Objections To Evolutionary Psychology: Reflections, Implications and The Leadership Exemplar

Human Relations
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Objections to evolutionary psychology: Reflections, implications and the

leadership exemplar
Nigel Nicholson
Human Relations 2005; 58; 393
DOI: 10.1177/0018726705053428
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Human Relations
DOI: 10.1177/0018726705053428
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Objections to evolutionary psychology:

Reflections, implications and the
leadership exemplar
Nigel Nicholson
A B S T R AC T
A recent exchange of articles in Human Relations debated the

validity, philosophical coherence and applicability of the ideas of
evolutionary psychology (EP), with specific reference, inter alia, to
previous writings where the author has sought to apply EP to the
field of organizational behaviour. This article aims to analyse key
areas of controversy about the logic and assumptions on both sides
of the debate and to explore the possibilities for common ground
to be found between them. It is argued that this entails an interactionist approach to the analysis of individual agency and action, and
a co-evolutionary perspective on the social context. Leadership is
taken as an exemplar of how this would be applied.
K E Y WO R D S
evolution leadership theory
Introduction
Evolutionary psychology as controversy
In 1996 I took upon myself the mission to introduce the ideas contained in
the new discipline of evolutionary psychology (EP) to the field of organization and management, first in a major conference and shortly after in a book
chapter and an article for Human Relations (Nicholson, 1997a, 1997b). This
was followed by a piece for Harvard Business Review (Nicholson, 1998),
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Human Relations 58(3)
and subsequently in a book for a non-academic readership (Nicholson,

2000). From the start I expected to encounter a chorus of objections for
the ideas are radical and challenging to conventional assumptions in
traditional social science. The Harvard Business Review article did arouse a
fair amount of ire from consultants they perceived the message to be one
that disempowered them; telling them that they could not be secure in the
belief that intelligent and skilful intervention can create ideal organizations
and leaders from any human material. This reaction was unsurprising, but
the silence from my academic colleagues even in open forums where I
invited feedback was unexpected.
This has not been the case outside the organizational sphere, where
debate has raged. Conducting a PhD seminar on EP earlier this year my
students remarked with amazement how they had never seen such vituperative debate as one encounters in the exchanges between protagonists for and
against this topic. My psychologists instincts tell me that such heat suggests
that deep interests are being threatened on either side, which again should
give us pause for thought. The debate may not always be dealing solely with
technical or even philosophical issues, but also tapping into more deeply
rooted matters of faith and belief. This tends to steer us away from the path
of inquiry after truth towards more tribal contest. It is refreshing to have
vigorous debate, but it can be depressing when it descends to vulgar abuse
or cartoon caricature.
Now the debate seems belatedly to have arrived in organizational
behaviour (OB), as represented in the exchange between Sewell (2004) and
Markczy and Goldberg (2004) in this journal. The Sewell article, provocatively entitled Yabba-dabba-do borrows the unfortunate appellation of
Flintstone psychology from one of EPs most vehement opponents, and the
Markczy and Goldberg reply is an equally impassioned rejection of this
misrepresentation of the EP agenda. I do not wish to amplify or repeat these
arguments.
So, without stirring up the mire even more by picking on all the points
at issue, I would rather try to take a step back and evaluate what I see as the
current status of the debate. When I wrote my first pieces on EP inevitably
my ideas were still nascent in some areas, and I welcome this as an opportunity to take stock more maturely. Sewells comments seem to treat as of
equal critical standing academic articles, practitioner pieces and television
programmes for a lay audience. What I wish to do here is to get behind
semantic issues to what kinds of truths about human behaviour in organizations a neo-Darwinian inquiry might lead us, taking leadership, a topic
highlighted by Sewell, as a test case or exemplar.

