– by Adi Wiezel & Doug Kenrick

Women make up slightly over 50 percent of the U.S. population. Why then are only a quarter of U.S. Senators and a tenth of Fortune 500 CEOs women? Why have none of 45 American Presidents been a woman? According to some experts on leadership, the explanation involves two steps: first, people’s stereotype of a leader involves masculinity and dominance (the human incarnation of an “Alpha Male” chimpanzee); second, this stereotype translates into a preference. When voters go the polls, or when boards of directors choose executives, the Alpha Male stereotype drives their choices.

But a recently published series of studies suggests that this story is only half true: Most people’s mental image of a leader is a man. But does that mean most people prefer men as leaders? No, in fact, there is a slight preference for women as leaders. This is true whether people are evaluating candidates for a position in a business organization, or for a political office.

More importantly than the slight preference for women, there is a strong bias against leaders who manifest the Alpha Male brand of dominance.

To understand the antipathy towards dominance, it’s important to recognize a distinction between dominance and prestige. In many animal species, positions of status are acquired by aggression and threats, as in the case of Alpha Male chimpanzees. No doubt some of human status is achieved by bullying and threats, with power-hungry individuals fighting to win control over others. But human beings also have another route to status – via prestige. Because human groups involve a great deal of cooperation and mutual problem-solving, people often freely confer status, and leadership positions, on individuals who are especially socially skilled and who can mediate and reduce conflict within and between groups. Unlike dominance, prestige is bestowed by other group members, rather than taken by force. And unlike dominance, prestige is not particularly sex-typed.

In five studies, our research team explored the relationship between leader stereotypes and preferences. In the first study, we found that most people asked to imagine a leader spontaneously thought of a man. This was true whether they were asked to think of a dominant leader (“… has a lot of power and has authority and control over people. People don’t get in this person’s way”) or a prestigious leader (“… has a lot of prestige and has people’s respect and admiration. People seek this person out.”). A follow-up study found this true whether people were prompted to think of a leader in the military, politics, business, sports, science, or the arts.

After imagining a leader, however, people were asked “How much would you like to work for this person?” Did preferences follow stereotypes? No. In fact, there was a slight preference favoring female leaders. More importantly, there was a strong preference to be led by a prestigious rather than a dominant leader. This preference for female over male leaders was corroborated in an analysis of a nationally representative sample from the Pew American Trends Panel.

In another experimental study, people evaluated two candidates for a leadership position in an organization. One leader was described as dominant (forceful, commanding), the other as prestigious (well-respected, looked up to). Sometimes the dominant candidate was a woman and the prestigious candidate was a man, and sometimes the woman was the prestigious candidate. In both cases, people strongly preferred the prestigious over the dominant leader—regardless of whether that person was a woman or a man.

In another study, participants judged actual politicians from facial photographs (European parliamentarians, not known to American participants). People viewed women as more likely to use prestige- over dominance-based leadership strategies, and when asked whether they would vote for this person as governor of their state, showed a slight preference for the women over the men.

But do voters still choose men over women in real elections? No. Analyses of actual U.S. elections confirm that women are (very slightly) favored when they do run for elected office, even at the highest levels. There has only been one instance in which a woman ran against a man for the U.S. presidency, and she earned the majority of the popular vote.

But if people have no prejudice against women leaders, why doesn’t American leadership reflect the fact that half the population is female? The answer is that fewer women tend to run for high office and may be less likely to be chosen by party leaders. Hence, social scientists who persist in promoting the belief that there is a prejudice against females in leadership positions may be unintentionally contributing to the problem. The data suggest it is time to update our models.

This set of studies also raised further questions. Some of these were addressed by seven thoughtful commentaries from prominent scholars in the field, including Alice Eagly and Steven J. Karau, Joey Cheng, Mark van Vugt, Charleen Case and Laurel Detert, Nina Rodriguez and Jaimie Krems, Chris von Rueden, and Patrick Durkee and Aaron Lukaszewski. For example, Case and Detert asked why women were stereotyped as more prestigious than men—is it that men and women vary in their capacity to wield dominance, or that men and women are differentially rewarded for using these two strategies (such that women are more often punished for using dominance)? Moreover, since dominance was less preferred as measured in the present studies, it is worth considering whether this would still be the case for more expanded definitions of dominance. For instance, as Durkee and Lukaszewski suggest, it may be that people dislike dominance when it is used to inflict net costs on the group, but not when it used to provide net benefits to the group. Collectively, commentaries like these suggest the importance of considering further nuance in our models of human leadership. One promising future direction involves considering what ancestral functions leaders may have served, what traits and capacities may have been useful for those roles, and what mismatches we see today.

