How Did Human Leadership Evolve? - Chris Von Rueden - #545

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Chris von Rueden. He's an anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Richmond, who researches how humans form status hierarchies and the evolution of human cooperation. We take it for granted that there are leaders in modern society, presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens. Hierarchies are baked into our world. But what did leadership look like in an ancestral environment? And why did it evolve in the first place? Expect to learn the two ways that primitive leaders could command respect from a group. Why followership evolved at all in humans. Why the female leadership paradox even exists. How leadership and hierarchies change as group size increases. Whether leaders are altruistic or selfish. And much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Chris von Rueden.
Chris von Rueden, welcome to the show.

**Christopher von Rueden** (1:17)
Thanks so much, fun to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (1:20)
What would you say are the interesting evolutionary questions about human leadership?

**Christopher von Rueden** (1:27)
Well, first, asking an evolutionary question about leadership perhaps presumes that it was selected for, so that we've evolved some kind of motivation to adopt leadership or followership as members of groups. And I think, you know, the research on that is still ongoing. And so it would sort of require that over our evolutionary history and ancestral human societies, individuals that had such motivations to adopt leadership or followership, I mean, it takes two to tangle there, their reproductive success was improved, or being just being members of a group in which leadership and followership was was happening, enabled their groups to perform other groups. But taking an evolutionary perspective requires us to think about over evolutionary time skills, where was leadership and followership adaptive, particularly the specific kinds and unique kinds of leadership and followership that humans engage in. Because leadership is fairly ubiquitous across social species.
But there are some unique properties to human leadership.

**Chris Williamson** (2:41)
How so? What like?

**Christopher von Rueden** (2:44)
Well, I think first, there's a lot of so-called active leadership in humans, where leaders will talk directly to other group members to try and get individuals to coordinate, use rhetoric, various other communication strategies to directly influence the behavior of others in their group. Now, you see instances of that in other species, but I think the majority of leadership in other species, and perhaps the majority of leadership in humans, too, might be more passive. So it's sort of one individual does some kind of action, and other members of the group observe that and decide it's in their interest to do the same. So it's not like that one leader has actively communicated with other individuals to get them to do something.

**Chris Williamson** (3:32)
Like a lion decides that we're going to try and go after this particular thing and everybody else that's in that pride goes after it as well.

**Christopher von Rueden** (3:40)
Exactly. Yeah, that's a good example.

**Chris Williamson** (3:42)
Okay.

**Christopher von Rueden** (3:43)
I think humans do that too. But I mean, I think when we use the word leadership, we're often thinking more of the active kind, where I'm directing you or giving you explicit instructions or things like that.

**Chris Williamson** (3:56)
Okay.

**Christopher von Rueden** (3:57)
That is more rare, I think.

**Chris Williamson** (3:58)
And that's a function of the fact that we can communicate more deeply, I guess, that we can hold different levels of hierarchy within our minds, that people can be statusful at scavenging or communicating or fighting or whatever. Whereas I guess if you're a lion, it's are you big and powerful? Yes, no.

**Christopher von Rueden** (4:17)
Yeah. I think, I mean, maybe what you're bringing up is division of labor. Like if you're in a group, there might be some people with some skills that are better than others. And if solving some group goal or problem can benefit from a division of labor, certain people do some tasks and others do others. Leadership can help coordinate all that. And so that kind of division of labor with coordinated by leadership really rare. And I think that but that is what makes humans and human groups so incredible at solving problems and innovating.

**Chris Williamson** (4:49)
And I suppose that that's a reason that leadership would be more important. Like if you have all of these different divisions working, you need somebody that is outside of the divisions to be able to bring them together to coordinate them toward a common goal.

**Christopher von Rueden** (5:03)
Exactly. And even that aspect of understanding that there's a common goal, I think it's not that common across species either. I think humans are really good at. I can understand that you have the same goal that I have.