When do people prefer dominant over prestigious political leaders?

Abstract

Previous research has sought to explain the rise of right-wing populist leaders in terms of the evolutionary framework of dominance and prestige. In this framework, dominance is defined as high social rank acquired via coercion and fear, and prestige is defined as high social rank acquired via competence and admiration. Previous studies have shown that right-wing populist leaders are rated as more dominant than nonpopulist leaders, and right-wing populist / dominant leaders are favoured in times of economic uncertainty and intergroup conflict. In this paper we explore and critique this application of dominance-prestige to politics. First, we argue that the dominance-prestige framework, originally developed to explain inter-personal relationships within small-scale societies characterised by face-to-face interaction, does not straightforwardly extend to large-scale democratic societies which have frequent anonymous interaction and complex ingroup-outgroup dynamics. Second, we show that economic uncertainty and intergroup conflict predict not only preference for dominant leaders, but also prestigious leaders. Third, we show that perceptions of leaders as dominant or prestigious are not fixed, and depend on the political ideology of the perceiver: people view leaders who share their ideology as prestigious, and who oppose their ideology as dominant, whether that ideology is liberal or conservative. Fourth, we show that political ideology is a stronger predictor than economic uncertainty of preference for Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election, contradicting previous findings that link Trump"s success to economic uncertainty. We conclude by suggesting that, if economic uncertainty does not directly affect preferences for right-wing populist leaders, other features of their discourse such as higher emotionality might explain their success.

Dominance, prestige, and intergroup conflict: How and why leadership preferences change in response to social context.

“…Across this body of research, we observed a consistent pattern: People supported leaders who adopt a prestige-based leadership strategy over those who use dominance to lead. Based on the existing evolutionary literature on leadership selection, one might be tempted to draw the conclusion that certain contexts cause people to prefer dominant leaders over other types of leaders (Jiménez et al, 2021; Kakkar & Sivanathan, 2017; c.f., Laustsen & Petersen, 2017) . However, in the current work, prestigious leaders were preferred even during times of intergroup conflict and competition.…”

“…Although the current findings highlight the role of intergroup conflict, it is worth noting that leadership preferences may shift in response to contexts other than intergroup conflict that were not manipulated in the current work. For example, economic uncertainty may cause people to feel that they lack personal control, which may underlie support for dominance (Kakkar & Sivanathan, 2017; c.f., Jiménez et al, 2021). Another important caveat is that the manipulations of social context used in the current work may have differed across studies in the degree of existential threat they implied to participants.…”

“…Such preferences could be tied to inferences pertaining to a leader’s dominance (highly masculine faces are perceived as dominant) but they could also reflect perceptions of trustworthiness (less masculine faces are judged as more trustworthy; Little, 2014). Other work has relied on correlational analyses involving participants’ perceptions of dominance or prestige (e.g., Halevy et al, 2012; Jiménez et al, 2021; van Kleef et al, 2021). For example, perceptions of prestige (but not dominance) positively predicted endorsement of a leader, whereas perceptions of dominance (but not prestige) positively predicted endorsement of a representative for an intergroup competition (Halevy et al, 2012).…”

Non-political anger shifts political preferences towards stronger leaders

“…Finally, because of its sensitivity to experimental manipulation, we used a well-validated task based on first impressions of faces to study the effect of apolitical anger on leaders' preferences. However, while this experimental protocol provides insight into the type of traits that may be valued in leaders in different contexts, other factors such as political affiliation play a more central role in real elections, sometimes interacting with the perception of candidates' personality traits 21 , 50 . Nevertheless, our results suggest that emotional factors, in addition to well-identified contextual factors such as war and social threats, can influence our preferences for particular leaders.…”

The Interpersonal Consequences of Moral Grandstanding

“…While prestigious leaders are preferred when there are intragroup conflicts, dominant leaders are preferred when there are intergroup conflicts in which in-group members could benefit from antagonizing out-group members (Halevy et al, 2012;Maner, 2017). That is, during intergroup conflicts, displaying dominant actions and traits can foster increased admiration and respect (e.g., Jiménez et al, 2021). Indeed, dominance and morality seem to converge when it comes to combative heroism or warriorship in certain instances (Bai, 2017).…”