Pandemic leadership: Sex differences and their evolutionary–developmental origins

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global societal, economic, and social upheaval unseen in living memory. There have been substantial differences in the kinds of policies implemented by political decision-makers to prevent the spread of the virus, to test the population, and to manage infected patients. Among other factors, these policies vary with politicians’ sex: early findings indicate that, on average, female leaders seem more focused on minimizing direct human suffering caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while male leaders implement riskier short-term decisions, possibly aiming to minimize economic disruptions. These sex differences are consistent with broader findings in psychology, reflecting women’s stronger empathy, higher pathogen disgust, health concern, care-taking orientation, and dislike for the suffering of other people—as well as men’s higher risk-taking, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and focus on financial indicators of success and status. This review article contextualizes sex differences in pandemic leadership in an evolutionary framework. Evolution by natural selection is the only known process in nature that organizes populations of organisms into higher degrees of functional order, or counteracts the unavoidable disorder that would otherwise ensue, and is therefore essential for explaining the origins of human sex differences. Differential sexual selection and parental investment between males and females, together with the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, drive sex differences in cognition and behavioral dispositions, underlying men’s and women’s leadership styles and decision-making during a global pandemic. We propose the sexually dimorphic leadership specialization hypothesis to explain how general psychobehavioral sex differences have been exapted during human evolution to create sexually dimorphic leadership styles. They may be facultatively co-opted by societies when facing different kinds of ecological and/or sociopolitical threats, such as disease outbreaks or intergroup aggression. Early evidence indicates that against the invisible viral foe that can bring nations to their knees, the strategic circumspection of empathic feminine health “worriers” may bring more effective and humanitarian outcomes than the devil-may-care incaution of masculine risk-taking “warriors”.

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Further discussions on the complexities of applying EGT to design effective interventions in the COVID-19 context are also warranted as these are complex, iterative games that are concurrently happening in different ways around the world. Other evolutionarily driven directions may also enlarge our understanding of behaviors in pandemic events alongside EGT, including cooperation versus competition as a function of threat ( van Prooijen and van Vugt, 2018 ), inclusive fitness ( Arnot et al, 2020 ), and adaptive leadership styles ( Luoto and Varella, 2021 ), as well as risky behavior as a function of dominance signaling ( Ronay and von Hippel, 2010 ) or life history strategies ( Corpuz et al, 2020 ). Some of the research in these areas has indeed refined what we know about behaviors during COVID-19.…”

“… 2 Another way by which COVID-19 differs from previous pandemics is that while developed countries have historically had lower viral prevalence during pandemics, this is not the case for COVID-19 as global human development indices have been shown to be positively correlated with COVID-19 deaths ( N = 168, r = 0.51; Luoto and Varella, 2021 ). …”

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

“…The authors wish to thank David C. Geary, Kyle Fischer, Ania Grant, Jaroslava Varella Valentova, and three reviewers for their several helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. An earlier version of this article has been published as a preprint ( Luoto and Varella, 2020 ).…”

COVID-19 Pandemic on Fire: Evolved Propensities for Nocturnal Activities as a Liability Against Epidemiological Control

“…Evolutionary approaches to human behavior have the potential of uncovering hidden patterns and deep roots of many seemingly disparate findings ( DeBruine, 2009 ; Gentle and Goetz, 2010 ; Stephen et al, 2014 ; Buss, 2020 ). And the context of pandemics, particularly the current COVID-19 context, is no different ( Arnot et al, 2020 ; Dezecache et al, 2020 ; Seitz et al, 2020 ; Troisi, 2020 ; Luoto and Varella, 2021 ). Besides the evolved tendencies to respond to cues of diseases avoiding contagion (i.e., behavioral immune system; Shook et al, 2020 ; Stevenson et al, 2021 ), and to deal with pathogens (i.e., immune system; Krams et al, 2020 ), there are many other evolutionary factors that play a role in a pandemic situation ( Arnot et al, 2020 ; Seitz et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Besides the evolved tendencies to respond to cues of diseases avoiding contagion (i.e., behavioral immune system; Shook et al, 2020 ; Stevenson et al, 2021 ), and to deal with pathogens (i.e., immune system; Krams et al, 2020 ), there are many other evolutionary factors that play a role in a pandemic situation ( Arnot et al, 2020 ; Seitz et al, 2020 ). For instance, the evolved sex differences in psychological tendencies might help to explain why women are more careful and comply with safety measures more than men, and importantly why female leaders are more successful in minimizing deaths in a pandemic context than male leaders ( Luoto and Varella, 2021 ). Further insight can be acquired via the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis ( Lloyd et al, 2011 ; Li et al, 2018 ), in which evolved tendencies in response to specific ancestral contexts become a burden in current environments.…”