The current review evaluates the status hypothesis, which states that that the desire for
status is a fundamental motive. Status is defined as the respect, admiration, and voluntary …

From an evolutionary perspective, followership is puzzling because it is not clear why
individuals would relinquish their autonomy and set aside their personal goals to follow …

Across species, social hierarchies are often governed by dominance relations. In humans,
where there are multiple culturally valued axes of distinction, social hierarchies can take a …

Observation of leadership in small-scale societies offers unique insights into the evolution of
human collective action and the origins of sociopolitical complexity. Using behavioural data …

Why are physically formidable men willingly allocated higher social status by others in
cooperative groups? Ancestrally, physically formidable males would have been differentially …

Highlights•Social rank in humans derives from the capacity to inflict costs (dominance) or the
capacity to benefit others (prestige).•Evidence indicates that social rank accrues to …

Anthropological evidence from diverse societies suggests that prestige-based leadership
may provide a foundation for cooperation in many contexts. Here, inspired by such …

Many researchers have turned to evolutionary theory to better understand diversity in
leadership. Evolutionary theories of leadership, in turn, draw on ethnographic cases of …

Objective Mate choice involves trading‐off several preferences. Research on this process
tends to examine mate preference prioritization in homogenous samples using a small …

Understanding how systems of political and economic inequality evolved from relatively
egalitarian origins has long been a focus of anthropological inquiry. Many hypotheses have …