or influence. When dominance behaviors are successful, dopamine release strengthens those neural pathways, encouraging repetition. Conversely, reduced dopamine signaling can lead to withdrawal, or submissive doubtful behavior after a perceived loss of status.
Serotonin plays a regulatory role within the Social Dominance System. Higher serotonin levels are associated with impulse control, emotional stability, and flexible social behavior. Balanced serotonin helps prevent dominance from tipping into aggression or fear of loss of status. Low serotonin, by contrast, can lead to impulsive dominance displays or difficulty tolerating status threats.
Cortisol also interacts with the Social Dominance System, particularly during social status selection and evaluation, or hierarchy stress. Elevated cortisol can suppress dominance behavior when a social threat feels overwhelming, leading to avoidance-based or submissive behaviors.
It is important to state the Social Dominance System is highly context-sensitive. Culture, upbringing, early attachment experiences, and repeated social and competitive-based feedback shape how the Social Dominance System is set up and expressed. Healthy dominance is characterized by confidence, leadership, and calm yet strong authority, while dysregulated dominance may appear as control, intimidation, a lack of confidence, anger, or chronic fear and insecurity.
The primary brain chemistry of the Social Dominance System involves a complex interaction between testosterone, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, and key brain regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. When brain chemistry is balanced, the Social Dominance System supports effective leadership, social confidence, and adaptive hierarchy navigation. When dysregulated, it can drive conflict, fear and insecurity, or power struggles across personal and professional relationships.