Open Collections

Hohm, Ian

University of British Columbia

A growing body of research suggests that humans likely evolved to use two distinct strategies to acquire social rank: dominance and prestige (e.g., Cheng, Tracy, Foulsham, Kingstone, & Henrich, 2013; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Dominance is characterized by the use of aggression to induce fear and coerced followership, whereas prestige involves the display of expertise and knowledge to gain admiration and freely chosen deference. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence follower preferences for these different kinds of leadership. We propose that group conflict dynamics contribute to follower preferences, such that followers exhibit a stronger preference for dominant leaders during intergroup conflict, due to these leaders’ willingness to use aggression against outgroups, and a stronger preference for prestigious leaders during intragroup conflict, due to prestigious leaders’ perceived ability to resolve conflicts. We conducted three pre-registered studies (N = 979) to test this account. Studies 1-3 manipulated perceptions of group conflict using hypothetical scenarios and assessed follower preferences for dominant and prestigious leadership in each situation. Results supported our hypotheses, showing that followers preferred dominant leaders during intergroup, compared to intragroup, conflict; and prestigious leaders during intragroup, compared to intergroup, conflict. In Study 3 we further found that these preferences are partly driven by the different group goals that become salient during each kind of conflict. Finally, in a fourth pre-registered study we tested two hypotheses emerging from these findings: (1) Dominant and prestigious leaders should strategically manipulate followers’ perceptions of conflicts so as to make their own leadership style seem more effective, and (2) These manipulations should be observable in the language leaders use when speaking to followers. Using archival data from U.S. presidential speeches, Study 4 provided initial evidence to support these hypotheses: presidents high in dominance and prestige (based on ratings made by expert U.S. historians) used distinctive language in their State of the Union Addresses potentially to increase the salience of the group conflicts for which their own leadership style is preferred. Together, these studies provide new insights into how group context and follower preferences work together to influence dominant and prestigious leaders’ status acquisition.

Text

2022-08-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82412

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/