Content uploaded by Mark Van Vugt
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mark Van Vugt
Content may be subject to copyright.
Running Head: LEADERSHIP AND FOLLOWERSHIP
EVOLUTION, LEADERSHIP AND FOLLOWERSHIP
Some Lessons from the Past
Mark Van Vugt
The University of Kent at Canterbury
Robert Hogan
Hogan Assessment Systems
Robert B. Kaiser
Kaplan DeVries Inc.
Author notes:
Mark Van Vugt is a professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Robert Hogan is the president of Hogan Assessment Systems. Robert B. Kaiser is a partner with
Kaplan DeVries Inc. Portions of this paper were presented at the 21
st
annual conference of the
Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Dallas, TX.
Inquiries may be sent to Mark Van Vugt, Department of Psychology, Keynes College, The
University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NP; mvv@kent.ac.uk
Leadership and Followership 2
Abstract
This paper reviews the topic of leadership from an evolutionary perspective and proposes three
conclusions. First, leadership and followership are adaptive responses for dealing with various
group challenges, most notably group movement, peacekeeping, and intergroup competition, that
were prominent in human evolutionary history. Second, leadership and followership are
complimentary strategies for dealing with such problems, but the interests of leaders and
followers do not always correspond. Third, many modern organizational structures are
inconsistent with our evolved leadership psychology, which explains the alienation and
frustration of many citizens and employees. Finally, we note various implications of this
evolutionary analysis.
Key Words: LEADERSHIP, FOLLOWERSHIP, EVOLUTION, GAME THEORY,
PEACEKEEPING, INTERGROUP RELATIONS
Leadership and Followership 3
EVOLUTION, LEADERSHIP AND FOLLOWERSHIP
Some Lessons from the Past
Think for a moment about the natural disasters that occurred in the 20
th
century—the
earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, and disease epidemics—and estimate the number of
people who died as a result. Pick a number, any number at all. Now consider Rummel's (1994)
report that, around the world, between 1900 and 1987, 169,202,000 people were killed for
political reasons. Of these, 38.5 million were killed by invading armies; the remaining 130.7
million were murdered by their own governments. In all cases, politicians ordered the killing.
Obviously, leadership matters, and is a potentially deadly force.
Leadership is a universal feature of human societies (Brown, 1991; Earle, 1991), and the
person in charge affects the quality of life for citizens and the destiny of societies (Burns, 1978).
When individuals work on collective tasks, leadership emerges quickly and spontaneously
(Bales, 1951; Mann, 1959; Sherif, 1966). Thus, leadership is an unavoidable theme in human
affairs—it is arguably the most important problem in the social sciences. Nonetheless, although
the leadership literature is enormous (Bass, 1990; House & Aditya, 1997; Northouse, 2004;
Yukl, 2005), it yields few firm conclusions.
There are several reasons for this. First, despite a wealth of empirical findings, there is no
overarching conceptual frameworks in terms of which they can be integrated (Chemers, 2000;
Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). Second, the literature tends to focus on who is in charge rather than on
the psychology of followership, an essential component of leadership (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995;
Hollander, 1992; Yukl, 2005). Third, it concentrates on the proximate functions of leadership in
groups so that questions about its ultimate origins are rarely considered (Hogan, Curphy, &
Hogan, 1994). Fourth, there has been little cross-fertilization between psychology and the other
behavioral science disciplines like anthropology, economics, zoology and evolutionary biology,
Leadership and Followership 4
all of which have interesting things to say about leadership (E. O. Wilson, 1998).
We begin with a brief discussion of the origins and functions of leadership from the
perspective of evolutionary theory, which many scholars, including ourselves, see as an
appropriate integrative perspective for conceptualizing human social affairs (Cosmides, &
Tooby, 1992; Buss, 2005; Schaller, Simpson, & Kenrick, 2006). We then apply game theory
(Gintis, 2000; in press) to model the evolution of leadership and followership traits and
behaviors. Based on these analyses, we debunk some myths about leadership, paying particular
attention to the psychology of followership. Finally, we consider how the social roles of
leadership and followership in humans have evolved through four distinct periods of
evolutionary history.
In this article, we define leadership broadly in terms of the coordination of group activities
to pursue joint goals (Bass, 1990; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). In the literature, leadership is
sometimes regarded as a trait or disposition (Stogdill, 1974) and sometimes as the outcome of
strategic social interactions between people (Hollander, 1978). An evolutionary analysis of
leadership incorporates both perspectives.
An Evolutionary Analysis of Leadership
Although Sigmund Freud, William James, William McDougall, and E. L. Thorndike
were enthusiastic Darwinians, evolutionary thinking was out of favor in mainstream psychology
for most of the 20
th
century (Pinker, 2002). However, it is coming back in the form of
evolutionary psychology (Buss, 2005; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004).
Evolutionary psychology is more than a methodology; it is a way of thinking based on the
possibility that human behavior and psychology are products of evolutionary history, and have
been shaped by natural selection (Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004).
Leadership and Followership 5
An evolutionary perspective examines the leadership question at four different levels
(Tinbergen, 1963). The first concerns the proximate functions of leadership in groups—i.e., what
motivates someone to take the lead and why are some leaders more effective than others? This is
the question in which most social and I/O psychologists are interested. A second question
concerns the ontogenetic causes of leadership—is there something in people’s developmental
history that prompts them to become leaders or followers? Developmental, personality, and
educational psychologists are interested in these aspects of leadership. A third question concerns
the phylogenetic aspects of leadership—when did it first appear in humans and are there
equivalents in other species? This most concerns comparative psychologists, anthropologists and
zoologists. Finally, there is the question about the ultimate causes of leadership, a question that
most interests evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary biologists. Does leadership enhance
the survival and reproductive opportunities of individuals and their groups? Each of these
questions analyzes leadership from a different perspective, and it would be wrong to confuse
them. For instance, it is pointless to ask whether leadership is linked to ambition or to
reproductive opportunities -- both views are probably right.