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Objections to evolutionary psychology
What are opponents of EP opposing and what are they

proposing?
Sewells assault on EP is diffuse in its range, though quite specific in some
points of objection. It is a scattergun to stop what is perceived to be a dangerous juggernaut. What is unclear, however, in these objections is (i) how far
along the road of the EP argument are opponents such as Sewell prepared
to travel and at what point do they wish get off, and (ii) what is the alternative proposition that they would advance?
Here are some of the questions that might be raised along the EP chain
of logic, to discern at which stage there might be critical points of departure:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Do they object to the proposition that Homo sapiens is an animal

species, and more particular propositions about human phylogeny as
primates? This is where creationists jump off the juggernaut at the
beginning of the journey. Few social scientists do, in my experience.
Is the problem the idea of the adapted mind? Is there objection to the
selfish gene mechanism the idea that whatever DNA is favourable
to survival and reproduction will be replicated being extended to
human behaviour as well as physical morphology? Are mental dispositions, motives and biases exempt from evolution? If so, this exemption would be a singular gift of humans, or whatever wider group of
primates or mammals were granted such a dispensation. Affirming this
would create a philosophically awkward position; or rather it would
be another way of using metaphysics to end the debate.
Is it just that we are using the wrong model of mind? Sewell takes
exception to the concept of the modular mind. There is a legitimate
debate to be conducted on this point. But the debate is about how
human psychological predispositions are neurologically constituted
rather than whether they are. If the objection is the latter, then we are
back in metaphysical territory. Sewell and others are right to challenge
crude mechanistic metaphors for the functioning of the mind. My own
use of hardwiring is one such a deliberate choice for a business
audience to overturn blank slate assumptions (Nicholson, 1998) but
let us not confuse metaphors with the essence of the argument.
Is the problem the idea of reproductive fitness as the criterion for evolutionary design? This is where many misapprehensions arise. Because
these processes have morphological outcomes it does not follow that
all aspects of a phenotype are retained because they confer a fitness
advantage. Features that once had a purpose, like toenails or ostrich
wings, for example, do not disappear because they cease to have their

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5.
6.
7.
original purpose. This point is widely misunderstood by anti-Darwinians who wish to caricature the EP view as finding an adaptive logic for
every aspect of a phenotype (panadaptationism). Evolution proceeds
mainly by extinction eliminating the bearers of genes that impair
functioning. This means that redundant features may be retained, or
just whither away gradually through genetic drift. Many may be
retained because they confer a fresh fitness advantage, one for which
they did not owe their origin. The latter applies to a great many human
capabilities (Buss et al., 1998).
Do the objectors to EP believe that cultural evolution has superseded
natural selection and sexual selection as explanations of human
relations and institutions? Although health care and other social institutions have changed the contingencies around survival and reproduction they have not altered the underlying process. Pathogens remain
the chief source of natural selection, and sexual selection mate choice
based upon fitness indicators continues to guide reproductive
outcomes (Ridley, 1999). Cultural evolution provides contextual
moderators of these processes, biasing and shaping the probability of
reproductive outcomes, but without suspending either principles or
processes.
Is rejection of EP based upon its alleged imaginative or romantic
attempts to reconstruct Stone Age conditions? This is the Flintstone
charge, the idea that one requires 2020 Pleistocene hindsight to verify
EPs propositions. Much of Sewells and others arguments rest on this
misrepresentation of the nature of the EP project. More on the nature
of the project shortly, but it does not rely upon any kind of reconstruction. Understanding the selective pressures that shape human
ontogeny is certainly an important part of the chain of inference, but
the most important of the contextual factors that have governed
human evolution continue to operate today principally the need to
survive and reproduce within complex social networks of other
humans, acting alongside kin and non-kin in mixed cooperative and
competitive relationships (Richerson et al., 2003).
Does the reflexive capability of language and self-consciousness make
us uniquely masters of our own fate, stretching the gap between distal
and proximal influences, such that the former are obviated by the
power of social construction? This is a variant on question 5, but relegating our biological ontogeny to a distant background role rather than
dismissing it. This is probably the most critical point that EP
proponents need to deal with. However, the error lies in its formulation
a recurrent problem in Sewells article dichotomizing the argument

