FACE BLINDNESS NEW BRAIN CELLS COME ONLINE

MIND
Causes of
School Shootings
page 52

THOUGHT IDE AS BR AIN SCIENCE

Au g u s t/S e p te m b er 2 0 07 w w w. s cia m m i n d .co m

New Insights about

LEADERSHIP
Power and charisma arent enough. The best leaders guide groups from within.

PLUS:
The Mind-
Body Nexus
Psychology
of eBay
How Words
Shape
Thought
Preventing
Dropouts
20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
 The New
Psychology of
Leadership
Recent research in psychology points to secrets of effective
leadership that radically challenge conventional wisdom
By Stephen D. Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam and Michael J. Platow

Today weve had a national tragedy, announced President
George W. Bush, addressing the nation for the rst time on
September 11, 2001. Two airplanes have crashed into the
World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our
country. Bush then promised to hunt down and to nd
those folks who committed this act. These remarks, made
from Emma T. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla.,
may not seem extraordinary, but in subtle ways they exem-
plify Bushs skill as a leader. When viewed through the lens
of a radical new theory of leadership, Bushs 9/11 address
contains important clues to how the president solidied his
G E T T Y I M AG E S

political power in his early months and years in ofce.

22 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND Au g u s t / S e p te m b e r 2 0 07

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
w w w. s c i a m m i n d .c o m SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 23
20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
( Leaders are most effective when they can induce followers
to see the groups interest as their own interest. )
In the past, leadership scholars considered of everyday language such as hunt down and
charisma, intelligence and other personality those folks Bush portrayed himself on 9/11 as
traits to be the key to effective leadership. Ac- a typical American able to speak for America.
cordingly, these academics thought that good According to this new approach, no xed set
leaders use their inborn talents to dominate fol- of personality traits can assure good leadership
lowers and tell them what to do, with the goal because the most desirable traits depend on the
either of injecting them with enthusiasm and nature of the group being led. Leaders can even
willpower that they would otherwise lack or of select the traits they want to project to followers.
enforcing compliance. Such theories suggest that It is no accident, then, that Bush has often come
leaders with sufcient character and will can tri- across to Americans as a regular guy rather than
umph over whatever reality they confront. as the scion of an elite East Coast Yale University
In recent years, however, a new picture of dynasty.
leadership has emerged, one that better accounts But far from simply adopting a groups iden-
for leadership performance. In this alternative tity, inuential presidents or chief executives who
view, effective leaders must work to understand employ this approach work to shape that identity
the values and opinions of their followers rath- for their own ends. Thus, Bush helped to resolve
er than assuming absolute authority to enable the mass confusion on 9/11 in a way that pro-
a productive dialogue with followers about what moted and helped to forge a new national unity.
the group embodies and stands for and thus how Among other things, people wondered: Who or
it should act. By leadership, we mean the ability what was the target? New York? Washington?
to shape what followers actually want to do, not Capitalism? The Western world? Bushs answer:
the act of enforcing compliance using rewards America is under attack. By establishing this fact,
and punishments. he invoked a sense of a united nation that re-
Given that good leadership depends on con- quired his leadership.
stituent cooperation and support, this new psy-
chology of leadership negates the notion that From Charisma to Consensus
leadership is exclusively a top-down process. In Nearly 100 years ago the renowned German
fact, it suggests that to gain credibility among fol- political and social theorist Max Weber intro-
lowers, leaders must try to position themselves duced the notion of charismatic leadership as
among the group rather than above it. In his use an antidote to his grim prognosis for industrial
society. Without such leadership, he forecast,
not summers bloom lies ahead of us, but rather
FAST FACTS a polar night of icy darkness and hardness.
How to Lead Since then, the notion of charisma has endured,
alternatively attracting and repelling us as a func-

1>> A new psychology of leadership suggests that effective

leaders must understand the values and opinions of
their followers rather than assuming absolute authority to
tion of events in the world at large. In the chaos
following World War I, many scholars continued
to see strong leaders as saviors. But in the after-
enable a productive dialogue with team members about what math of fascism, Nazism and World War II,
the group stands for and thus how it should act. many turned against the notion that character
determines the effectiveness of leaders.

2>> According to this new approach, no xed set of person-

ality traits can assure good leadership because the most
desirable traits depend on the nature of the group being led.
Instead scholars began to favor contingency
models, which focus on the context in which
leaders operate. Work in the 1960s and 1970s by
the inuential social psychologist Fred Fiedler of

3>> Leaders who adopt this strategy must try not only to t
in with their group but also to shape the groups identity
in a way that makes their own agenda and policies appear to
the University of Washington, for example, sug-
gested that the secret of good leadership lies in
discovering the perfect match between the indi-
be an expression of that identity. vidual and the leadership challenge he or she con-
fronts. For every would-be leader, there is an op-

24 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND Au g u s t / S e p te m b e r 2 0 07