Evolved Functions of Leadership
Humans are a group-living species (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Buss, 2005). For most of
their history — the genus Homo is estimated be 2 to 2.5 million years old — humans lived in
small kin groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers on the savannah (Dunbar, 2004). These bands
were presumably connected to others in extended social networks like clans and tribes
(Richerson & Boyd, 2006). Group living is an adaptation; across many generations, its benefits
in terms of food gathering, group defense, and parental care exceeded its costs and thus group
living became a survival strategy (Buss, 2005; Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003). Nevertheless, group
Leadership and Followership 6
life is riddled with problems of coordination and cooperation, and leadership was perhaps one
way to solve them. Phylogenetically, the oldest leadership problem is group movement. Like any
other nomadic species early humans periodically needed to move together in search of new
resources—watering holes or hunting grounds—but how did they collectively decide when and
where to go? Clearly, this type of decision-making is aided if some individuals take the lead and
others acquiesce. This type of coordinating leadership has been found in many social species,
including the social insects (Couzin, Krause, Franks & Levin, 2005), which suggests that
leadership doesn’t necessarily depend on complex cognitive facilities such as language and
theory of mind.
In humans --and other primates as well-- leadership also solves other kinds of group
problems. For many generations, humans lived in large, cooperative units in which there was
always a risk of disruption from aggressive ingroup members (Dunbar, 2004). Anthropological
evidence reveals that the social lives of hunter-gatherer groups involved constant conflict and
that homicide was a leading cause of death (Boehm, 1999; Chagnon, 1997; Johnson & Earle,
2000). Some form of peacekeeping would be useful to sustain cooperation and cope with internal
violence, and leadership may have been co-opted in our species for that purpose. All our closest
phylogenetic relatives— chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas—practice peacekeeping and it was
almost surely a feature of early humans (Boehm, 1999; De Waal, 1996). De Waal (1996), for
example, describes an incident in a chimpanzee community: "A quarrel between Mama and Spin
got out of hand and ended in fighting and biting. Numerous apes rushed up to the two warring
females and joined in the fray. A huge knot of fighting, screaming apes rolled around in the sand,
until Luit [the alpha male] leapt in and literally beat them apart. He did not choose sides in the
conflict, like others; instead anyone who continued to act received a blow from him" (p. 129).
Leadership and Followership 7
Many evolutionary scientists assert that a unique feature of human evolutionary history is
conflict and warfare between groups (Alexander, 1979; Chagnon, 1997; Kenrick et al., 2003;
Van Vugt, De Cremer & Janssen, in press). Intergroup competition may have created strong
selection pressures for the evolution of a range of groupish traits such as altruism, empathy,
morality, social identity, and perhaps leadership (Alexander, 1979; Johnson & Earle, 2000; Sober
& Wilson, 1998). Deferring to a leader in the face of an outgroup threat makes sense because it
enables groups to quickly organize their defenses (Hamblin, 1958; Sherif, 1966; Vroom & Jago,
1978).
In sum, leadership originally emerged to solve simple coordination problems in group-
living species, and has an ancient phylogenetic history. Among humans, leadership was co-opted
to deal with specific problems associated with living in large groups. The first is internal conflict
management, and the second is intergroup relations. Clearly, individuals in well-led groups
would be better off. As a quick thought experiment, imagine two groups of early humans living
in the same region, and competing for the same resources—water holes, large game, and safe
sleeping sites. One group is characterized by internal discord, violence and poor group-decision
making procedures. The second is characterized by relative intragroup harmony and the ability to
coordinate effectively through leadership. Over time, members of the second group will prevail.
Consequently, traits linked to leadership and followership, like peacekeeping, coordination and
conformity should spread through the population.
There is much debate among evolutionists about the way in which these and other social
traits have emerged in human populations, however, this is not the place for an extended
discussion (see for details Dawkins, 1976; Richerson & Boyd, 2006; Sober & Wilson, 1998).
Standard individual selection models argue that social traits were selected for because they
Leadership and Followership 8
conferred personal benefits on individuals holding these traits – for example, sociable or
agreeable individuals would be expected to do better, on average, in groups than aggressive or
introverted individuals. Alternative models assert that traits associated with, for example,
leadership or followership may have emerged through a combination of individual and group
level selection, whereby groups with effective leader-follower relations were more successful
and therefore produced more offspring, thus allowing these traits to spread (Sober & Wilson,
1998). Finally, some writers claim that many more complex social behaviors such as language,
cooperation, democracy and perhaps leadership first emerged as cultural innovations and then
spread through a combination of cultural transmission and genetic selection (Richerson & Boyd,
2006). We do not take a position in this debate; our analysis of leadership is consistent with any
of these models. Ultimately, empirical research must tell us which model is appropriate for
understanding leadership.
A Game Theory Analysis of Leadership
Game theory enables us to model the evolution of leadership and followership and test
predictions using the extant leadership literature. Game theory emerged from an analysis of
strategic interactions among combatants in World War II, but it has since become a basic method
for studying social processes across the behavioral sciences, including psychology and biology
(Gintis, in press). Framing leader-follower relations in terms of game theory accomplishes
several purposes. First it illuminates the way leadership and followership may have evolved as
complimentary decision rules for solving group problems. Second, it requires students of
leadership to consider simultaneously the perspectives of both the leader and the follower, and
clarifies the risks and payoffs for both leaders and followers. Third, it shows how people with
potentially conflicting interests can join forces and, for perfectly self-interested reasons, achieve
Leadership and Followership 9
goals that maximize benefits for the collectivity.
The leader game is one of several, archetypical nonzero-sum games, including the well-
known prisoner's dilemma game (Rapoport, 1967). Figure 1 depicts a version of the leader game,
and it is best illustrated with an example. (Although we present the simplest case here, the
analysis can be easily extended to more complex settings). Suppose John and Mary live on the
savannah; to obtain water, they must choose between two waterholes, A or B. For protection
against predators, they should travel together. As is often the case, especially in larger groups,
preferences are not identical. John prefers Hole A, which would give him an outcome of 3,
whereas Mary prefers Hole B, which would give her an outcome of 3. The payoffs of the game
suggest that both are better off moving to the same hole (outcomes of either 1 or 3; note that the
absolute values are unimportant but the ranking of preferences are), yet each prefers a different
hole. How do they solve this dilemma? Leadership offers a solution. If one of them takes the lead
and moves on to his or her preferred choice, the other should follow.