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into a simplistic debate that either we are biologically determined or

we are social constructed. It is essential to avoid the trap of such simplification if any kind of common cause can be achieved between those
who propose and those who currently reject the neo-Darwinian
precepts. As I shall argue, this requires a deeper understanding of the
co-evolution of human identity and its social context.
The EP project
The label EP can mislead, since it less a branch of psychology than an interdisciplinary venture, an ongoing project to understand the contents, processes
and social consequences of human identity as an evolved design. The
distalproximal distinction is important and helpful in appreciating the nature
of what design means here it embraces capabilities that emerge spontaneously (various appetites and capabilities), those that require a minimally
supportive environment (such as the emergence of spoken language), and
those that arise through more complex environmental interactions (most
social motives) (Wilson, 1994). I shall illustrate these three meanings in
relation to leadership in the next section, a topic highlighted in Sewells article.
First, let us briefly enumerate the sources contributing to the EP
project.
Darwinian logic
The starting point for Darwinian analysis is the question, what follows from
applying the ideas of natural selection to humans? Darwin himself realized
and was fearful of the backlash he anticipated from the heresy of doing this
(Wright, 1994), though he demonstrated the viability of such application in
his discourse of the expression of emotions in man and other animals
(Ekman, 1998). Sewell attempts to tar EP with the brush of Herbert Spencers
crude distortions of Darwinian theory (Hawkins, 1997). The approach of EP
owes nothing to so-called social Darwinism, but rather extensions of
Darwins own biological analysis, to be found in the work of scholars such
as Hamilton (1964) and Trivers (1985).
Genetics
Darwin developed the principles but knew nothing of the mechanism a
classic instance of empirical discovery validating an untested theory. Modern
genetics, having revealed the mechanism, is beginning to document the range

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of its consequences including key elements of human psychology, including

the biological bases of temperament (Farde et al., 1997). This can be
expected to be one of the fastest growing contributory bodies of knowledge
to the EP project.
Behaviour genetics
The study of individual differences and similarity under conditions of varying
genetic relatedness identical twins, non-identical twins, siblings and
adoptive kin enables the heritability of measurable features to be modelled.
Critics often overlook the significance of non-additive genetic determination
(the effects of gene combinations), which means that, paradoxically, many
inherited characteristics do not run in families (Lykken et al., 1992).
Neuroscience
New imaging technologies and other techniques are able to locate psychological processes and functionalities not just of clearly autonomic processes
such as emotional arousal, but also for areas such as judgement and decisionmaking, with which rational self-control is traditionally associated (Adolphs,
2003). The so-called modularity of the brain is not a collage of compartmentalized functions, but a mix of layered and localized circuitries (see, for
example, Buck, 1999).
Ethnopsychology
This is the name given to the study of primitive or basic human functions.
It includes comparative developmental psychologists testing for crosscultural parallels in cognition that may indicate the existence of inborn biases
towards concepts of self, theories of mind and sociality (Lillard, 1998).
Reconstructive palaeontology
This is the aspect that most troubles EPs critics. It is the range of inferences
one can make about the life of any species from artefacts and remains, and
about what can be assumed about the habitat and conditions of life that
governed its survival and reproduction (Megarry, 1995; Mithen, 1996).
There seems to be no reason why one should take exception to the application of this reasoning to humans more than any other species.

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Primatology
Sewell seems greatly exercised by the idea that other primates are used as
models for our understanding of human nature. Far from it. Comparisons
are instructive especially for species with whom we share a high degree of
genetic identity as much for the differences that they highlight as the parallels (Chadwick-Jones, 2000; McGrew, 1992; Runciman et al., 1996).
Comparative anthropology
Although the variety is diminishing, human societies exhibit a wide range of
forms. Some can be inferred to be closer to the conditions pertaining for the
bulk of human evolutionary time, though it is the presence of universals
across heterogeneous cultures that is most indicative (Barrett et al., 2002;
Brown, 1991).
New syntheses
There is an explosion of knowledge from these sources, traversing disciplinary boundaries. Contrary to the claim that it has always been economics
informing biology and not vice versa (Sewell, 2004: 945), one of the most
fertile areas of emerging knowledge is neuroeconomics, where functional
imaging of neural activity is related to experimentally controlled processes
of exchange, competition, reflection and recall (Camerer et al., forthcoming).
The 2003 Nobel Prize for Economics was jointly awarded to Daniel
Kahneman and Vernon Smith for their demonstrating the revisionist implications for economics of the infusion of psychological rationality and the
application of Darwinian principles.
Distinguishing heat from light: What is the debate really

about?
Where does all the heat come from the yabba-dabba-do-type caricatures of
EP? It seems mainly born of a panic that the cherished territory of the antiempiricist social theory critical theory, social constructionism and poststructuralism is being eroded by the march of positivist science. As Tooby
and Cosmides (1992) pointed out, EP does take a radical position in relation
to the tabula rasa assumptions of what they called the Standard Social
Science Model (SSSM; Pinker, 2002; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992), which has
dominated for nearly a century and separates the social sciences from the

