The Evolution of Leadership: A Preliminary Skirmish

  • John H. Crook
Chapter
Part of the Springer Series in Social Psychology book series (SSSOC)

Abstract

Leadership is so clearly an important aspect of human life that it comes as a surprise to find almost no literature concerned with its origins. In particular the excitements caused by new ideas about the origins and functions of several types of altruism—ideas that crystalized as the sociobiological approach within ethology (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971; Wilson, 1975)—do not seem to have led to more extended inquiries into other aspects of advanced sociability. Recent work on human social evolution is pre-dominantly based on a paradigm that, in focusing exclusively on the inclusive fitness of individuals, tends to leave aside aspects of social life that are essentially group phenomena. Nonetheless, it seems strange that although recent textbooks (Wallace, 1979; Wittenberger, 1981; Barnard, 1983; Huntingford, 1984) contain detailed accounts of complex social activity in animal groups in which leaderlike behavior is often in evidence, actual discussion of leadership is absent and the term does not appear in their indexes. Even in Alexander’s review Darwinism and Human Affairs (1980), the term receives a derisory one-page, one-paragraph citation.

Keywords

Inclusive Fitness Reciprocal Altruism Hamadryas Baboon Reproductive Unit Attention Structure 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1986

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  • John H. Crook

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