One thing that stuck out to me in these readings was a point made in the Von Reuden and Van Vugt article. In my 102 class, we talked a lot about over-confidence, and how people with narcissistic traits are more likely to assume leadership roles. Furthermore, we talked about the numerous issues of charisma within both leaders and followers.

I think that this article highlights an important issue in our society that we may not notice. In SSSs, the authors write that community members were easily able to distinguish competent leaders from those who were merely over-confident and narcissistic because they were able to interact with them on a day-to-day basis. This personal relationship between others allows them to better see how that leader would benefit them in the long run. However, we have evolved into a world where charisma is everything, and we are willing and able to overlook substance behind a potential leader in order to focus on their charm or ability to socialize. This ability we have leads to unrealistic expectations and frustrated followers if the leader cannot live up to their expectations and, as we described in our 102 class, fulfill the followers’ need for “continuing magic”. I believe that this idea is detrimental to our society, especially as we are in a world of social media where people can make themselves a brand that appeal to large groups. I think that this reading is very important to keep in mind when evaluating our society and the people who want to lead it.

I really enjoyed the von Rueden reading. The break down of the differences in leadership between SSSs and LSSs, especially when looking at physical qualities and other traits that made leaders in these societies, reminded me a lot of the trait theory of leadership. Like with this reading, when learning about the trait theory of leadership in my LDST 102 class, I was fascinated in the implications of it in current society. Being politically minded, I related a lot of examples back to political circumstances. Prior to my LDST 102 class or this reading, I already knew the fact that the taller presidential candidate tends to win. I was also aware of the arguments regarding level of attractiveness affecting the perception of candidates (think Nixon vs. JFK debate). After learning about the trait theory of leadership, the reasons as to why these preferences exist and the changes that appear to be occurring in them began to make more sense. However, even after learning more about trait theory of leadership, I did not realize how ingrained into society these preferences for leaders are. The evolutionary aspect of the preferences deriving from SSSs fascinated me but also made me wonder if these preferences are capable of changing on a wide scale.

The part of the preferences that I focused on the most with these questions are the physical attributes. The physical attributes of taller, masculine, stronger, etc… all relate back to men, making me question the possibility for women to acclaim high political power, particularly the American presidency, while these preferences still stand. In the 2016 presidential election and during the 2020 democratic primaries, we saw women rise to new levels of political recognition by being the first female nominee from a major political party and through, at one point, being a front-runner in a crowded democratic primary. However, each time, these women were beaten out by men that were taller, more masculine, etc… than the women. With that as the basis, I think that it is interesting to look at these physical preferences and determine if they are in any way, shape, or form decreasing. In tracking the way the preferences are decreasing (assuming they are decreasing given recent strides by female politicians), I think that you would be able to determine the point when these evolutionary preferences would no longer play a role in political leadership. Then, since they would no longer play a role in political leadership, the same findings could possibly be translated to the private sector and leadership within business.

I actually had Dr. von Rueden for my leadership 102 class and we discussed a lot of these ideas (our “textbook” was Van Vugt). Perhaps the idea that I have always found most interesting is evolutionary mismatch, or the mismatch hypothesis, which centers around the idea that we sometimes carry over values and leadership traits from small scale societies and apply them to our large scale societies. But this does not always make sense. In the reading, Dr. von Rueden describes how we see stronger, more physically dominant people as leaders of the military and wars. Another example we talked about in my 102 class is the focus that we place of political leaders’ personal lives. For example, in a small scale society, it makes sense to value and pay attention to a leader’s personal life. However, why does that carry over to a large scale society? Does it matter if Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky? If he is a good leader, why does his personal life matter to us? Another example of the mismatch hypothesis is fear. For example, evolutionary mismatch explains why we still fear spiders and insects but not cars, which have killed and harmed thousands more than spiders.

I found his evolutionary explanation about gender very interesting. In class, we discussed how men have evolved to take on more leadership roles in SSS and why they are viewed as leaders. Women tend to build a smaller social network with people that they trust. This is mainly due to the idea that they take care of offspring and need trustworthy individuals to help them with these tasks (mutual aid). Men, on the other hand, tend to build bigger social networks in order to compete for resources, mates, and more. On page 981 of the reading, it states that “emergent leaders tend to be hubs of social networks.” This is one train of reasoning that can explain why men tend to emerge more as leaders in SSS than women; pairing this idea with the idea that physical size signals leadership in SSS also strengthens this idea.