Implications of Leader Game
This game model makes several claims about leadership that are largely supported by the
evidence. First, Figure 1 suggests how these strategies could have become part of human evolved
psychology—if people encountered these games frequently, social coordination would always
yield higher mutual pay-offs, and these strategies would be selected for. Evolutionary game
theory (Maynard-Smith, 1982), a special branch of game theory, assumes that these strategies are
underpinned by genes that compete with each other in a Darwinian fashion. Strategies (genes)
that are successful spread through the population and this is essentially natural selection
(Dawkins, 1976). Genetically encoded strategies are highly responsive to environmental
conditions and are elicited in situations that resemble those that they were originally designed to
Leadership and Followership 10
solve (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Kenrick & Simpson, 1997) – although there is unlikely to be a
perfect match. For instance, leadership emerges more quickly in response to perennial group
threats like resource scarcities or conflicts with outgroups (Hamblin, 1958; Van Vugt & De
Cremer, 1999), but also in situations that mimic such threats like a sports match (Sherif, 1966).
Moreover, some individuals will be genetically more disposed to leadership than others (Kenny
& Zaccoro, 1983) but, for obvious reasons, there is likely to be considerable adaptive flexibility
built in the human capacity to emerge as leader or follower (cf. Tooby & Cosmides, 1990).
Figure 1 also suggests that leaders, on average, will profit more from coordinated group
action than followers. In recent history leaders have indeed been better off than followers in
terms of health, wealth, and reproductive opportunities (Betzig, 1986; Chagnon, 1997; Perusse,
1993). The resulting asymmetry probably frustrates followers, which limits their dedication to
leaders (Hollander, 1992). Not surprisingly, traits like honesty, trustworthiness, generosity and
fairness are highly desirable in leaders because they signal a willingness to share resources
(Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Lord & Maher, 1993; Tyler & Lind, 1992).
Third, this model explains why leadership is correlated with initiative-taking, ambition,
boldness, impulsiveness, self-esteem, excitement seeking, risk taking, and extraversion (Bass,
1990; House & Aditya, 1997; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002). Figure 1 suggests that the
first mover in a leader game is more likely to become leader. Another implication is that,
especially in larger more, complex groups, individuals better at guessing the payoff preferences
of others have a greater chance to become leaders. This would explain why leadership correlates
with measures of empathy, social and general intelligence (Bass, 1990; Hogan & Hogan, 2002;
Kellett, Humphrey, & Sleeth, 2002; Zaccaro, Gilbert, Thor & Mumford, 1991).
Finally, the model can help to explain the existence of a variety of leadership styles. Figure
Leadership and Followership 11
1 suggests that leadership can either focus on the task at hand, for example, getting to the nearest
waterhole, or on persuading others to follow. The distinction between task and relation (person)-
oriented leadership functions is well-established (Bales, 1951; Cartwright & Zander, 1968;
House & Aditya, 1997). Task leadership might have emerged in response to situations in which
payoffs for leaders and followers were the same, and the leader's primary task was group
coordination. Relational leadership might have emerged in response to situations where there
were payoff discrepancies between leaders and followers, but group cohesion was essential.
The distinction between transactional and transformational leadership might be similarly
encoded. Transactional leaders appeal to followers' self interest by providing them with
favorable outcomes in return for support (Bass, 1985; Hollander & Offerman, 1990). Such
exchanges between leaders and followers require the ability to share. This capacity is part of our
primate heritage but we know that it is much more advanced in humans (Cosmides & Tooby,
1992; Van Vugt & Van Lange, 2006). Transformational or charismatic leaders move followers
beyond their immediate payoffs (Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978; House & Adityma, 1997). Followers
might have been attracted to this type of leadership in crisis situations with which existing group
hierarchies were unable to cope, thus paving the way for an outsider to seize power. Offering an
appealing vision is an important attribute of charismatic leaders so we expect this leadership type
would emerge only after language evolved (Dunbar, 2004). Burns (1978) refers to this as heroic
leadership and many leaders who sacrificed themselves for their group are considered
transformational —Gandhi, Jesus of Nazareth, Thomas Beckett, Joan of Arc, and Nelson
Mandela. In game theoretical terms, transformational leaders pick the option that gives the
followers rather than themselves the best pay-off in the game (e.g., John making a first move to
Hole B to help Mary get her desired payoff).
Leadership and Followership 12
Finally, game theory illuminates the origins of autocratic versus democratic leadership.
Payoff differences in the leader game, as in Figure 1, inevitably cause resentment among
followers. Nonetheless, once individuals obtain power, they are reluctant to give it up (Keltner,
Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003; Kipnis, 1972). If followers threaten to defect, then leaders must
make concessions to stay in power. They can promise their followers a greater share of resources
but followers may (and often do) fear that leaders will not keep their promises. Thus, followers
might demand some control over the group's decision-making procedures so as to protect their
long-term interests (Tyler & Lind, 1992).
Two economists, Acemoglu and Robinson (2006), used game theory to model the origins
of democracy, and reached essentially the same conclusion. Their analysis suggests that
democracy solves a leader's commitment problem. In the history of the modern world, leaders
relinquish power primarily when they are confronted with overwhelming force—by a rebellious
military or an aroused citizenry. However, the rebels can only stay united for a limited time, after
which they disperse and go back to their ordinary lives. Dictators will make concessions in the
face of a rebellion, but once the peasants return to their fields or the army to its barracks, rulers
can rescind their concessions. By agreeing to a written and institutionalized version of the
concessions, the dictator's options to defect are limited, and the rebels lock in their power before
it dissipates. Institutionalized concessions are the origins of modern democracy (Acemoglu &
Robinson, 2006).
