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When the appeal of a dominant leader is greater than a prestige leader
Open accessAbstract
Across the globe we witness the rise of populist authoritarian leaders who are overbearing in their narrative, aggressive in behavior, and often exhibit questionable moral character. Drawing on evolutionary theory of leadership emergence, in which dominance and prestige are seen as dual routes to leadership, we provide a situational and psychological account for when and why dominant leaders are preferred over other respected and admired candidates. We test our hypothesis using three studies, encompassing more than 140,000 participants, across 69 countries and spanning the past two decades. We find robust support for our hypothesis that under a situational threat of economic uncertainty (as exemplified by the poverty rate, the housing vacancy rate, and the unemployment rate) people escalate their support for dominant leaders. Further, we find that this phenomenon is mediated by participants' psychological sense of a lack of personal control. Together, these results provide large-scale, globally representative evidence for the structural and psychological antecedents that increase the preference for dominant leaders over their prestigious counterparts.
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“Indeed, especially in times of economic or personal uncertainty, groups have been shown to elect more dominant (Kakkar & Sivanathan, 2017) and narcissistic (Nevicka, De Hoogh, Van Vianen, & Ten Velden, 2013) leaders.”
From The "Why" and "How" of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit (2020) · cites this paper as Kakkar & Sivanathan, 2017
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kakkar, H., & Sivanathan, N.
- Affiliations
- London Business School (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-06-12
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 26
- Pages
- 6734-6739
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5495227
- OpenAlex
- W2626998810
- Cited by
- 254
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 50 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 12
- FWCI
- 21.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- London Business School Research Online (London Business School) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
- Keywords
- leadership emergence, dominance, prestige, economic uncertainty, poverty, vacant housing, unemployment, perceived personal control, political support
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Leadership, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Social Behavior
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