In the Von Rueden and Van Vugt article, I was particularly struck by looking at leadership from an evolutionary perspective. I think that there are definitely certain leadership traits which have evolved to most effectively benefit leaders and to bring them to success but before this reading I had not given any thought to what would benefit leaders the most and what we have evolved to view as effective leadership or charisma. Specifically, the concept of evolutionary mismatch is not one that is oftentimes discussed but can be very relevant.

The evolutionary mismatch regarding leadership and its effectiveness reminds me of how ever changing leadership styles and how when people evolve to be inclined towards certain types of leaders and leadership styles eventually something shifts such as moving from a small society with a group of mostly kin to an entire country. The leaders who were most effective years ago at the dawn of society will not actually be the most effective leaders today, but we are most inclined to think that they would be based on inherent evolutionary perspectives.

For over 95% of our history, humans have interacted and thrived in “small scale societies.” Within these groups, leadership tends to be less formal and institutionalized and more egalitarian (Von Reuden, Van Vugt). However, our modern day world is more accustomed to functioning in “large scale societies,” in which leadership tends to be very structured and civil. There are different attributes to leaders in both societies that affect their status and power over their followers. One of these attributes includes physical build. According to the reading, success in combat and physical warfare contributes to leader emergence in SSSs. The members of these communities who tend to thrive in battle are taller and stronger men. Physical strength also has the ability to indicate strength in hunting and gathering. Therefore, in societies that are ridden with war and also rely on hunting and gathering, men who have these physical attributes are favored for a leadership position. Our history of living in SSSs has led to the automatic desire for physically strong and built leaders in LSSs. While physical cues should be rather irrelevant when choosing leaders in business and politics, people in our modern day world more often than not show preference to tall, strong and masculine leaders.

While the same physical attributes signal leadership in both SSSs and LSSs, personality traits tend to differ among the leaders of these different sized societies. Within SSSs, it seems that citizens are more aware and in closer relation to their leaders, therefore have a better idea of how they act and live. This causes their leaders to be more generous, trustworthy, and fair. Obvious signs of humility are also helpful in gaining leadership in an SSS. Trade and interaction among not only members of the society but with other societies nearby is an integral piece of thriving as a group. A leader who has the ability to be understanding and open with both other communities and its citizens will have an easier time succeeding in a SSS. However, in LSSs, it has shown that individuals who are increasingly narcissistic and over-confident are generally chosen as leaders. While these personality traits may not be favorable to a group overall, people with these characteristics are often “persuasive, charming and sociable,” increasing their pull among followers. These individuals tend to thrive because they are able to take over leadership positions before any newcomers or agreeable members of the society because these citizens may not want any conflict and therefore will not argue as to why they may serve as a more favorable leader.

Since I have only ever known living in a large-scale society, I often forget how recent of a development they are. For most of human history, we have existed in small-scale societies and much of the world still does. So Von Ruden and Van Vugt did the not-so-obvious obvious thing to do if we want to understand modern large-scale leadership – analyze how the leadership of small-scale societies operates and see what parallels there are that might explain the development of the leadership we see in large-scale societies today.

It’s fascinating to see how much of the leadership we see in large-scale societies is a result of the traits that are valued in small-scale societies. For example, even though we pretty much never will come face to face with the President or expect the President to himself or herself lead the country into battle, we still prefer taller and more masculine leaders because those are the leaders that had greater success in small-scale societies. Or how in small-scale societies the average population is about 150 people and in successful large-scale leadership leaders within big companies are generally responsible for about 150 people. 

However, one aspect of large-scale leadership that did not develop from small-scale societies is the enormous amounts of money these large-scale leaders are paid and the extreme wealth inequality that creates. Leaders in small-scale societies were most certainly rewarded and held a higher social status in many ways, but that distinction did not come at the expense of others as it does in modern large-scale leadership. Yet, these exorbitant salaries may result from our natural desire to be better off relative to the people around us, as is present in small-scale societies. It’s still interesting to me that our new social differentiator is monetary wealth as that was not necessarily the case in small-scale societies. 

This article, Leadership in small-scale societies by Christopher von Rueden and Mark van Vugt, was very interesting and informative as it highlighted the differences between leadership in large-scale societies and small-scale societies. Many individuals would claim that humanity has progressed through the creation of large companies, organizations, and governments. While there is some truth to this, humans have adapted strategies and practices from small-scale societies that do not function well in large scale societies. An example referenced in the reading is the effect of masculine physical traits on important decisions such as voting for the next president of the United States. It is illogical that as a society we tend to favor certain candidates merely because of their height or how deep their voice is. It is a regular occurrence that highlights how evolutionary practices have carried over into our modern civilization.

