Evolutionary psychology and leadership both speak to the nature of human nature. But like humans, they aren’t simple. It takes an expert to explain the primary concepts of evolutionary psychology, its implications in the workplace, and its controversies.
In the latest podcast, The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Douglas Kenrick, PhD, professor of psychology at Arizona State University about evolutionary psychology. With decades of research and lecturing experience, Doug is a leading global expert in the field of evolutionary psychology.
“To be a successful human being, you need to do a lot more than just beat the other members of your species at finding mates,” he said.
Read on to learn the fundamentals of evolutionary psychology, how it affects our everyday lives, how it shows up in the workplace, and why it’s been so controversial.
The Basics of Evolutionary Psychology
As a psychology student, Doug was inspired to study evolutionary psychology when he read Primate Behavior and the Emergence of Human Culture by anthropologist Jane B. Lancaster. He began to research dominance and attraction by asking questions about whether any universals existed in human mating behaviour. “From an evolutionary perspective, it’s a broad set of questions. Who are we? Where do we fit into the universe? What kind of an organism are we? How did we evolve?” Doug explained.
It’s quite challenging to explain evolutionary psychology concisely. But Doug summed it up this way: “You need a brain that’s specifically designed to run the body you’ve got.”
The Psychology of Human Nature
If you have a body like a bat, you’re probably flying around to catch moths. If you have a body like a seal, you’re probably swimming around to catch fish. If you have a body like a human, you’re probably running around and throwing stones to catch an antelope. Instinctive programming in these particular brains runs these particular bodies. Human beings also have instincts and are not a “blank slate,” a notion that was contested until relatively recently.
Not only do humans have instincts, but our instincts change as our bodies change. As adolescents, we become interested in mating. We aren’t interested in mating before puberty. Human instincts develop over time—they evolve, if you will. Just how far into our adult social lives do the evolved mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce go? Quite far indeed.
Instincts govern our behavior largely without our awareness. Most humans have a preference for foods high in sugar and fat, which are two things our hunter-gatherer ancestors struggled to find. When we shop for a pint of chocolate ice cream, we aren’t likely thinking about our survival instinct to avoid starvation by seeking things that taste sweet and rich. Even though this diet is now maladaptive in the modern world of abundance, our brains are programmed. We buy the ice cream.
Evolutionary Psychology in Everyday Life
“Understanding where we fit into nature or our evolutionary place can help us understand the broad meaning of our lives,” Doug said. Aggression and attraction are driving instincts that influence our social interactions. In every society with historical records of homicides, males’ homicide rates are vastly higher than those of females. Why? Males want to rank high in the dominance hierarchy compared to other males so females will select them as mates.
When a human female selects a male, she’s not selecting for the curliest horns or most colorful feathers. A female wants a male who’s intelligent. “And how do you show your intelligence?” Doug asks. “You show it by quickly processing information, by doing things like writing poetry, playing a musical instrument, or performing well in a sport. Males use competition to display their status.
Life is more than just survival and reproduction; we have different social needs. In terms of evolutionary psychology and leadership, three universal motives guide human behavior: getting along (cooperation), getting ahead(competition), and finding meaning. Adults have inherited instincts related to their individual status within a group, their group’s status with respect to other groups, the availability of mates, the allocation of resources, raising offspring in environmental safety, and feeling as though life has purpose.
“Most of us don’t run around thinking specifically of those fundamental motives, but almost everything we do is connected to them,” Doug said.
Evolutionary Psychology and Leadership
In today’s industrialized modern society, humans spend a lot of time working, often more than they spend on any activity but sleep. We may be spending most of our time earning money, but we still have the same social needs humans have always had. If work interferes with our status, reputation, relationships, values, or life goals—we’ll hate the job. “To what extent are the reward structures at work serving those fundamental human motives?” Doug asked.
Evolutionary psychology and leadership are very closely related. Humans care about getting ahead in life, but not everyone wants to be at the top of the dominance hierarchy. The cost of leading includes being the target of criticism or of assassination, depending on the exact high-status position.
Two Paths to Gaining Status
Instead of using dominance, humans can also gain status through the prestige route.1 Doug explained that one can move up by being so skilled that others trust them, want to be around them, and learn from them, as opposed to being so forceful that others want to get out of the way. He and his colleague Adi Wiezel researched those leadership approaches.2 They asked people to imagine the characteristics and behavior of dominance-style versus prestige-style leaders and whether they wanted to work for those leaders.
“When people thought about actual leaders they knew, they strongly preferred to work for someone who took a prestige approach, who led by expertise, and who could be trusted and looked up to by others,” he said. Men were perceived as more likely to be dominant and women as more likely to use a prestige approach. “Interestingly, it didn’t make any difference whether it was a man or a woman. People preferred a prestige-based leader. And the person they liked the least was a dominant male.”
When making talent decisions, it’s important to acknowledge the unconscious bias many people may hold that a woman can never be a leader. In fact, data across hundreds of government elections indicate a slight preference for women leaders. “People like working for somebody who’s prestige-based. There’s a general presumption that women are a little less likely to be that bullying, self-serving leader than one who leads by expertise,” Doug added.
Why Is Evolutionary Psychology Controversial?
Evolutionary psychology has been controversial because the blank slate theory was associated with optimism about society. If humans have no built-in wiring, we can be formed into ideal members of an ideal society. But, as Doug pointed out, the leaders of communist Russia believed in the blank slate theory, and the society they created didn’t come anywhere close to ideal.
If you want people to function their best, to live a happy life, to have your society do well, you’ll want to know what people are really like. In an organization, if you think you can push people to do anything, you’re not going to do as well as if you try to understand and work with people’s actual motives.
Even though humans do compete with one another, our species has advanced with cooperation. “Hunter-gatherers did a lot more cooperating than killing one another—as we do still today,” Doug said. “We want to understand from a scientific perspective what the circumstances are that trigger us to do things that lead to a more harmonious environment. We need to understand what human nature really is.”
* Article provided by courtesy of Hogan Assessment
