People who see society as cutthroat value antagonistic leaders, study finds

People who view society as competitive are more likely to admire antagonistic leaders, a new study finds. Meanwhile, those who see society as cooperative are more likely to call those same leaders ineffective.

Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 participants about coercive behaviors — such as making threats or blaming problems on others — and observed that reactions to these behaviors weren't universal, but instead depend on the observer's worldview.

These results suggest that people who view the world as dog-eat-dog would evaluate a leader who behaves antagonistically as more competent and more effective than people who believe members of a society are symbiotic, helping one another.

"Our work highlights that eye-of-the-beholder effects are meaningful," study co-author Christine Nguyen, a doctoral student at Columbia Business School in New York, told Live Science in an email. The study's results were published in the APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on July 14.

Worldview impacts perceptions of leadership

Nguyen and co-author Daniel Ames, a social psychologist at Columbia Business School, hypothesized that people who view society as competitive are more likely to value antagonistic leaders. To test the idea, they surveyed 2,065 people from the United States, asking them to participate in seven different evaluations. In the study, antagonistic behavior was defined to include mean, tough and intimidating actions, as opposed to friendly and agreeable behaviors.

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The surveys each included 10 questions to determine the participants' worldviews, asking about the extent to which they agreed with various statements. One example was: "My knowledge and experience tell me that the social world we live in is basically a competitive 'jungle' in which the fittest survive and succeed, in which power, wealth, and winning are everything, and might is right." Participants responded on a seven-point scale, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree."

Another survey had participants rate the impact of behaviors, such as making threats, blaming others or acting abrasively, from "would greatly decrease their ability to get things done" to "would greatly increase their ability to get things done." In another, participants reacted to hypothetical depictions of workplaces managed by people with varying degrees of antagonistic behavior.

Finally, one survey had participants rate the behaviors of real-world, well-known business leaders, including CEOs such as Apple's Tim Cook and Walt Disney's Bob Iger. Participants rated whether they thought a given CEO used antagonistic behaviors to aid their "rise to the top."

Across all the surveys, people who viewed the world as competitive were more likely to find antagonistic leaders competent. In other words, those with a stronger belief in society having an inherently cutthroat nature were more likely to see antagonistic actions as having a positive impact or being effective. When asked to evaluate CEOs, people with this worldview assumed the leaders used confrontational tactics that helped them succeed in their careers.

People with a competitive worldview were also more likely to report working under antagonistic managers themselves.

"Over time, through processes like employees selectively joining and leaving, antagonistic leaders may find themselves surrounded by a subset of employees with stronger competitive jungle beliefs, who are more tolerant and approving of their behavior," Nguyen said in a statement.

"We're seeing the world differently"

Past research has shown that people's perception of behaviors is partly dependent on factors like their job and location. But "our work is the first to apply this to judgments of leaders through the lens of competitive worldviews," Ames told Live Science in an email. He added that both employees and managers could learn from the study.

"To help people to thrive and find satisfaction in their work means we should understand not only how and why managers behave as they do, but also how and why people perceive managers as they do," he said.

For example, he suggested that leaders should recognize that people evaluate them "not just based on the leader's visible behaviors but also through the lens of those onlookers' own belief systems." While a manager might believe that their leadership style is being evaluated in the vacuum of the workplace, the study places their impact in a broader context, he suggested.

Nguyen did flag that, because all the survey respondents are based in the United States, their results may not be applicable globally. That said, Nguyen and Ames both hope that the work inspires people to reflect on how they view leaders around them, and for leaders to reflect on their perceived impact.

"We hope this research helps people understand that when we disagree about what makes someone competent or admirable, it might be that we're seeing the world differently," Nguyen said.