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rest of science. The attraction and endurance of the SSSM is a force for liberation; freeing social scientists from any fear of inferiority in relation to the
natural sciences, by asserting the decoupling of the realm of culture and
identity from biology or any other scientific materiality. This perhaps also
heightens the fervour of EP supporters, who having made an intellectual
commitment to cast themselves adrift from the social science mainstream,
may be also apt to (i) proselytize to shift the centre of gravity in their direction, and (ii) to defend against those who would increase their alienation
from the traditional mainstream.
Without wishing to perpetuate any reciprocal misrepresentation, it
may be useful to examine more specifically the major themes of opposition
to EP and what deeper motives may underlie them. Three seem to predominate.
Reductionist imperialism
Running through Sewells article is a persistent fear that the biologists are
taking over and EP is their Trojan horse. A chief focus of anxiety is the idea
that explanations at one level might be claimed to be superior to explanations
at another level. This fear is misplaced because it leads inexorably towards
the reductio ad absurdum of molecular explanations of molar phenomena.
It would be plainly futile, even if neuroscience were sufficiently advanced for
the task, to explain, say, the effects of kinship systems on intergroup relations
by reference to brain events, though it would be contrary to reason to assert
there was no connection between them. The EP view commits to what Tooby
and Cosmides (1992) call an Integrated Causal Model that requires us to
avoid incongruence between the accounts offered at different levels of
analysis, and to seek causal linkages between them, but not to have to make
translations from the language of one discipline to another.
Mechanistic determinism
This is the attribution of simplistic billiard ball causal reasoning to human
behaviour, such as the attribution that our genes make us do x or y. Genetic
research is typically uncovering interaction effects, such as the recently
discovered connection between a specific genetic susceptibility and experience of negative life events as a cause of depressive illness (Caspi et al., 2003).
Contrary to the assertions of critics, there is no assumption that biological
substrates have a supervening causal relationship to behavioural outcomes
(Radcliffe Richards, 2000). The relationship between distal and proximal
causation is always an interaction effect. In many instances proximal stimuli

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draw their motivational potential from distal roots that can be reliably
inferred but which do not intrude into consciousness (e.g. the proximal
nature of risk incentives drawing energy from the distal underlying asymmetries of the subjective utility of loss and gain) (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979). There are also several varieties of contextual dependence; some where
there only needs to be a bandwidth of supportive conditions for a behaviour
to emerge (e.g. speech); others where normal development can be disturbed
by neglect (e.g. bonding); and others where specific learning is required for
a faculty to be awakened (e.g. some kinds of communal living). More on this
shortly, but there is no purpose in trying to overthrow EP with accusations
of simplistic thinking about causal effects.
Normative naturalism
This is identification of is with ought the idea that EP would tell us how
to live, by arguing for social forms and practice that shorten the distance
between our current circumstances and our evolutionary origins. There is an
anxiety among EPs critics that its proponents have a social agenda often
assumed to be conservative that is hijacking Darwinian principles for
political ends. The history of social Darwinism shows this to have been a
recurrent hazard with writers of both the left and the right claiming the
scientific support of cod Darwinian reasoning for their preferred forms of
social engineering (Hawkins, 1997). There is also a present danger for EP
writers to be too assertive about fit and misfit between human nature and
contemporary life, and some of my own writing has probably overstepped
this line (Markczy, 2003). The only philosophically and empirically tenable
point of view is that all human life is a social construction and rather than
asserting that one state is more fitting than another, we would do better to
talk impartially about the consequences of any particular social arrangements for their capacity to evoke human responses and let our value judgements follow from a more open acknowledgement of what consequences we
want or do not want (Radcliffe Richards, 2000). This makes sense. But it
does not make sense to assert appealing though it might be to our desire
to preserve freedom of spirit that our preferences for social constructions
of one kind or another have become decoupled from our psychological dispositions and biases.
On the latter point, Sewell invokes the interesting idea of looping
(Hacking, 1995), whereby changing social definitions have the power to
recondition behaviour. This is an important idea with a long lineage, and
recognizes the mutual interdependence and adaptation of social definitions
and contextualized action. In other words, our reflexive capability means we