Read the original article: Wiezel, A., Barlev, M., Martos, C.R., & Kenrick, D.T. (2024). Stereotypes vs. preferences: revisiting the role of alpha males in leadership. Evolution & Human Behavior, 45(3), 292-308.

Read the commentary articles and authors’ response:

• Patrick Durkee & Aaron Lukaszewski: Deconstructing “dominance” to refine leadership search (see here)
• Alice Eagly & Steven Karau: Implications of dominance versus agency in the interpretation of preferences for female and male leaders (see here)
• Charleen Case & Laurel Detert: Are men (believe to be) less prestige-oriented than women? (see here)
• Christopher Von Rueden: “Think leader, think alpha male” and the evolution of leader stereotypes (see here)
• Joey Cheng: Prestige-based leadership offers women leaders an advantage and reduces gender inequality in leadership (see here)
• Nina Rodriguez & Jaimie Krems: Two notes on Wiezel et al.: explaining why people disfavor dominant leaders and exploring overlooked sources of women’s dominance and leadership (see here)
• Authors’ response (Adi Wiezel, Michael Barlev & Doug Kenrick): Beyond stereotypes versus preferences: sex, dominance, and the functions of leadership (see here)

Image source (Creative Commons)

 

– By Tran Dinh and Steve Gangestad

Why do humans vary in their willingness to have multiple sexual relationships or tendency to form long-term bonds with a single partner? Evolutionary-minded researchers often look at patterns observed in nonhuman animals to gain insight into human nature. Indeed, much research has been done to explain the array of mating strategies across and within species: why individuals engage in intense mating contests, display exaggerated physical characteristics, cheat on their partners—and also why they form monogamous bonds or mate with many partners.

Over the past few decades, some scholars have argued that variations in human sociosexuality—their willingness to have sex without commitment or interest in having multiple sex partners—are part of fast vs. slow life history strategies. Across species, those that are fast life history strategists reproduce at an early age, have many offspring, and die young. Slow strategists invest in their health, have offspring late, have few of them, and live long lives. Within humans, fast and slow life history strategies may exist too. According to dominant views, humans achieve fast or slow reproductive outcomes by having uncommitted sex with multiple partners (unrestricted sociosexuality, a “fast” strategy) or settling down with one committed partner and having few lifetime sex partners (restricted sociosexuality, a “slow” strategy).

At first blush, it may seem a compelling argument. More sex leads to more offspring, right? Less commitment leads to more sex partners which leads to more offspring. The logic sparked much research into life history trajectories explaining not just variations in sociosexuality, but also personality traits and aggression. Here, we focus just on the question of whether restricted vs. unrestricted sociosexuality solves the adaptive problem of reproducing at a slow vs. fast rate. Before we get into addressing that question (spoiler: the answer is no), it is important to first discuss life history theory.

Life History Theory and the Fast-Slow Continuum

            The life histories and life cycles of animals vary tremendously. The giant sunda rat lives less than a year, the bowhead whale over 200 years. Yet both grow, develop, and successfully reproduce within their lifespans. How has natural selection shaped such a vast diversity of life cycles? How can it pay members of one species to spend more time gestating a single offspring than members of another species spend living? Life history theory seeks to answer these questions.

The theory argues that species’ life courses vary along a fast-to-slow dimension. Fast species tend to reproduce early in life. They put a lot of effort into reproduction, which means that they have less to invest in fighting infections, suppressing cancer, avoiding or defending against predators, and other tactics for extending their life. Slow species start reproducing later in life. They instead prioritize growth and development. Their strategy is to put more effort into living longer, which comes at the expense of reproducing more slowly.

The “winning” strategy partly depends on the cost that members of a species must pay to avoid death. When the chances of dying young are low or can be reliably avoided, reproducing slowly across a longer lifespan—and “helping” each offspring survive and reproduce—becomes more profitable. But waiting to reproduce when the world is sufficiently dangerous risks not reproducing at all. Reproducing early and plentifully—but not investing heavily in any one offspring—becomes a better strategy.