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
 Before Adolf
Hitlers reign,
people yearned
for strong leader-
ship. After Hitler,
they dreaded it.
timal leadership context; for every leadership ple to identify and act together as group mem-
challenge, there is a perfect candidate. This idea bers for example, as Catholics, Americans or
has proved to be a big moneymaker; it underlies a Dodgers fans. Social identities thus make group
multitude of best-selling business books and the behavior possible: they enable us to reach consen-
tactics of corporate headhunters who promote sus on what matters to us, to coordinate our ac-
themselves as matchmakers extraordinaire. tions with others and to strive for shared goals.
In fact, such models have delivered mixed re- Tajfel and Turners original social identity
sults, contributing to a partial resurgence of framework does not refer to leadership explicitly,
charismatic models of leadership in recent de- but it helps to clarify why leadership requires a
cades. In particular, James MacGregor Burnss common us to represent. Leadership theorist
work on transformational leadership in the late Bernard Bass of Binghamton University has
1970s rekindled the view that only a gure with shown, for example, that leaders are most effec-
a specic and rare set of attributes is able to bring tive when they can induce followers to see them-
about necessary transformations in the structure selves as group members and to see the groups
of organizations and society. interest as their own interest.
How, then, do we get beyond this frustrating The emergence of social identity helps to ex-
ip-op between those who argue that a leader plain the transformation in the strategies of rul-
can overcome circumstances and those who re- ers associated with the birth of modern nation
tort that circumstances dene the leader? In our states in the 19th century. According to historian
view, strong leadership arises out of a symbiotic Tim Blanning of the University of Cambridge,
relationship between leaders and followers with- before national identities emerged European
in a given social group and hence requires an monarchs could only rule as autocrats, using
intimate understanding of group psychology. power (rather than true leadership) to control
In the 1970s Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, people. But once people identied with nations,
then at the University of Bristol in England, per- effective monarchs needed to rule as patriots who
BE T TMANN/CORBIS

formed seminal studies on how groups can re- were able to lead the people because they embod-
structure individual psychology. Tajfel coined the ied a shared national identity. Monarchs such as
term social identity to refer to the part of a per- Louis XVI of France who misunderstood or ig-
sons sense of self that is dened by a group. As nored this shift literally lost their heads.
Turner pointed out, social identity also allows peo- More recently, we afrmed the importance of

w w w. s c i a m m i n d .c o m SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 25

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
 social identities for leadership in an experiment who scoffed at Bushs awkward utterances suf-
we called the BBC Prison Study, an investigation fered, because their criticism cast them as an alien
of social behavior conducted within a simulated elite out of touch with most ordinary Americans.
prison environment [see The Psychology of Tyr- Even the way leaders dress can help them ap-
anny, by S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. pear representative of the groups they lead. Bushs
Reicher; Scientic American Mind, October leather jackets and cowboy clothes round out the
2005]. We randomly assigned volunteers to two image of him as a regular guy. In the same vein,
groups: prisoners and guards. Surprisingly, we the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat adopted
found that meaningful and effective leadership the headscarf of the peasantry to identify himself
emerged among the prisoners but not among the with his people. The founder of Pakistan, Mu-
guards, because only the prisoners developed a hammad Ali Jinnah, wore a dress made of dis-
strong sense of shared social identity based on a tinctive items from the various regions of the new
common desire to resist the guards authority. country, suggesting a newly unied national iden-
The guards, on the other hand, lacked a group tity and establishing himself as its gurehead.
identity, in part because some of them were not Such examples counter the notion that leader-
comfortable being in a position of authority; ac- ship requires a particular set of personality traits
cordingly, they did not develop effective leader- or that leaders should behave in a xed way. The
ship and ultimately collapsed as a group. most desirable traits and actions have to t with
the culture of the group being led and thus vary
One of the Gang from group to group. Even some of the most oft-
When a shared social identity exists, individ- touted leadership traits, such as intelligence, can
uals who can best represent that identity will be called into question in some settings. Some
have the most inuence over the groups mem- people consider being down-to-earth or trust-
bers and be the most effective leaders. That is, the worthy as more important than being brilliant,
best leaders are prototypical of the group they for instance. Where this is the case, being seen as
not only seem to belong to it but also exemplify too clever may actually undermine ones credibil-
what makes the group distinct from and superior ity as a leader, as Bushs tactics suggest.
to rival groups. For example, Bush was connect- Followers may also shun an otherwise desir-
ing with Middle America intentionally or oth- able trait such as intelligence if doing so helps the
erwise when he littered his speeches with verbal group differentiate itself from competitors. In a
gaffes, something that columnist Kevin Drum study published in 2000 by Turner, now at the
suggested in the Washington Monthly worked in Australian National University, and one of us
Bushs favor in the 2004 election. Indeed, those (Haslam), we asked business students to choose

Dictators or True Leaders?

