Honestly, most people don’t. When you reach a certain point of maturity, you realize that the whole alpha/beta thing isn’t how the world really works and you focus more on things like personal achievement and collaborative work. The whole alpha/beta thing is really an adolescent concept that only really develops during late teens because so little of consequence is being asked and social status is artificially inflated during the high school years. This idea takes hold because our society doesn’t really impress the value of developing an internal locus of control onto kids and meanwhile developmental pressures make kids want to separate themselves as individuals. In this artificial microcosm, the skills that “alpha males” excell at, social climbing because of aggression and passive-aggressive tendencies, seem to be effective skills for success because the more mature skills of self development and effective communication aren’t being taught and there is no expectation for their use yet. Add to that a patental tendency to treat kids as their narcissistic extensions, and you have a fantasy world that buffers consequences for the immature behaviors.
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