These differences between species sparked the idea that life history strategies may differ within a species too. Humans may also differ in the speed that they grow, reach puberty, have kids, and age. These differences may arise from growing up in an environment with high chances of relatively uncontrollable death, or in a relatively safe controllable environment.

Sociosexuality as Part of a Fast vs. Slow Strategy

            So far, these ideas are conceptually plausible. But there is an additional element to dominant viewpoints—that sociosexual orientations underlie fast vs. slow reproductive strategies. Fast female strategists are purportedly more open to mating with multiple males (serially or concurrently) in relatively uncommitted or transient relationships. Their unrestricted sociosexuality or “short-term” mating strategy serves the purpose of reproducing sooner, having more offspring, and caring less for each child. In contrast, slow female strategists desire strong, stable romantic relationships and are less open to having uncommitted sex. Their restricted sociosexuality or “long-term” mating strategy allows them to reproduce later and within a lasting relationship in which both partners intensively care for fewer offspring.

For multiple reasons, we question how well these proposed links are theoretically grounded.

First, pair-bonding does not systematically associate with fast-slow life history variation across species. Bats have amongst the slowest life histories of any mammal. Yet female bats mate with multiple males and rear young without male assistance. Among bird species, some slow strategists, such as albatrosses, pair-bond for life. But so do some relatively fast strategists, including many geese and swans. Similarly, primate species that pair-bond do not systematically have slower life histories than those that do not pair-bond.

Second, a reason for these patterns is that pair-bonding and biparental care do not promote offspring quality at the expense of offspring quantity. Females of bird species that pair-bond and engage in biparental care have more offspring than female birds that do not have male assistance. Female marmosets and tamarins—primates that raise offspring in pairs or small family groups—have relatively high rates of reproduction among primates.

Third, reflection of how humans have evolved (e.g., as cooperative breeders) offers little basis for thinking that female “fast mating” and having many unstable sexual relationships promote the speed that offspring are produced. Human offspring require investment across nine months of pregnancy. In foraging societies, mothers breastfeed children for a year or more. Having additional sex partners during this time does not increase how fast a woman has children. Having sex with one man or several men may result in one child. Indeed, fidelity to a single partner, who helps provide nutrition or care for children, may best promote the rate that women can have children. Across foraging societies, how much men provide food negatively covaries with the spacing between births and the number of children women have.

The Take-Home

It is plausible that variation in rates of growth and development, such as when girls have their first menstrual period, partly reflects differences in life history strategies. Mating propensities likely systematically vary as well, as reflected in differences in tendencies to form stable pair-bonds or willingness to have multiple sexual relationships. However, there is little compelling reason to think that variations in sociosexuality explain differences in reproductive rate or offspring quality vs. quantity in humans—or, for that matter, across nonhuman animal species. What may appear to be a logical link is not supported by evolutionary thinking or pertinent data. Our understanding of both life history variations among humans and variations in mating propensities will benefit from seeing them as largely unrelated phenomena.

Read the full article here: Dinh, T., & Gangestad, S.W. (2024). Mating fast and slow? Sociosexual orientations are not reflective of life history trajectories. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(1), 27-40.

Photo credit: Zachary Garfield. Hamar women gather for a community meeting

– by Zachary Garfield

How do we resolve conflicts? Who helps resolve conflicts and why? To answer these questions, my colleague Luke Glowacki and I analyzed data from ongoing long-term fieldwork among Hamar pastoralists in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, now published in Evolution and Human Behavior.

The Hamar are an interesting ethnographic case study for conflicts and their mediation. They live in the culturally diverse Omo Valley, home to over a dozen distinct ethnic groups, most of which practice pastoralism to some degree. There’s also much history of inter-group conflict, warfare, and large-scale cattle raids between these groups. So, ethnic identity is powerful. Most men over 50 have fired rifles at neighboring groups when herding cattle, and several have killed other men in the context of inter-group raids. Inter-group threats are assumed to help sustain within-group cooperation and, by extension, theoretically, limit within-group conflicts. Alternatively, it could be argued that cultural values favoring warriors and ferocity could lead to elevated potential for aspiring or well-known warriors to increase or maintain their status through competitive displays, creating additional opportunities for within-group conflicts.

