Is leadership biological? This question has been the main concern of this semester-long research project. In order to form a research project proposal that addresses this question, the project began with a thorough literature review on leadership and the characteristics associated with leadership figures. During this journal review, the major assumptions that the research is based on were decided, and the areas that needed more research, or "weak areas" were noted as possible areas for the field testing. One assumption that laid the foundation for our research is that leadership qualities are created though environmental factors. Robert Wright argues this in his book on evolutionary psychology:
"The whole point of the human brain is behavioral flexibility, and it would be very unlike natural selection, given that flexibility, to deny anyone a chance at the genetic payoffs of high status, should the opportunity arise." (254)
In other words, the fact that our behavior can be modified and will be modified in favor of a more evolutionarily beneficial behavioral role confirms that both leadership and submission roles must have their benefits. This argument continues to state that the same individual may benefit more in submissive roles vs. leadership roles depending on the environmental situation. For example, Wright notes:
Being a dominantÖis fine so long as there are lots of submissives around. But as the [dominance] strategy spreads, it grows less fruitful: there are fewer and fewer submissives to exploit, and meanwhile dominants encounter one another more and more, engaging in costly combat. (240-241)
In essence, leadership can be a lot of work. Leaders must work hard not only to gain their dominant role but also to maintain among other would-be leaders. They are required to expend much more energy for this role than their counterparts. Submissives, as Wright calls them, are required to give up some of their resources to the dominants in many species, but this is not exactly true in the human world. (The president of the student body does not go around door-to-door asking for points off our diplomat plans.) So, why, according to natural selection philosophy, would leadership be a desired trait among humans? One possibility is that the characteristics that make a good leader are also characteristics that make a good mate. This would lead individuals to desire to achieve leadership positions due to the societal view that good leaders are good mates. Following the example above, the president may not get more food, but when women find out his role, they may find themselves to be more interested in dating him, and therefore he would benefit from the role.
In this project, we will explore the characteristics of good leaders and the implicit assumptions that are made by observers that place the leader in a positive light for mate selection. Therefore, we hypothesize that people view specific roles, such as a career position, as having implicit characteristics regardless of the individuals' personalities in the roles. We believe that these implicit characteristics may cause people to believe that an individual in a high leadership position will be a better mate since these positive characteristics put the leader in a better position with observers of the opposite sex especially male leaders in the eyes of females.
In order to begin our research, we formed a working definition of leadership. Leadership is defined in different ways, depending on the discipline of the study and the framework of the author's investigation. We have chosen our definition from a combination of several disciplines, including business, communication, and social psychology. The following aspects are consistent with our desired definition of leadership:
· Leadership is interpersonal influence directed toward attaining goals and achieved through communication.
· Leadership is the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with direction and orders.
· Leadership is an act that causes others to act or respond in a shared direction.
· Leadership is the art of influencing people by persuasion or example to follow a course of action.
· Leadership is the essential dynamic force that motivates and coordinates the social organization in the accomplishment of its objectives.
The implicit characteristics of leadership show themselves immediately in this definition, some of these implied characteristics from above are the character of the individual (integrity, honesty, charisma, aggression, etc), competence (self-efficacy) and a modicum of decorum. We will test these implicit beliefs in our survey to see if they are really dictated by the role of the individual or if the individual already has these characteristics.
Relevance of the Research Question:
An extensive amount of research has been done on the theory of implicit characteristics for leadership positions. We used this research to form our own study. Our research was especially influenced by three specific studies in psychological research that tested the implicit characteristics of leadership. The first study, by Emrich, helped us to define exactly how preconceived views of dominant and submissive roles influence a person's impression of a leader. Emrich defined these characteristics as implicit and found that they come from a romantization of the leader (992). She found that participants falsely recognized leaders of successful groups as having more "leadership-consistent" characteristics (Emrich 998). Emrich's study also found that additional qualities tend to be added to leaders by others; she noted that this especially occurs when the leader is in a context that requires a good leader (1002). Although this study shows that implicit and romanticized characteristics are attached to leaders, it created personalities and performance histories for the leaders. Therefore, the leadership position was not the only factor in these preconceived notions of the leaders. After we analyzed this study, we decided to create a survey that analyzed the position of the individual without including any details of the individual's personality or performance.
In order to formulate a list of implicit characteristics for our survey, we used two studies to create our list of characteristics for dominant and submissive roles. The first study by Cherulnik, Turns, and Wilderman used a quantitative approach asking each participate to rate a list of qualities for what they believed comprised a good leader. They found that implicit qualities include persuasiveness, sincerity, friendliness, dominating, honesty, shrewdness, intelligence, and outgoingness. They also found that people who are considered more beautiful have a greater tendency to be ambitious and competent. We combined this survey with the qualitative survey of Danzig, which identified the major characteristics of thirty leaders. Danzig found nine main characteristics: quality, innovation, inspiration, perseverance, passion, character, charisma, energy, and enthusiasm. From this research we created our own implicit characteristics of persuasive, sincere, friendly, dominating, intelligent, honest, and ambitious for leaders. We also created implicit characteristics of followership for submissive roles. After we presented these lists and our surveys to our class, we decided to include what we believed would be neutral characteristics. So we included: content, loyal, diligent, creative, and organized. (However, our "neutral" terms were proven to be consistently chosen by the subjects to be either leadership or followership roles.)