Some Myths and Realities of Leadership
Although the leadership literature overwhelmingly focuses on leaders, usually defined in
terms of the person who is in charge, an evolutionary approach suggests that it is essential to
simultaneously consider the preferences of followers. The psychology of followership is more
Leadership and Followership 13
complicated and intriguing than that of leadership, and we say this for several reasons. First, the
motives of many leaders may not be very complex—they simply want power. Second, the
literature has overwhelmingly focused on leaders, and relatively little is known about
followership (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Hollander, 1992; Hollander & Offerman, 1990). Third, it
is not immediately obvious why people follow leaders, because they resent coercive,
authoritarian control (Van Vugt et al., 2004) and, from an evolutionary perspective, they are
often at a disadvantage. In what follows, we analyze five myths about leadership, which are
perpetuated in the literature, but are inconsistent with our evolutionary model.
Myth 1: Leadership is more important than followership
Although the leadership literature is biased towards the study of leaders, followership is
the real evolutionary puzzle. If you want to lead, you need to find out who your followers are. In
the book, The English, Paxman (1999) wrote: "The Bishop of Norwich was told by his
predecessor 'Welcome to Norfolk. If you want to lead someone in this part of the world, find out
where they are going. And walk in front of them'" (p. 134). Why do people choose to follow?
One answer is, not everyone can be the leader, and perhaps people simply make the best of a bad
situation (Dawkins, 1976). As the game model showed, followers also benefit from association
with good leaders. Effective leaders encourage individuals to work for their groups from which
everyone in the group benefits (Hogan et al., 1994; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Van Vugt & De
Cremer, 1999).
Furthermore, followers usually determine the kind of leadership that emerges.
Charismatic leadership is a good example. Charismatic leaders inspire followers through their
ideals, close personal contact, and self-sacrifice (Bass, 1985; House 1977). Charismatic
leadership is presumably an adaptive response to crisis situations in which group members look
Leadership and Followership 14
for alternatives outside the traditional group leadership to help them overcome certain
challenges. Desperate people seem inclined toward charismatic leadership (Cohen, Solomon,
Maxfield, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2004; Landau et al., 2004). Cohen et al. (2004) asked half
of a research sample to think about their own death; the others received normal instructions.
They were then asked to vote for a hypothetical governor on the basis of a speech. The speech
was either task-oriented, relationship-oriented, or charismatic. People reminded of their mortality
were more likely to vote for the charismatic candidate.
Myth 2: Leadership is dominance
A second myth is that leadership involves dominance. Many researchers, including
evolutionary psychologists, define leadership in terms of holding the top position in a hierarchy
(e.g., Nicholson, 2000). These hierarchies emerge when individuals compete with each other for
scarce resources, and the more successful competitors emerge on top (Buss, 2005). Defining
leadership in terms of the ability to dominate others is simply wrong. Although dominants in
many species often take leadership roles (E. O. Wilson, 1975), this model is too limited to
understand human leadership. First, human hierarchies are much flatter than those of most
species, and they are typically prestige-based rather than power-based (De Waal, 1996; Henrich
& Gil-White, 2001). Dominance often fails as a leadership strategy in humans because followers
form alliances to overthrow aggressive leaders (Boehm, 1999). The empirical literature shows
only modest correlations between measures of leadership and dominance; Lord, DeVader, and
Alliger (1986) report an average meta-analytic correlation of .09. The conclusion is inevitable:
Leadership is not dominance (although bullies often attain leadership positions).
Myth 3: Leadership is a product of the situation
Leadership and Followership 15
Another myth is that leaders are the product of situations, that personal attributes do not
determine leadership emergence or effectiveness. This leads to the view that anyone can be a
leader, which is the de facto perspective of the government, the military, business, and most
large organizations (House & Aditya, 1997). Judge et al. (2002) show that personality powerfully
predicts leadership emergence across organizational levels, corporate cultures, and business
sectors. In the laboratory the same individuals emerge as leaders on different tasks (Kenny &
Zaccoro, 1983). Also twin research (Ilies, Gerhardt, & Le, 2004) finds substantial heritability
coefficients for many traits related to leadership, including extraversion, intelligence, ambition,
and empathy. This is not an argument for genetic determinism (cf. Kenrick & Simpson, 1997);
we are simply saying that situational models are incomplete, and that some people have more
talent for leadership than others.
Myth 4: Leadership is inevitable
All groups may need leadership some of the time, and some groups may need leadership all
of the time, but all groups do not need leadership all of the time. Leadership evolved because it
fosters group coordination but there is nothing inevitable about it. Leadership solves specific
problems associated with group living; consequently, it is elicited under conditions that resemble
those problems (cf. Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Consider the following. Unstructured groups
choose leaders when shared resources are being depleted (Samuelson & Messick, 1986; Van
Vugt & De Cremer, 1999), when there is a natural crisis (Baumeister et al., 1982), or when faced
with intergroup competition (Sherif, 1966). In most other situations, people want to be left alone.
For example, groups often remain leaderless when faced with simple coordination problems or
when cohesion is high (Kerr & Jermier, 1978). Cohesive groups even perform better without a
recognized leader (Haslam, McGarthy, Brown, Eggins, Morisson, & Reynolds, 1998). Finally,
Leadership and Followership 16
new ways of communication like E-mail may render leadership less relevant because people can
coordinate their actions without central control (Avolio, Kahai, & Dodge, 2000). This point
deserves emphasis—groups only need leadership under fairly well defined circumstances.
Managers and politicians whose livelihood depends on seeming to lead others may find this a
difficult lesson to learn.
Myth 5: Leaders and followers pursue the same goals
A final myth is that leaders and followers always have the same goals. Our evolutionary
model suggests that the goals of leaders and followers are not always aligned. In the natural
world, competition between members of the same species is the rule and cooperation the
exception. Human nature is a mixture of competitive and cooperative tendencies (Campbell,
1975) that make leader – follower relations inherently ambivalent. There are at least two reasons
for this ambivalence. First, many people with leadership aspirations do not become leaders.
