This myth has several things that well-designed misinformation needs in order to supplant good information: 1) it fits into existing worldviews - the myth of t

This myth has several things that well-designed misinformation needs in order to supplant good information: 1) it fits into existing worldviews - the myth of the alpha validates people continuing to do what they want to do and what they've always done. it's a lot easier to accept information that tells you that you and the systems with which you're already familiar and comfortable are correct 2) it's intuitive to understand - "the big guy kicks the crap out of the little guys and takes all their stuff" is not something that has any sharp edges to snag unwary intellects. We've all seen this system at work. Also the popular understanding of evolution at the time was that competition happened at the level of the organism, which dovetails nicely with this theory of competition and dominance where our more current understanding of competition at the level of the gene complex introduces the possibility of cooperation and even self-sacrifice as valid survival strategies. 3) it trended in the same direction as society at the time - the book came out in 1970, about the same time that we started trending toward neoliberalism which is a hyperindividualistic, hypercompetitive worldview. If you like neoliberalism then this is why you like it, and if you don't this is why you don't. This means that as this idea was becoming more and more well-known there was a lot of room for it in the emerging zeitgeist. It's the political and sociological equivalent to 1, but with significance added by people who were already dedicated to engineering our culture in that direction in the first place latching onto this idea because it indicates that they're so correct that the whole world is already designed around principles of individualism and competition.