If one examines large-scale societies, leaders are chosen not for their desire to ethically achieve goals with their followers, but rather to achieve their own self interests at all costs. It is surprisingly true that many of our leaders have narcissistic traits and are concerned with maintaining their own personal image. This article’s explanation is great because it articulates how the physical separation between leaders and followers has lost the accountability found in small-scale societies. This physical distance has had an effect on how we trust individuals part of large hierarchical structures such as financial banks. By having no face-to-face contact with many of their borrowers, banks were able to issue falsely rated mortgages until many Americans were forced to default on their credit causing an economic spiral known as the Financial Crisis of 2008. This moral impermissibility occurred because individual actors responsible were shielded as these shady loans required so little information from customers. With large-scale societies, humanity has come to accept that hyper-competition has replaced values of transparency and integrity found in small-scale societies.

A negative effect of large-scale societies is how the motivation behind leadership has changed. With small-scale societies, leaders were motivated to collectively improve their group’s way of life by contributing food, resources, or other services. These leaders still had some incentives whether that be taking more fish collected by hunters or establishing practices that would improve herding of their own cattle. In large-scale societies, the incentives of workers in modern hierarchical structures has exponentially grown. The salaries of certain CEO’s and upper management continue to grow into the hundreds of millions of dollars, while lower workers’ salaries are constant and fairly low. It is reasonable to assume that the community structure of Amazonian tribes could not function well in every society across the country; however, some values of egalitarianism could certainly be taken away. In large-scale societies, our desire for more wealth and status has outpaced desires for feelings of content and happiness found in small-scale societies.

Honestly, I thought both of these readings were dry and somewhat boring. I think they had a lot of good information though. After reading the second article, I was confused about the interaction between different types of observation and leadership in small scale societies. After thinking about it a little more about the topics, I came to the conclusion that in order to evaluate the effectiveness of leadership in SSSs and subsequently LSSs, one must know how to observe those societies. I did not know that there were so many different kinds of observation and how informal some of them are. I don’t really think about how I am observing the world when I am going about my life.

I thought it was interesting how in the first article it talks about naturalistic observation. I interpreted this as just being aware of what is going on around you. The phrase naturalistic observation sounds so formal but it really just means paying attention to the world. Its interesting to think about how we are always observing even if we don’t think we are. I would be interested to know what the most used form of observation is in the leadership studies world. I think it would be mostly retrospective case studies but I think there is a lot to be learned by studying what is going on right now also so Im not sure.

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_awuah_how_to_educate_leaders_liberal_arts/up-next#t-7857

In this TEDGlobal talk, university head Patrick Awuah delineates the significance of a liberal arts education for inspiring future leaders. Awuah left his big career at Microsoft in the United States to return to his home country of Ghana to found Ashesi University, a liberal arts school. As an attendee of a liberal arts school myself, I was intrigued to learn the perspective of a Ghanian professor and leader and how he views leadership. Although Awuah gave this talk back in 2007, I felt that the points he made still resonate with the state of our world in 2020 as well as the rising popularity of liberal arts education. He mentions that leaders are not merely those in the political sphere, but also the lawyers, doctors, civil servants, judges, policemen, engineers, and all those who have been trained to serve society. This is why liberal arts education is so important– so we can train these future leaders to enter all fields. At UofR, a lot of us often default that our future leaders will be the political science and business administration majors; while this is often true, we must view other industries and skillsets to also be leading the world. Artists, writers/journalists, psychologists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, etc….these are all people who will become leaders in our society with a well-rounded, liberal arts education.

I really enjoyed Patrick Awuah’s talk and how he applied leadership to the state of the African continent, his home country of Ghana, and the state of the world. Many often do not think Africa as a developed, educated continent, but this assumption is often very wrong. Awuah wanted to come back to Ghana and fix the weak institutions and the corrupt leaders in Ghana. He went towards the educational system of how these people come to power, and he found that the educational system there had little focus on ethics and a massive sense of entitlement. Instead of ignoring the state of Ghana, he found that ethical leadership– starting at the primary school level– was the key. Awuah founded Ashesi University to combat this issue and bring ethical, entrepreneurial leaders into the world.