Accession to leadership is a Darwinian process; through a complex series of events in which luck
and circumstances play a role, one person prevails over the others. The losers will return to the
ranks of the followers, resent the leader, and make plans to gain power in the future. Second,
leaders are likely to benefit more from collective action, which increases their control over
followers. Followers, in turn, must find ways to protect their interests by undermining the power
of leaders. Over time this tension may have led to the co-evolution of self-serving leader and
follower strategies which are normally in equilibrium (cf. Maynard-Smith, 1982). At any
particular time though, the balance might tip in favor of leaders, allowing for the emergence of
the coercive, authoritarian structures found in our primate cousins, the gorilla and chimpanzee
(Boehm, 1999). If the balance shifts in favor of the followers, then more egalitarian and
democratic structures are likely to develop.
Leadership and Followership 17
How Leaders Stay in Power. Our analysis suggests that leaders use five major strategies to
stay in power. First, they can redistribute the resources of group action fairly and generously;
generosity and fairness are universal characteristics of successful leaders (Brown, 1991; De
Cremer & Van Vugt, 2002; Tyler & Lind, 1992). The second strategy involves emphasizing
threats. The integrity of any group is constantly under threat, and leaders who can fend off these
threats increase their power (Hamblin, 1958). Leaders also retain power through more selfish
strategies, for example, by buying support. Cronyism is a common strategy in both humans
(Gandossy & Sonnenfeld, 2004) and chimpanzees (De Waal, 1996), although there is little
psychological research on corruption and nepotism (for an exception, see De Cremer & van Dijk,
2005). Leaders can also employ more coercive strategies; Kipnis (1972) showed that when group
leaders have punishment powers, they will use it. Given adequate compensation, there will
always be individuals willing to support such leaders (Altemeyer, 1981). A final strategy is to
impose an ideology on followers to justify the leader’s position. Throughout history, leaders
have used religion to justify (for themselves and their descendants) privileged access to
resources—consider, for example, the "divine" right of kings (Earle, 1991).
How Followers Can Survive Leaders. Our analysis also suggests that followers have
evolved strategies to control the power of leaders. Such strategies—called leveling mechanisms
by anthropologists—allow followers to benefit from leaders without paying excessive costs (e.g.,
losing autonomy, being exploited). The first line of defense is gossip, ridicule, and other forms of
public scrutiny. In many human societies, leader's decisions can be overridden in public
meetings. Among hunter-gatherer groups in the Philippines, when a chief misbehaves, he may be
publicly criticized, and if he tries to give commands, he is rebuffed (Freeman, 1970). In our
society it often falls to the media to ridicule self-serving leaders. Second, groups can disobey
Leadership and Followership 18
overbearing leaders. Freeman (1970) reports that the rank and file ignore Philippine chiefs who
issue commands as opposed to suggestions. In traditional societies leaders cannot order people to
do things that they do not want to do. Disobedience can be effective, because in this way leaders
are sanctioned without necessarily being replaced—which causes further disruptions to a group.
Third, followers can ostracize exploitative leaders. Moore (1972) reports that, when aggressive
tribal leaders start a feud, the other tribesmen declare that the leader is no longer one of their; this
allows rival groups to kill him at will. Ostracism is a severe group sanction that affects the well-
being of the ostracized (Williams & Sommer, 1997). Fourth, followers can desert an exploitative
leader (“voting with their feet”), a reaction observed in both natural (Boehm, 1999) and
experimental settings. Van Vugt et al. (2004) found, for example, that the attrition rate in groups
with autocratic leadership was 4 times that of democratically led groups, resulting in the collapse
of the former groups. Finally, groups can depose selfish leaders or even kill them. Tribal chiefs
may be killed for liaising with outsiders, for being stingy, or generally overstepping their
prerogatives (Boehm, 1993). Disgruntled citizens have attempted to assassinate 15 of 43 U.S.
Presidents; four attempts succeeded, making the Presidency one of the most dangerous jobs in
the world.
A Brief Evolutionary History of Leadership
In this final section we like to present a scenario for the development of leadership in
human evolutionary history. Such scenarios risk becoming an unsubstantiated “just so story.”
Nonetheless, there are a number of clues embedded in various behavioral science disciplines that
can be used to estimate the time frame for the evolutionary elaboration of leadership in humans.
Stage 1: Prehuman Leadership
Phylogenetic evidence suggests that pre-adaptations for leadership evolved long before
Leadership and Followership 19
humans appeared some 2 to 2.5 millions years ago. First, very simple forms of coordinating
group movement are found in many social species, including foraging mammals, migrating
birds, and social insects (Couzin et al., 2005; E.O. Wilson, 1975). Group coordination does not
require sophisticated cognitive machinery; it only requires an individual to take the initiative and
others to acquiesce. Second, leadership for peacekeeping in cooperative groups has been
observed in other primates, including gorillas and chimpanzees. The common ancestor, from
whom we split around 7 million years ago, probably had this capability. Finally, an embryonic
form of leadership in raids and other between-community encounters has been observed in
chimpanzees, with whom we shared a common ancestor some 5 million years ago (Wrangham &
Peterson, 1996).
Stage 2: Band and Tribal Leadership in the EEA
Leadership was further shaped by the unique evolutionary history of humans. One can
think about modal patterns of human leadership as evolving through three stages. Each stage
represents a change in the economy, complexity, and organization of groups, which has
implications for the relationship between leaders and followers. The first and by far the longest
stage extended from the emergence of humans around 2.5 million years ago until the end of the
last ice age about 13,000 years ago. During this stage, the Pleistocene era, humans lived in small
family bands (much like other primates). Social arrangements within bands were largely
egalitarian, and there was no formalized leadership. Most experts agree that modern hunter-
gatherers—e.g., the !Kung San of the Kalahari desert, the Yanomamo of the Amazon river basin,
the Inuit of the Arctic coasts, and the Aborigines in Northern Australia—provide the best model
we have for human social organization in this stage, often referred to as the environment of
evolutionary adaptedness or EEA (Boehm, 1999; Foley, 1997).