From the research of these groups we believe that the people we survey will link the characteristics we define as implicitly dominating as leadership qualities and not those that we define as submissive. This becomes important in the context of dating and choosing a mate. Gutierres, Kenrick, and Partch found in their study that after people were shown pictures of "beautiful" people, they rated themselves as less desirable mates (1126). If "beauty", as Gutierres, Kenrick, and Partch argue, is implicitly connected to dominance, this study shows the extent that leadership and implicit characteristics can affect people.
Methods:
After we presented our hypothesis and literature review to our class, we brainstormed to create a survey. We wanted to form a survey that would test the implicit characteristics that are connected to roles while only providing the person taking the survey with a dominant or submissive role. Our solution was to create four profiles of people in job roles. The first two were a male and female who worked as clerks. The other two were a male and female who worked as CEO's. This non-leadership role of clerk and leadership role of CEO should cause the people we surveyed to match the characteristics above to either the submissive or dominant role (see surveys). Included in the second half of our survey was our list of implicit characteristics and a basic rating scale, with 1 as very unlikely and 5 as very likely. We also included two questions at the end. The first question asked: "If you were single, would you consider dating this person?" This question allows us to see if the leadership position really did cause the person surveyed to see the leader as a good mate or the non-leader as an average mate as evolutionary psychology would suggest. The second question asked: "Is this person a leader?" This question was our manipulation check to make sure that the person surveyed recognized our survey as dealing with leadership.
The surveys were conducted on subjects while they were eating at the Shriver Center. This allowed us to survey a variety of people including students, faculty, and parents. The surveys were passed out based on the assumption that everyone surveyed was heterosexual. Therefore, we gave males one of the two female profiles and females one of the two male profiles. This was necessary due to our question about dating. (One male survey was passed out to a female by mistake, and she was so offended that she approached one of the experimenters and told her that she could not finish the survey. This confirmed the decision to conduct the survey based on a heterosexual bias.) We surveyed 80 subjects, 20 in each survey condition. However, not all those surveyed contributed to our results. Several surveys were voided due to the following conditions: 1) the survey was less than 90% complete 2) the exact same number was placed in every entry 3) a comment was made on the sheet by the subject stating that the subject could not make the judgments. Four of the men that received "Sarah" surveys were voided, and two of the male subjects that received "Jessica" surveys were voided. Two female subjects "Doug" surveys were voided and one "Scott" survey was voided. This left us with 34 male subjects, 16 Sarah surveys and 18 for Jessica; and 37 female subjects, 18 Doug surveys and 19 for Scott. The large number of subjects (80 originally surveyed) was used in order to receive more statistically accurate data results.
After surveying the subjects, the data was placed into Microsoft Excel. This produced the basic statistical work on the data, such as averages and totals. The data was then processed through Statview. This program produced the p-values and determined the resulting statistical significance.
Results: (Observations)
The results were significant in several different comparisons. First, looking at non-leadership or submissive characteristics, the results showed that Scott, the CEO, when compared to Doug, the clerk, had statistically significant differences in ratings for the characteristics suggested (0.0177), and Jessica, the female CEO, when compared to Sarah, the clerk, also showed statistically different results (0.0326). The cross comparisons for CEO's to clerks were also statistically significant, Scott to Sarah was 0.0128, and Jessica to Doug was 0.0391. The only comparisons that were not statistically significant were the ratings between the ranked sexes. The male and female CEOs, when compared to one another, were well under accuracy to the 95th percentile, at 0.2198 - about an 80% chance of an accurate hypothesis. The male and female clerks were even more similar to one another, a p-value of 0.8373, which places our hypothesis of a significant difference between the male and female results for clerks at a 16% chance of being accurate.
The results for characteristics associated with leaders were also statistically significant, in the same groupings as the non-leadership, or follower characteristics. Scott, when compared to Doug, resulted in a p-value of 0.0027 and when compared to Sarah had a p-value of 0.0019. Jessica and Sarah also had statistically significant differences, with a p-value of 0.0006, and Jessica to Doug resulted in a p-value of 0.0008. The standard deviations for Scott (0.617) and Jessica (0.586) were higher than those of Doug (0.376) and Sarah (0.276). This will be discussed in more depth in the discussion section.
It is also important to note in this result section that the checks for the subjects relating the position of CEO to leadership and the position of clerk to non-leadership were clearly understood. The average leadership rating for both CEO's, Scott and Jessica, were 7.5 on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the most effective leadership role (see copies of surveys). The average leadership rating for the clerks, Doug and Sarah, were slightly different, and therefore worthy of mentioning separately. Doug had a leadership ranking of 5.1, and Sarah's ranking was 4.8. Although the statistical difference may not be significant between the two, the difference is notable and will be discussed further in the discussion section.
