It is premature to redefine egalitarianism based on processes rather than outcomes. Various ethnographic examples – like big man cycles, potlatches, and panem et circenses – contain egalitarian processes described by the authors while still generating, legitimizing, and maintaining distinctly unequal outcomes. We therefore argue that outcomes remain a necessary corrective to process-based definitions.

This article argues that process-first theories of egalitarianism remain incomplete without a feminist account of gender, dependency, and bodily vulnerability. Practices that limit domination may flatten hierarchies mainly among men while leaving unequal burdens of care, reproduction, and coercion intact. Egalitarianism should therefore be assessed not only by process but also by who bears its hidden social costs.

Drawing on formal models and empirical studies of collective decision-making in animal groups, we show that egalitarian systems can emerge and remain stable despite persistent individual inequalities in needs, information, and social position. Egalitarianism is best understood as a dynamic regulation of influence under heterogeneous conditions, where leadership is conditional, distributed, and reversible rather than fixed or coercive.

I agree with many elements of the target article. My concerns focus on criticisms of outcome-based approaches to (in)equality and insufficient attention to factors constraining processes favoring egalitarianism. Understanding outcomes is of great importance. We often want to know how unequal societies are and why egalitarian-favoring processes vary in effectiveness across both small-scale societies and as the social scale increases.

The target article usefully distinguishes egalitarian outcomes from the motivations and processes that lead to them. They emphasize that egalitarian outcomes can result without egalitarian motivations. We suggest that this same approach can be applied to meritocratic outcomes.

There is a three-way fit between: humans’ evolutionary ecology, which is deeply social; the turn towards fundamentally social understandings of human cognition; and the target article’s reframing of egalitarianism in terms of process rather than outcome. Here, I outline this three-way fit, and how it might inform a rethinking of the idea of an “open” society.

The target article demonstrates that inequality exists even in traditional subsistence societies often labeled “egalitarian.” It suggests that relative equality is maintained by egalitarian processes that channel self-interested motives, rather than by evolved preferences for equality. We argue that harnessing the potential of egalitarian processes to reduce existing inequalities requires a better understanding of the psychological effects of inequality.

Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden argue that egalitarianism is best understood through process rather than outcome. We extend this by showing that the same inequalities and processes found in hunter-gatherer societies exist among children’s peer cultures. This consistency, alongside early-emerging concerns for mutual respect, suggests egalitarianism may reflect foundational processes in social cognition, which particular ecologies and subsistence practices can refine.

The plural processes underlying egalitarianism should be gendered adequately, with women seen as drivers and innovators from an evolutionary perspective. We apply this across all six processes enumerated by Stibbard Hawkes & von Rueden and advocate ritual as a seventh core process, the engine of reverse dominance.

Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden redefine egalitarianism as a process rather than an outcome. We extend this framework by arguing that egalitarian societies represent cognitive-ecological equilibria in which evolved psychological systems regulate dominance hierarchies. The six identified processes correspond to distinct neurocognitive mechanisms for hierarchy suppression, interpretable as distributed strategies for managing hierarchical risk within predictive processing.

The analysis of subsistence cultures, centered on hunting foragers, presented in the target article returns them to the fold of our common humanity. With that, they can make their full contribution to our understanding of the species to which we belong. I comment on some of the issues this involves.

We argue that favourable socio-ecological circumstances do not translate uniformly into opportunities for all individuals. Drawing on intersectionality theory, we show that intersectional positions shape individuals’ differential ability to engage in the processes identified by the target article. Thus, while socio-ecological conditions create the possibility of egalitarianism, intersectionality shapes how those possibilities may be actualised.

Influenced by reports from eastern North America, early Enlightenment thinkers portrayed hunter-gatherers as largely egalitarian. Subsequent observations, anthropological research, and archaeological evidence since the 1970s documented notable inequalities of power, wealth, and rank in some hunter-gatherer societies. Recent global archaeological analyses link increasing inequality to population growth, fuelling increases in group size, growing constraints on land and resources, and thus on individual autonomy.

This comment accepts the distinction that Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes and Chris von Rueden make: the difference between process-egalitarianism and outcome-egalitarianism. It also accepts that most historical societies care more about process- than outcome-egalitarianism. However, a question remains. If people care about process-egalitarianism, how come they are ready to surrender autonomy – i.e., ability to make decisions of their own – to a political community?

Egalitarian processes may be driven by multiple coexisting motivations, rather than solely by self-interest and disadvantageous inequality aversion. Drawing on behavioral, computational, and neural evidence, we highlight the important role of advantageous inequality aversion and propose that incorporating it would enhance the framework’s theoretical completeness, explanatory power, and scope.

We argue that the differences between process-based and outcome-based egalitarianism correspond to the distinction between equity and equality as principles of resource allocation. By outlining the limitations of relying solely on a process-based definition of egalitarianism, we propose that egalitarianism is context-dependent and varies across socio-ecological settings.

The target article should help productively orient studies of egalitarianism in human societies. However, it ignores the role of cultural transmission and evolution in the maintenance and transformation of the socio-ecological processes supporting egalitarian behavior. Each of the proposed processes are manifest and reproduced through culturally mediated behavior, as is made visible through research on children’s social learning and inter-group interaction.

Humans have no general egalitarian moral norm. Ancient humans varyingly adopted eight practices, each of which tended to cut a few kinds of inequality. But individuals did not do these mainly to cut inequality, and the recent fading of such practices suggests that they are no longer as adaptive as they once were.

Their conceptual approach is the signal strength of this important paper. Future researchers on egalitarianism, whether archival or original, would be well advised to use their approach as a research guide. One major problem with the study of egalitarianism is that it only applies to the status of men and not women. This gap is the focus on my commentary.

The authors’ process-based framework, while analytically compelling, undermines the case for retaining society-level classifications. If egalitarian mechanisms are modular and domain-specific, they operate within nominally hierarchical societies as readily as egalitarian ones. Within-society structure is likely the more useful unit of analysis for understanding how leveling dynamics operate. The authors’ definition remains underspecified. Abandoning the society-level label sharpens the framework.