Leadership and Followership 20
Boehm (1999) describes conditions in the EEA as fundamentally egalitarian. Resources
could not be stored, and were shared equally among band members—when hunter-gatherers take
down game, the head man and the one who killed the animal eat first, followed by the others, but
all members of the party eat the same (Boehm, 1999). All important group decisions were made
by consensus and leadership was transitory (Brown, 1991). Good hunters and fierce warriors
were able to exercise relatively more influence but only within their domains of expertise and
their position was not formalized (Chagnon, 1997; Diamond, 1997).
Social life among early humans was far from peaceful (Buss, 2005; Chagnon, 1997). There
were always people trying to dominate the others—dominance is a legacy of our primate heritage
(Boehm, 1999)—but these attempts prompted fierce resistance from the group. By acting
together the group could avoid tyranny. Group members could ignore a bully; if he persisted,
they could leave him, exile him, or kill him. In time, this gave rise to a highly participative,
democratic leadership style that existed for at least 2 million years. Evolutionary psychologists
believe that this period, the EEA, reflects our natural way of thinking about and responding to
leadership. Our implicit leadership theories (Lord & Maher, 1993) were formed during this time.
As a result, modern humans across cultures think of leadership in terms of fairness, integrity,
competence, good judgment, and concern for others (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; House &
Aditya, 1997) and they resent authoritarian and overbearing leaders (Van Vugt et al., 2004).
In the late Pleistocene, bands linked up to form larger tribal structures, possibly under
pressure from intergroup rivalry (Alexander, 1979; Johnson & Earle, 2000; Van Vugt et al., in
press). The formation of larger social networks was made possible by advances in human
communication and cognitive capacities produced by the evolution of language and theory of
mind (Dunbar, 2004) in Homo Sapiens some 100,000 years ago. These cognitive developments
Leadership and Followership 21
paved the way for more complex societies and enlarged leadership structures that were,
nonetheless, still inherently democratic (Johnson & Earle, 2000).
Stage 3: Chiefs, Kings, and Warlords
Although there have been no fundamental changes in our evolved leadership psychology,
social structures changed dramatically in the third stage, which began with the development of
agriculture at the end of the last ice age approximately 10,000 years ago. Agriculture and
dependable food supplies enabled settled communities and populations exploded. For the first
time in history communities could accumulate resources through harvests, and leaders (the so-
called Big Men—Diamond, 1997; Johnson & Earle, 2000) played an important role in the
redistributive economy. As communities grew so did the potential for conflict within and
between them. To deal with this, leaders were sometimes awarded extra powers and this
sometimes led to more formalized leadership structures, giving rise to the emergence of
chiefdoms and kingdoms (Earle, 1991). In their redistributive role, leaders could siphon off extra
resources and use them to strengthen their power base by creating an elite, and, in some cases,
making their leadership hereditary. It quickly became attractive for clever, resourceful and
dominating individuals to pursue positions of leadership. Unlike the EEA, it was difficult for
people in settled communities to move away from exploitative leaders, and the power gap
between leaders and followers steadily increased.
Constant conflicts between communities led to the emergence of a military class and war
lords emerged; tough, aggressive men who built coalitions of like-minded men, united in the
common purpose of acquiring property and resources by force. War lord societies are essentially
the norm in pre-industrialized societies—e.g., medieval France (Johnson & Earle, 2000). A
substantial proportion of modern humanity, including parts of Africa, Asia, and South America
Leadership and Followership 22
still live in these oppressive conditions (Transparency International, 2005). Whenever a
centralized government with a monopoly on the use of force breaks down—Iraq or
Afghanistan—war lords inevitably emerge. War lords and tyrannical chiefs are leaders in the
sense that they have a band of dedicated followers whose loyalty is predicated on the possibility
of resources and privileges in the new regime, and perhaps one day becoming the leader
themselves. Nonetheless, they are resented, in part, because their behavior is inconsistent with
our evolved leadership psychology—warlords and tyrants are the antithesis of leadership
(Epitropaki & Martin, 2004).
Stage 4: State and Business Leadership
The fourth leadership period corresponds roughly to the beginning of the industrial
revolution some 250 years ago; this change created very large modern nation states and business
organizations. Citizens of these states and employees of these organizations are more or less free
from the predations of their leaders and potentially free to defect to other states and
organizations; this freedom shifts the power balance in the direction of followers. In the early
stages of the industrial revolution, however, and in developing economies today, workers were,
and are, in effect indentured servants. Class warfare is real, but in the developed world it is
somewhat moderated and its effects are muted compared to parts of the world still dominated by
war lords.
Modern academic discussions of leadership exclusively concern social arrangements in this
fourth period, that is, leadership structures in large, bureaucratic hierarchies (Wielkiewicz &
Stelzner, 2005). Although such arrangements can be effective in a business sense, they are
usually inconsistent with our evolved leadership psychology that originated in small scale
societies. The intimate egalitarian leader-follower relationships from that period have been
Leadership and Followership 23
replaced by a depersonalized, hierarchical style of leadership in bureaucracies. Large
organizations would perform better if they recalled the leadership style of small groups in which
relations between managers and subordinates are nearly equal. Collins (2001) reports that, in
Fortune 1000 companies, unusually successful CEOs are modest and humble (as well as smart
and incredibly persistent). Their leadership style resembles that associated with traditional band
leadership. Effective organizations also devolve substantial leadership responsibility to managers
far down the chain of command and rely on non-coercive power sources (prestige and charisma)
to manage their staff.
In sum, although pre-adaptations for leadership evolved long before humans appeared,
leadership was elaborated in the EEA in response to cooperation problems within and between
larger groups. This leadership was consensual, democratic, and transitory—leadership was only
needed in specific situations. The formalized leadership structures that emerged after the
agricultural revolution are often at odds with our evolved leadership psychology. This implies
that many existing leadership practices are ineffective and alienate those who are subject to
them; this might explain the high rate of leadership failure in modern organizations, estimated to
be as much as 60-75% (Hogan, Curphy & Hogan, 1994).
Conclusions
Leadership is a crucial but often misunderstood topic. Much of the misunderstanding
comes from the tendency to think about leadership in terms of the attributes of the people in
charge (cf. House & Aditya, 1997). This paper proposes conceptualizing leadership from the
perspective of evolutionary psychology, and doing so suggests three conclusions that are not part
of the current leadership literature. The first is that leadership cannot be studied apart from the
motives and intentions of followers. An evolutionary analysis suggests that leader-follower
Leadership and Followership 24
relations are functional responses to a variety of specific group threats that have been around for
much of human history.