The subjects were asked if they would consider dating the subjects on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (definitely). Ratings were higher for Scott (3.05), and Jessica (3.44), than they were for the follower counterparts, Doug (2.611), and Sarah (2.77).
Discussion:
To begin, it is important to note how the characteristics were divided into leadership and non-leadership categories. After the results of all characteristics for all four surveys were averaged, we noticed that the characteristics listed by the subjects for the CEO position and the clerk position were generally the same as those we believed would be chosen. This makes sense since the categories were predetermined to some extent due to the foundational information received from other studies done on similar leadership characteristics. , The purpose of this study was, as stated before, not to link only leadership to these characteristics, but link career positions to these characteristics and to leadership. This link between the expenditure of energy toward a more stressful career as a CEO and the attribution of positive leadership characteristics is clearly shown in our research and presents a perspective that has not, to our knowledge, been researched before.
The characteristics that the subjects rated as more likely for Scott and Jessica, the CEOs, included: persuasive, intelligent, outgoing, dominating, ambitious, content, creative, organized, loyal only for Jessica, and untrustworthy for Scott. The characteristics that were rated more likely for the clerks, Doug and Sarah, were: dull, gullible, submissive, honest, untrustworthy for Sarah, passive, withdrawn, and loyal for Doug. These attributes show a definite positive bias toward the leaders, in most aspects. This would prove our hypothesis that the public does attribute specific characteristics to others in specific roles, such as career positions. Evolutionarily, these people seeking supervisory or leadership roles can then justify that the energy expended is worth the resulting positive light by which they are viewed by the opposite sex.
Several additional results were found in our study, that were not seen in our literature research. The fact that Jessica is considered more loyal to the company than Scott as the CEO may be due to gender bias. One possibility is that people consider Jessica more loyal due to her other opportunities as a wife and mother that may have to be set aside slightly to pursue her career. Another possibility is that since the men rated Jessica, men may, in general, view a CEO to be more loyal to the company than women would. The women rated Doug to be more loyal to the company than Scott, and the same gender questions could apply here. Further research could be created based on these results. For example, a study that investigated women's views on women in leadership roles and men's views of men in leadership roles could help in the confirmation of our two hypotheses.
The standard deviations were much higher for the high career positions than for the low career positions, which means that our subjects had stronger opinions about the leaders. This could be because the role of clerk may not have as many implicit characteristics linked to it.
The datability scale that we included showed significant difference between the career positions (ranking to the question: "If you were single, would you consider dating _______?" followed by a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (definitely). Scott (3.053) and Jessica (3.44) were considered more "datable" than Doug (2.611) and Sarah (2.78). This further confirms our secondary hypothesis based on evolutionary psychology.
Possible Bias to the Survey:
Although we attempted to include more neutral terms to eliminate a source of bias due to positive terms only being available to describe high leadership positions, it is possible that there were not enough significantly positive terms for the followership positions. However, since the distribution of terms rated by the subjects included approximately the same number for both leader positions and follower positions, this bias is small.
We also were able to limit the bias of only having one age group of subjects (i.e. college students) by purposefully giving surveys to a variety of ages. Approximately half of the people surveyed were not students. This student population, however, is higher than the percentage of the nation's students, so it may need to be done again with a more correct population ratio.
Conclusions:
One of the advantages of assuming a leadership position is the power of implicit positive characteristics assumed by the observer and potential mate. We examined the implicit characteristics of leadership as well as the advantages and disadvantages of leadership and determined that there may be evolutionary advantages to higher career roles. Since it was significantly noted in our results that the subjects would rather date a CEO than a clerk (regardless of gender), it can be concluded that the energy expended in becoming a CEO, or a leader, for that matter, may be well worth the price. The opposite sex does seem to be attracted to these leadership positions.
References
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Cherulnik, P., Laurie, C., Et al. "Physical Appearance and Leadership: Exploring the Role of Appearance-Based Attribution in Leader Emergence". Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1990, Vol. 20 No. 18. p. 1530-1539.
DuBrin, Andrew J. The Ten Minute Guide to Effective Leadership. Broadway, New York: Macmillan Spectrum/Alpha Books, 1997
Emrich, Cynthia G. "Context Effects in Leadership Perception". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol. 25 No. 8, August 1999; p. 991-1006
Forsythe, S. "Appearance and Leadership: Effect of Applicant's Clothing on Interviewer's Decision to Hire" Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 1990, Vol 20, No 19, pp. 1579-1595.
Gutierres, S., Kenrick, T., and Partch, J. "Beauty, Dominance, and the Mating Game: Contrast Effects in Self-Assessment Reflect Gender Differences in Mate Selection". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol. 25 No. 9, September 1999. p. 1126-1134.
Kets deVries, Manfred F. R. Prisoners of Leadership. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989.
Raines, Robert S. "Physical Attractiveness of Face and Voice: Effects of Positivity, Dominance and Sex." Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Vol. 20 (19). 1990. p. 1558-1578.
Tuel,B., Betz, N. "Relationship of Career Self-Efficacy Expectations to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Personal Styles Scales". Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development. Vol. 31, Oct. 1998.
Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
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