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can create environments with the deliberate intent of reshaping identity. But
our capacity to do this is not without limitations from the pull of distal forces
that resist reconditioning. Human endeavours to socially engineer without
regard for human nature have been spectacularly unsuccessful, as in various
attempts to sustain ideologically inspired social systems. A decoupling of the
distal from the proximal is neither implied nor entailed by reflexivity. To do
so takes us back into the metaphysics of dualism. This can be avoided, for
an appreciation of the significance of reflexivity is vital to a coherent and
viable account of EP, and may be the way to find common ground between
its proponents and all but its most ideological critics.
Is there a common ground?

If there are any grounds for reconciliation it will be at two levels: a truly
interactionist (bi-directional) account of individual agency and social
context, and at the societal/species level an analysis of the co-evolution of
human nature and culture.
At the individual level we need to avoid dualisms that set the biological
against the social, man against nature, or mind against body. The EP goal,
as might be wished for all scientific inquiry, is a unity of knowledge that
assists the translation between disciplines and across levels of analysis. This
is an essential part of the EP project to restore the link between the social
sciences and other bodies of knowledge (Wilson, 1998). Metaphors can help
and hinder in this endeavour. Perhaps one that may be more helpful than
others is to think about human dispositions as akin to a gravitational force.
The instincts (another distracting word) of higher mammals pull them
towards distal goals that do not need to be represented in consciousness to
effect their force. Understanding the nature of this subliminal force enhances
choice, but not without limit, rather in the manner that understanding of
aerodynamics does not suspend the laws of gravity, but it does prevent us
from trying to get off the ground by mimicking birds. Reflexive awareness,
mediated by consciousness and language, does endow us with what feels like
limitless choice (often more than we can comfortably handle). Indeed it is
our attachment to this feeling that underpins infatuation with the philosophically problematic idea of free will and resistance to determinism (Pinker,
2002).
Interactionism at the societal level is one of the major areas of debate
within EP (Janicki & Krebs, 1998). Again, the idea of a complete decoupling
of human nature from cultural evolution is unsupportable for philosophical
reasons, though this is a hare that Dawkins himself one of the leading

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proponents of the biological perspective has set running through the idea
of the meme (Blackmore, 1999; Dawkins, 1989). However, memes ideas
that compete in ideational space for the opportunity to survive and reproduce if they exist would nonetheless remain dependent upon other biologically based elements of the psychological environment. For example,
religious concepts prime candidates for memetic status are highly dependent upon their ability to resonate with human interests and reconcile
conflicting impulses (Kirkpatrick, 1999; Wilson, 2002). A second radical
view of social evolution is the more normative idea that wherever we are able
we strive to create social systems that reflect our evolved psychology, and
where we fail to do so we suffer negative consequences. A third view is the
co-evolutionary idea that there is reciprocation between psychology and
social forms, such that the latter are constituted to reinforce or support the
former (Richerson & Boyd, 1999), with genetic variation constrained by
cultural forms (e.g. via sexual selection). A fourth variant is the work
around view that social forms can arise that do not reflect more than the
interests of their instigators (e.g. certain totalitarian regimes) or economic
imperatives (e.g. Fordist technology) yet people adapt them to their own
genetic purposes, i.e. they find ways of continuing to express their preferred
modes of interaction and exchange.
Take the case of hierarchy. The first view says that forms of hierarchy
might change memetically as a matter of changing fashion, without any
compelling raison dtre. The second view would take the normative view
that people respond more favourably to the kinds of status relationships that
predominated throughout our evolution (Erdal & Whiten, 1996), namely
flexible and fluid hierarchy rather than either rigidly stratified or totally egalitarian regimes. The third view would note that we institute forms of hierarchy even where we do not need them, in order to satisfy our desire for
hierarchical differentiation. The fourth view would maintain that where rigid
hierarchies are initiated people transgress them and where egalitarian social
orders are imposed people create status distinctions in order to satisfy their
preference for status differentiation.
These are not mutually exclusive, but none permits a complete decoupling of the social context from a defined human nature.
Leadership as an exemplar
A good deal of the Sewell article is taken up with reflections on leadership,
attributing to EP in general and my own work in particular a reification of
leadership as a trait-like entity in the human psyche and the use of circular