Hamar society, like most East African pastoralists, is clan-based, and birthright membership in a patrilineal clan is a salient feature of one’s social identity. This is part of what makes what is called a kinship-intensive society. Clan-based societies have long been thought to be more likely to experience large-scale conflicts (and this has been recently demonstrated empirically), given that disputes between individuals from different clans or social groups can move up the social levels, recruiting substantially more significant numbers of engaged individuals with every ratchet up. “Me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world,” the old proverb goes. This might be somewhat equivalent to, say, if, during a friendly football match between RasenBallsport Leipzig and Toulouse Football Club, an overly enthusiastic Toulousian and Leipziger got into a drunken brawl, which, if left unresolved, was likely to lead to a more significant conflict between the Saxony and Occitanie regions, and then an all-out war between Germany and France. Thankfully, as we all know, this is extremely unlikely to happen (especially in post-industrialized and Western cultural contexts). In kinship-intensive societies, however – which were probably the norm throughout our evolutionary history and remain common in many parts of the world today –  an open question is, how do clan-based social structures promote or inhibit conflicts between individuals?

Our study asked 99 adults, all willing participants in one Hamar community, to report on conflicts they had experienced with other adults, disputes between different community members they were aware of, or which they had been involved in as a third-party mediator. We also asked each participant to report on the nature and cause of the conflict, who was involved and their relationships, how relatively severe the conflict was, and the outcomes of the conflict, i.e., was it resolved and do the people in conflict get along today. Based on these data, we could analytically explore the socio-ecology of disputes and their mediation in this particular Hamar society.

A first and intriguing result: we observed that 54% of conflicts reported involved the intervention of a third-party mediator. This figure intriguingly aligns with findings from other autonomous, subsistence-based societies worldwide. For instance, von Rueden’s 2022 research with the Tsimane horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon demonstrated that, across four villages and seven observations, men reported the involvement of a third-party mediator in 56% of conflicts. Likewise, Singh and Garfield’s 2022 study with the Mentawai horticulturalists in Indonesia revealed that, out of 217 disputes, nearly half (49.8%) involved third-party mediation. These parallel findings across varied cultures and methods—from self-reports to observations—underscore a common thread: almost half of all interpersonal conflicts within these communities see the peacemaking hand of a third-party mediator.

We also found that pastoralists’ economic systems powerfully shape inter-individual conflicts. More than half of all reported conflicts were related to livestock grazing in someone’s agricultural plots or due to some other livestock management issue. Social disputes, such as those that arise from intoxication, quarreling children, or personal insults, were relatively more common among women, which we interpret as a consequence of gendered divisions of labor, more significant social interactions among women, and demographic patterns of greater mobility among younger adult men. Overall, these results paint a picture of a society where economic, social, and personal dimensions strongly interlace in the emergence of conflicts.

One of the most striking findings was the active involvement of both men and women in conflicts and their resolution, albeit in varying capacities. Men were more likely to be involved in economic and resource-based disputes, whereas women were more likely to be involved in resolving social conflicts. Furthermore, men are typically the mediators of disputes between other men; the same goes for women. However, conflicts between a man and a woman were equally likely to be mediated by a woman or a man. This highlights not only the significance of gender dynamics in conflict resolution but also the nuanced roles women play in these processes, even in a predominantly patriarchal society.

We also found that third-party mediation is more likely for social conflicts and when conflicts emerge between clan members but less likely for disputes between blood relatives. Surprisingly, more severe conflicts were not more likely to involve third-party mediation once other factors were considered. This emphasizes the importance of maintaining social cohesion within clans and suggests blood relatives may more easily be able to resolve conflicts on their own.

This study is just one small piece of the puzzle of human conflicts and resolution. Our results suggest that social structures can be designed to help limit and effectively mediate interpersonal disputes and that we should consider the social, economic, and cultural contexts of human groups and societies to understand what drives conflicts’ emergence and facilitates their resolution.

Read the original article here: Garfield, Z.H., & Glowacki, L. (2023). Interpersonal conflicts and third-party mediation in a pastoralist society. Evolution and Human Behavior, 44(6), 613-623.

To learn more about our work, our nonprofit, and philanthropy in Southwest Ethiopia, see The Omo Valley Research Project.