Our imaginations are incredibly powerful. As Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner (wow!) George Bernard Shaw said:
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.”
I wrote in my very first blog post about how people imagine national leaders to be taller than typical citizens. And guess what? That’s what we get.
Last time I wrote about my recent research showing that when asked to imagine the person they would want to lead the country, the people who participated in my experiment described a more physically formidable leader when prompted to think about the person leading in a time of war than in a time of peace or when national cooperation was required. In particular, in the war study condition they imagined a heavier and taller leader with a greater, but not unhealthy, body mass index (BMI) than in the peace or cooperation conditions.
Of course, this is weird since in modern times a national leader would never actually physically fight another leader or lead troops into battle. But I argued that evolution may help explain this head scratching outcome.
Specifically, followers prefer leaders with greater physical stature because of evolutionary adaptations resulting from humans’ violent ancestral environment. In this environment, individuals who allied with and followed physically powerful partners were more likely to survive and reproduce because the presence of the physically powerful ally signaled to others to avoid challenging for important survival and reproductive resources or risk a costly fight.
BUT THERE’S MORE
The first part of the study looked at actual physical measures (i.e., pounds of weight and inches of height), but I wanted to confirm these “anthropometric” results with perceptual measures. So I also asked my participants to indicate how well each of the following words or phrases described their imagined leader: athletic, attractive, competent, dependable, dominant, friendly, intelligent, physically fit, physically imposing or intimidating, and physically strong.
And the perceptual outcomes confirm the anthropometric outcomes. Of primary interest here, the participants indicated their leader was more “physically imposing or intimidating” and “more physically strong” in the wartime study condition than the other conditions. I think these results are hard to explain outside of evolutionary theory.
(The results also indicated the wartime leader was more “dominant” and had more classic leadership traits, but you’ll need to dig into the actual published article to see that discussion.)
I CAN’T ESCAPE IT
I’m not crazy about the idea that our leadership preferences are influenced by the physical characteristics of candidates. But there’s a great deal of evidence that we support more physically formidable leaders, whether in politics (be sides my posts see, e.g., fellow PT bloggers Gad Saad and Mark van Vugt) or business (again see, e.g., Gad Saad and Mark van Vugt). And this and my previous post suggest it’s at least partially driven by perceived threat and evolution.
I imagine I personally would not have been crazy about George Bernard Shaw, either, but I’m in awe that he could win two such prestigious awards…and he was tall.*
Hey, GBS, leave some for the rest of us!
* Reports indicate he was over six feet tall, with one noting he was 6’2”.
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For more information:
Gregg R. Murray. Forthcoming. "Evolutionary Preferences for Physical Formidability in Leaders." Politics and the Life Sciences.
In addition to writing the "Caveman Politics" blog for Psychology Today, Gregg is the Executive Director of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas Tech University. You can find more information on Gregg at GreggRMurray.com.
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