I've noticed in animal social structures, combat and aggression was used to determine the social status of the animal in the group. New a new study states that humans are the same way.

http://news.discovery.com/human/popular ... ssive.html

My question is if this is an inherent behavior, is trying to stop bullying pointless? Would it be better to teach those at the bottom of the social ladder better "Alpha" skills?

It's not really true in humans or in other animals.

Isn't it the opposite? I've heard, at least from reading dating literature ( ), that altruism and generosity are alpha qualities.

It is intuitive to me that those who cause unrest and decent in a society would be outside the mainstream.

I have a hard time believing that popular kids are more aggressive. That was not my experience in school, and speaking from the "jock" perspective of having played hockey for a dozen years, the kid we usually chose as our captain was the level headed guy who always managed to motivate people by sheer personality, or when that failed by going out there and working his ass off despite that the rest of the team was unmotivated. Locker room antics, particularly locker boxing (boxing with your equipment on, usually after practice), didn't seem a factor in determining who was the "alpha". Everyone boxes in the locker room, but those who were up the most frequently were those who had a chip on their shoulder or something to prove. More so the alpha/captain responded as a voice of reason (such as when we taped some kid's equipment to the ceiling), "Guys, I think we went too far this time."