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Psychologist says that in order to understand modern leadership we should consult the lessons of the past

In a landmark paper to be published in the April issue of American Psychologist, University of Kent psychologist Professor Mark Van Vugt argues that if we want to know why leadership sometimes fails in modern society, we should consult the lessons of our evolutionary past.

The paper, co-authored by Robert Hogan (Hogan Assessment Systems) and Robert B Kaiser (Kaplan DeVries Inc), is notable in that it goes beyond the modern tendency to think about leadership only in terms of the people in charge. Instead, the paper analyses leadership from an evolutionary perspective and suggests three conclusions that are not part of conventional wisdom.

The first is that leadership cannot be studied apart from followership and that an adequate account of the leadership process must consider the psychology of followers. For example, voters have a preference for more masculine leaders during war time and more feminine leaders during peace time. Further, when they want change, voters go for younger leaders.

Second, the goals of leaders and followers do not always converge, a fact that creates a fundamental ambivalence in the relationship between the two parties. When followers cannot control their leaders, for instance via a free press, leaders turn into despots and behave much like the dominant individuals in other primate species.

Third, 2.5 million years of living in small egalitarian communities has shaped the way we respond to leadership today. For instance, we are often required to defer to people in leadership roles whose behaviour is markedly inconsistent with qualities important in ancestral leadership. This may lead to frustration, alienation and efforts to change leaders, jobs or careers.

Professor Van Vugt says: 'There is a high rate of leadership failure in modern society. This is partly due to the way we select our leaders and how much power we give them, which is remarkably different from leadership in ancestral times.'

Leadership, Followership and Evolution - Some Lessons From the Past (Professor Mark Van Vugt, Robert Hogan, Robert B Kaiser) will be published in American Psychologist, Vol. 63, No. 3.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 11:36am 9 April 2008