The second conclusion is that humans have an evolved leadership psychology; it is based
on several million years of living in small egalitarian communities with an informal, prestige-
based leadership structure, and it affects the way we respond to modern leadership. These
evolved leadership prototypes include, amongst others, (1) integrity—good leaders can be
trusted; (2) prosociality—good leaders are fair and generous; (3) humility—good leaders are
humble; (4) decisiveness—good leaders make sound decisions for the group; (5) intelligence and
competence—good leaders contribute to the group's performance, and, finally, (6) vision—good
leaders adopt a personalized style and articulate attractive and inspiring group goals (Hogan &
Kaiser, 2005; Lord & Maher, 1993).
It is interesting to note how closely George Washington, the first president of the United
States, matched this prototype. His decision-making as a General has been questioned, but he
was known for his integrity, he was the wealthiest man in Virginia and the best equestrian in the
colonies—which speaks to his competence—and he showed astonishing persistence during the
long and arduous war for independence. Most importantly, his power over other men was rooted
in his humility—he gave up authority where other men lusted for it (Wood, 2006).
The third conclusion is that contemporary followers (employees and citizens) are often
required to deal with people whose performance in leadership roles departs markedly from our
evolved leadership psychology. This inevitably leads to frustration, alienation and desires to
change leaders, jobs, or careers. If we want to know why leadership fails so often and sometimes
so miserably in modern society, we should review the lessons from our ancestral past.
Leadership and Followership 25
References
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J.A. (2006). Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Alexander, R. D. (1979). Darwinism and human affairs. Seattle: University of Washington.
Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. University of Manitoba press
Avolio, B., Kahai, S., & Dodge, G. (2000). E-leadership: Implications for theory, research, and
practice. Leadership Quarterly, 11, 615-668.
Bales, R. F. (1951). Interaction process analysis: A method for the study of small groups.
Cambridge: Addison-Wesley Press Inc.
Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass and Stogdill's Handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and
managerial applications (3
rd
edition). New York: Free Press.
Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: The Free
Press.
Baumeister, R. F., Chesner,S. P., Senders, P. S., Tice, D. M. (1989). Who's in charge here?
Group leaders do lend help in emergencies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14,
17-22.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments
as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
Betzig, L. (1986). Despotism and differential reproduction: A Darwinian view of history. New
York: Aldine.
Boehm, C. (1993). Egalitarian society and reverse dominance hierarchy. Current Anthropology,
34, 227-254.
Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the Forest. London: Harvard University Press.
Brown, D. (1991). Human Universals. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill.
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Buss, D. M. (2005). Handbook of evolutionary psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Campbell, D. T. (1975). On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between
psychology and moral tradition. American Psychologist, 30, 1103-1126.
Cartwright, D., & Zander, A. (1968). Group dynamics: Research and theory. Evanston, Il: Row
Peterson.
Chagnon, N. A. (1997). Yanomamo. London: Wadsworth.
Leadership and Followership 26
Chemers, M. M. (2000). Leadership research and theory: A functional integration. Group
Dynamics, 4, 37-43.
Cohen, F., Solomon, S., Maxfield, M., Pyszcynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2004). Fatal attraction:
The effects of mortality salience on evaluations of charismatic, task-oriented, and
relationship-oriented leaders. Psychological Science, 15, 846-851.
Collins, J. (2001). Level 5 leadership: The triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard
Business Review, 79(1), 66-76.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. Barkow et al.,
The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 163-28).
New York: Oxford University Press.
Couzin, I.D., Krause, J., Franks, N.R. & Levin, S.A. (2005). Effective leadership and decision-
making in animal groups on the move. Nature, 434, 513-516.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Cremer, D., & van Dijk, E. (2005). When and why leaders put themselves first. European
Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 553-563.
De Cremer, D., & Van Vugt, M. (2002). Intra- and intergroup dynamics of leadership in social
dilemmas: A relational model of cooperation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
38, 126-136.
De Waal., F. (1996). Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other
animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs and steel. London: Vintage.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. London: Faber &
Faber.
Dutton, D. G., Boyanosky, E. O., Bond, M. H. (2005). Extreme mass homicide: From military
massacre to genocide. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 437-473.
Earle, T. (1991). Chiefdoms: Power, economy, and ideology. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Epitropaki, O., & Martin, R. (2004). Implicit leadership theories in applied settings: Factor
structure, generalizability and stability over time. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 293-
310.
Foley, R. A. (1997). The adaptive legacy of human evolution: A search for the environment of
evolutionary adaptedness. Evolutionary Anthropology, 4, 194-203.
Gandossey, R. & Sonnenfeld, J. A. (2004). Leadership and governance from the inside out.
London: Wiley.
Gintis, H. (2000). Game theory evolving. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Leadership and Followership 27
Gintis, H. (in press). A framework for unifying the behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences.
Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory
of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level domain perspective. Leadership
Quarterly, 6, 219-247.
Hamblin, R. L. (1958). Leadership and crises. Sociometry, 21, 322-335.
Haslam, A., McGarthy, C., Brown, P., Eggins, R., Morrison, B., & Reynolds, K. (1998).
Inspecting the emperor's clothes: Evidence that random selection of leaders can enhance
group performance. Group Dynamics, 2, 168-184.
Henrich, J. & Gil-White, F. (2001). The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a
mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human
Behavior, 22, 165-196.
Hogan, R., & Hogan, J. (2002). Leadership and sociopolitical intelligence. In R. E. Riggio, S.
E. Murphy, & F. J. Pirozzolo (Eds.). Multiple intelligences and leadership. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (Pp.75-88).
Hogan, R., Curphy, G. J., & Hogan J. (1994). What we know about leadership. American
Psychologist, 49, 493-504.
Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. (2005). What we know about leadership. Review of General Psychology,
9, 169-180.