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arguments to talk about its essence and effects. These are positions that it
would be quite right to challenge, and they bear no relationship to anything
I have written or read on the topic by EP proponents.
However, let us take the topic of leadership for closer examination, for
it does provide an ideal exemplar of EPs contribution to OB. Here I shall be
both paraphrasing and extending an earlier argument I advanced in a managerial article on the topic (Nicholson, 2001).
A starting point is to agree that it would be a category error, question
begging, and potentially a circular argument to identify leadership as a trait.
Leadership is probably best conceived as an exchange between three
elements, each of which is embodied in different kinds of usage of the
concept. First leadership denote roles and statuses, i.e. leadership as situation. All social systems contain roles that can be called leadership situations
because of their requirement for any incumbent to be responsible for people
or resources. However, because these demands vary a great deal in their
content (powers, accountability, responsibility, social relationships), it
follows that there is a multitude of leadership situations. Second, leadership
can be identified as a set of processes or skills whereby one person is able to
lead other people, i.e. leadership as behaviour. This too is a varied menu,
including actions that induce the cooperation, compliance or submission in
others. Third, leadership can be identified with individual motives to lead,
and capabilities to enact the processes identified with influence, i.e. leadership as personal qualities. A variety of other individual attributes many
forms of technical expertise, for example may also be identified as leadership qualities. To determine whether they have the potential to fulfil this role
requires one to specify a bandwidth of congruence between the three
elements: situations, processes and qualities. This dynamic between the three
elements is subject to arousal by environmental selection. Organizational
structures define the configuration of leadership situations, provide selective
opportunity for the exercise of certain behaviours, and admit or debar the
qualities exhibited by individuals seeking access to leadership opportunities.
An EP co-evolutionary argument would proceed as follows. First, a
wide range of individual differences have a high degree of heritability
(Loehlin et al., 1998; Plomin, 1994) many of which cannot be uniquely
identified with leadership, but are subject to selection by the criteria implicit
(or explicit) in the role demands of leadership situations. The major exception to this particularism is the motive to lead (Chan & Drasgow, 2001).
Dominance, a quality associated with personality traits and with biochemistry (Dabbs, 2000; Mazur & Booth, 1998), will encourage individuals to
seek a very wide range of leadership positions, and to desire to enact leadership behaviours. This says nothing about the effectiveness of such would-be

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leaders, which is a matter of their other dispositions and abilities and their
fit with situational demands.
Second, people will differ in their willingness or ability to enact leadership behaviours, often because of quite short-term goals or pressures. Individual propensity to do so will be a function of the role demands of the
leadership situations, and the stable preferences and dispositions of the individual i.e. how their personal qualities fit any given leadership position.
Moreover, leadership behaviours work by virtue of their capacity to exploit
the dispositions and needs of followers; hence the ability of would-be leaders
to attract followers by theatricality and displays of charisma (Gardner &
Avolio, 1998).
Third, leadership positions are constructions based upon situational
demands (e.g. technology, group size) and the intent of human agents, including their incumbents. This is partly a matter of preference, which results in
the common danger of leaders shaping their roles to suit themselves rather
than the needs of the moment. The latter include contingencies of potential
risk or gain, and they do have a shaping influence that evolutionary theorists
have recognized, such as the observation that in highly competitive environments with linear value chains one can expect more agonic (competitive)
models to prevail (Pierce & White, 1999). However, the most important situational contingency for leadership is the led. Leadership is a universal feature
of human social systems (Brown, 1991) whether formal or informal via
the reciprocation of peoples desire to lead and be led. Followers create
leaders through their demands for and their responsiveness to types of authority and display. The situational contingency is that leaders will be selected
according to the current needs of followers, e.g. for nurturance or combativeness. Certain qualities, such as confidence, expressed motivation to lead,
and even physical characteristics such as height (Judge & Cable, 2004) will
evoke a positive response among potential followers.
The potential circularity of this model will be apparent to readers,
although the recursion is not tautological but causal. People who desire
power shape situations so as to enable them to enact the processes that allow
them to retain power, often encouraged by the reciprocal needs of followers.
Environmental contingencies intervene to reinforce the bias for or against
any particular model. One can see the three different kinds of
distalproximal relationships described earlier in this analysis. There are
individuals whose drive for leadership impels them to find or construct
around them situations that will submit to their desires, and an equal and
opposite resistance to and rejection of all opportunities for leadership roles
for people with contrary impulses. Others choose and are chosen because of
the fit between their attributes and the specific manifest demands of

