An Evolutionary Exploration of Implicit and Explicit Dominance Cues in Leadership: Brexit, Gender Stereotypes and National Collective Narcissism

Abstract

This study investigated the preference for implicit cues of dominance and gender typicality by manipulating the masculinity of potential candidates faces and asking participants to rate these faces for leadership ability. Previous research in this domain has found that ‘No’ voters in the Scottish Independence Referendum were more likely to prefer masculinised male faces (Knowles & Little, in review). Thus, these results suggest a link between facial preferences and voting behaviour. Moreover, preliminary research has shown a correlation that illustrates people who are collectively narcissistic were more likely to vote Leave in the Brexit Referendum (Golec de Zavala, 2018). Expanding on this research, the current study will use a repeated measures design to explore an individual’s preference for implicit and explicit cues of dominance in both male and female faces. Exploring perceived leadership ability and determining whether there is any difference between those who voted ‘In’ or ‘Out’ in the referendum on EU membership (‘Brexit’). This study explores preferences for explicit dominance cues, by asking participants to rate quotations and different prototypical leadership qualities, which reflect dominance or diplomacy. Additionally, examine individual differences which may moderate these effects, including National Collective Narcissism (NCN), Need for Cognition (NFC), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and other personality characteristics. The results of this study demonstrated a preference for explicit cues of dominance. We found that NCN was higher in those who voted leave and that NCN moderated differences in personality construct between voters in some cases.