Hogbin, H. (1951). Transformation scene: The changing culture of a New Guinea village.
London: Routledge.
Hollander, E. P. (1978). Leadership dynamics: A practical guide to effective relationships. New
York: Free Press/Macmillan.
Hollander, E. P. (1992). The essential interdependence of leadership and followership. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 1(2), 71-75.
Hollander, E. P., & Offermann, L. (1990). Power and leadership in organizations: Relationships
in transition. American Psychologist, 45, 179-189.
House, R. J. (1977). A theory of charismatic leadership. In J. G. Hunt & L. L. Larson (Eds.),
Leadership: The cutting edge (pp. 189-207). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
Press.
House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (1997). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo Vadis?
Journal of Management, 23, 409-473.
Ilies, R., Gerhardt, M., & Le, H. (2004). Individual differences in leadership emergence:
Integrating meta-analytic findings and behavior genetics estimates. International Journal of
Selection and Assessment, 12, 207-219.
Leadership and Followership 28
Johnson, A. W., & Earle, T. (2000). The evolution of human societies. Stanford, Ca: Stanford
University Press.
Judge, T. Bono, J., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and
quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780.
Kellett, J. B., Humphrey, R. H., & Sleeth, R. G. (2002). Empathy and complex task performance:
Two routes to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 523-544.
Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach, and inhibition.
Psychological Review, 110, 265-284.
Kenny, D. A., & Zaccoro, S. J. (1983). An estimate of variance due to traits in leadership.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 68, 678-685.
Kenrick, D., Li, N. P., & Butner, J. (2003). Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual
decision rules and emergent social norms. Psychological Review, 110, 3-28.
Kenrick, D. T., & Simpson, J. A. (1997). Why social psychology and evolutionary psychology
need one another. In J. Simpson & D. Kenrick (Eds.), Evolutionary Social Psychology (pp.
1-20). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kerr, S., & Jermier, J. (1978). Substitutes for leadership: Their meaning and measurement.
Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 22, 374-403.
Kipnis, D. (1972). Does power corrupt? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 33-
41.
Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Miller, C., Cohen, F., &
Ogilvie, D. M., & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver Us from Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience
and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.
Lord, R. G, DeVader, C. L, & Alliger, G. M. (1986). A meta-analysis of the relation between
personality traits and leadership perceptions: An application of validity generalization
procedures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 402-410.
Lord, R. G. & Maher, K. J. (1993). Leadership and information processing: Linking perceptions
and performance. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Mann, R. D. (1959). A review of the relationships between personality and performance in small
groups. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 241-270.
Maynard-Smith, J. (1982). Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Moore, S. F. (1972). Legal liability and evolutionary interpretation. In M. Gluckman (Ed.), The
allocation of responsibility, (pp. 51-107). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Nicholson, N. (2000). Managing the human animal. New York: Thomson.
Leadership and Followership 29
Northouse, P. (2004). Leadership theory and practice. London: Sage.
Paxman, J. (1999). The English. London: Penguin.
Perusse, D. (1993). Cultural and reproductive success in industrial societies: Testing the
relationship at the proximate and ultimate levels. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 267-
322.
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate. London: Penguin Classics.
Rapoport, A. (1967). Exploiter, leader, hero, and martyr: the four archetypes of the 2x2 game.
Behavioral Science, 12, 81-84.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human
evolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Samuelson, C. D., & Messick, D. M. (1986). Inequities in access to and use of shared resources
in social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 960-967.
Schaller, M., Simpson, J., Kenrick, D (2006). Evolution and Social Psychology. London:
Psychology Press.
Schmitt, D. P., & Pilcher, J. J. (2004). Evaluating evidence of psychological adaptation: How do
we know one when we see one. Psychological Science, 15, 643-649.
Sherif, M. (1966). In common predicament. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish
behaviour. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership (1st edition). New York: Free Press.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1990). On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the
individual: the role of genes an adaptation. Journal of Personality, 58, 17-68.
Transparency International (2005). Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
Document retrieved from: http://ww1.transparency.org/cpi/2005/2005.10.18.cpi.en.htm on
June 29, 2006.
Tyler, T. R., & Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. In M. Zanna (Ed.),
Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 115-191). New York: Academic
Press.
Van Vugt, M., & De Cremer, D. (1999). Leadership in social dilemmas: The effects of group
identification on collective actions to provide public goods. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 76, 587-599.
Van Vugt, M., De Cremer, D., & Janssen, D. (in press). Gender differences in cooperation and
competition: The male warrior hypothesis. Psychological Science.
Leadership and Followership 30
Van Vugt, M., Jepson, S. F., Hart, C. M., & De Cremer, D. (2004). Autocratic leadership in
social dilemmas: A threat to group stability. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40,
1-13.
Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (1978). On the validity of the Vroom-Yetton model. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 63, 151-162.
Wrangham, R., & Peterson, D. (1996). Demonic males: Apes and the origins of human violence.
London: Bloomsbury.
Wielkiewicz, R. M., & Stelzner, S. P. (2005). An ecological perspective on leadership theory,
research, and practice. Review of General Psychology, 9, 326-341
Williams, K. D., & Sommer, K. L. (1997). Social ostracism by co-workers: Does rejection lead
to loafing or compensation? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 61, 570-581.
Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Science. New York: Knopf.
Wood, G. S. (2006). Revolutionary characters: What made the founders different. New York:
Penguin Press
Yukl, G. A. (2005). Leadership in organizations (6
th
edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Zaccaro, S. J., Gilbert, J. A., Thor, K. K., & Mumford, M. D. (1991). Leadership and social
intelligence: Linking social perceptiveness and behavioral flexibility to leader effectiveness.
Leadership Quarterly, 2, 317-342.
Leadership and Followership 31
Figure Caption
Figure 1. The Leader Game
Mary
Hole A Hole B
Hole A 3,1* 0,0
John
Hole B 0,0 1,3*
Fig. 1. The Leader Game in which payoffs are for
John and Mary respectively; game equilibria are
indicated with asterisks.
A preview of this full-text is provided by American Psychological Association.
Content available from American Psychologist
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