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opportunities. And there are others who when placed in leadership situations
adapt their goals and motives to whatever degree they are able. This is the
sense in which some people are born to lead and others not their intent
to take command is deeply rooted in their character, of which a substantial
element is attributable to heritable individual differences (Johnson et al.,
2004). The reciprocal of this is the instinctive responsiveness of followers
to leaders and leader displays. This analysis suggests that leaders of different
kinds will emerge as situations change, but that there will be common traits
and attributes across these types, as indeed the literature shows (Hogan et
al., 1994; Judge et al., 2002).
The general absence from women in leadership positions in publicly
quoted corporations and their greater frequency in public service organizations is explained by this analysis. On the abundant evidence that mens
desire for dominance is greater than womens (Feingold, 1994) and that their
preferred leadership behaviours are those that require single-mindedness,
competitive striving and political game playing (Browne, in press), then one
might expect organizational designs to look pretty much as they do in the
corporate world pyramidal with linearly divided labour and periodic tournaments for advancement. These will discriminate both directly and indirectly against the accession of women to leadership positions, not least
because of the self-selection of women away from them, on the grounds that
such positions are unattractive and their demands are felt to be a poor fit
with their style (Eagly & Johnson, 1990).
Some leadership positions can be expected to be less discriminatory,
where lower power distance and more cooperative relationships pertain,
and where the economic contingencies do not accord supremacy to the
values of competitive advantage. One important question that this analysis
raises is whether in the 21st century we will see the co-evolutionary
process move towards more female-friendly organizational designs and
leadership situations. There are grounds for optimism that the new
economic realities of decentralization, liberation from monolithic supply
chains, more networked structures, and reduced reliance on fixed technologies, could all reduce the competitive advantage of traditional
command-and-control hierarchy. However, the sharpening of competition
in a globalizing economy continues to reinforce features of organizational
design that have an implicit gender-bias. Moreover, there is little reason to
be optimistic that men will stop creating systems that are favourable to their
motivational orientations. Even in a more female-friendly business environment, should such a world come to pass more generally, there is still to be
reckoned the fact that men are more predisposed than women in any
circumstances to strive for status and leadership, and to do so with a greater

Nicholson
appetite for competitive striving, risk-taking and domination (Byrnes et al.,

1999; Geary, 1998).
Conclusion
Leadership research has tended historically to move back and forth between
individualist and situational positions. This discussion has been intended to
show how an EP analysis enables them to be integrated, as it can do likewise
in other sub-fields of OB (Nicholson & White, forthcoming). It is essential
that the pursuit of knowledge avoids misrepresentations, rises above caricature and puts reason before passion in seeking synthesis between levels of
analysis and disciplinary perspectives. Tribalism might be instinctive, but we
dont have to succumb to it.
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Business School. His wide-ranging research interests have encompassed
motivation and performance, the psychology of labour relations, innovation, role transitions, executive career development, personality and
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[E-mail: nnicholson@london.edu]

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Human Relations

Objections to evolutionary psychology: Reflections, implications and the

The Tavistock Institute

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Objections to evolutionary psychology:

A recent exchange of articles in Human Relations debated the

evolution leadership theory

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Human Relations 58(3)

and subsequently in a book for a non-academic readership (Nicholson,

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Objections to evolutionary psychology

What are opponents of EP opposing and what are they

Do they object to the proposition that Homo sapiens is an animal

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Objections to evolutionary psychology

into a simplistic debate that either we are biologically determined or

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of its consequences including key elements of human psychology, including

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Distinguishing heat from light: What is the debate really

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Is there a common ground?

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Objections to evolutionary psychology

appetite for competitive striving, risk-taking and domination (Byrnes et al.,

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