A
t the very heart of contemporary thought the most disparate collection of people using
lies a profound ambivalence toward lead- repression or rewards to secure assent or en-
ers. At times, they are seen as the hope courage compliance. But such leadership
of humanity having the capacity to inject en- succeeds only when followers are under surveil-
ergy and romance into jaded societies. The long lance say, when a boss watches over his or
shadow of Adolf Hitler reinforced an alternative her employees or the military enforces a lead-
view of strong leaders: far from saving human- ers wishes. Such a strategy works against
kind, they were considered the gravest threat to group members will and thus is not leadership
morality and security. Thus, instead of celebrat- proper but coercion.
ing the emergence of great men, it seemed When we refer to leadership, we mean the
that we should be working out ways to inoculate ability to motivate people to act in concert some-
ourselves against them. thing that requires an internalized social identity
Despite this dichotomy, neither the enlight- [see main story]. This type of leadership is effec-
ened nor dark rulers of this autocratic genre are tive even when followers are not being watched;
true leaders by our denition. Dictators, like that is, they do the bosss bidding even when the
early monarchs, can shape the behavior of even boss is away. S.D.R., S.A.H. and M.J.P.

26 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND Au g u s t / S e p te m b e r 2 0 07

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
( Anything that sets leaders apart from the group can
compromise their effectiveness. )
Leaders such as
Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, the found-
er of Pakistan
(left), Palestinian
leader Yasser Ara-
fat (center) and
President George
W. Bush (right)
have often
dressed in ways
that make them
appear prototypi-
cal of the people
they lead.

the ideal characteristics for a business leader. say we and to exert oneself except in ones own
When the students were confronted with a rival immediate self-interest.
group that had an intelligent leader (who was
also inconsiderate and uncommitted), the stu- Favoring Fairness
dents wanted their leader to be unintelligent (but Another reason not to lavishly compensate
considerate and dedicated). But when the rival those at the top is that followers are likely to per-
leader was unintelligent, virtually nobody want- ceive such nancial inequity as unfair. Followers
ed an unintelligent leader. generally respect fairness in leaders, although
If tting in is important for gaining inuence what fairness means can depend on the followers.
and control, then anything that sets leaders apart Ways to be fair as a leader include refraining from
B E T T M A N N / C O R B I S ( l e f t ) ; M I C H A E L W I L L I A M S Z u m a / C o r b i s ( c e n t e r ) ; G E T T Y I M AG E S ( r i g h t )

from the group can compromise their effective- helping yourself and making sacrices for the
ness. Acting superior or failing to treat followers group. Gandhi won people over by adopting an
respectfully or listen to them will undermine a Indian villagers dress, which symbolized his re-
leaders credibility and inuence. Similar prob- fusal of luxuries; Aung San Suu Kyi similarly at-
lems can emerge if a leader and followers are sep- tracted supporters with her willingness to endure
arated by a wide compensation gap. Financier ongoing house arrest to promote collective resis-
J. P. Morgan once observed that the only feature tance to military rule in Myanmar (Burma).
shared by the failing companies he worked with Effective leaders can also display fairness in
was a tendency to overpay those at the top. the way they resolve disputes among group mem-
Another experiment of ours, which we re- bers. Favoritism, or even the appearance of it, is
ported in 2004, conrms Morgans wisdom. We the royal road to civil war in organizations, po-
created work teams in which leaders remunera- litical parties and countries alike. In some cases,
tion was either equal to, double or triple that of however, leaders should favor those who support
followers. Although varying the remuneration
structure did not affect the leaders efforts, team
(The Authors)
members efforts diminished markedly under
conditions of inequality. As the late Peter F. STEPHEN D. REICHER, S. ALEXANDER HASLAM and MICHAEL J. PLATOW
Drucker, then professor of management at Clare- have collaborated on investigations into leadership and social identity,
mont Graduate University, wrote in his book The culminating in their forthcoming book The New Psychology of Leadership
Frontiers of Management (Dutton, 1986), Very (Psychology Press). Reicher is a professor of social psychology at the Uni-
high salaries at the top disrupt the team. They versity of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Haslam is a professor of social
make people in the company see their own top psychology at the University of Exeter in England. Both are on the board of
management as adversaries rather than as col- advisers for Scientic American Mind. Platow is currently a reader in psy-
leagues.... And that quenches any willingness to chology at the Australian National University.

w w w. s c i a m m i n d .c o m SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 27

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
( Followers generally respect fairness in leaders, although
what passes for fairness depends on the followers. )
their own group (the in-group) over those who biased against the out-group, however. A leader
support another group (the out-group). who represents a group that holds a strong belief
In a 1997 study conducted by one of us (Pla- in equality must treat in- and out-group members
tow) in New Zealand, people endorsed the lead- equally. Thus, when a member of the British Par-
ership of a health board CEO who allocated time liament recently put British families before mi-
on a kidney dialysis machine equally between grants in allocating public housing for those in
two fellow New Zealanders. Yet when the CEO need, charitable groups, religious groups and so-
had to split the time between a New Zealander cialist groups all protested strenuously. Good
and a foreigner, people liked the leader who gave leadership does not mean applying universal
more time to the in-group member. And in a rules of behavior but rather understanding the
2001 study we asked Australian undergraduates group to be led and the types of actions it esteems
about their support for a student leader, Chris, and considers legitimate.
who had distributed rewards between student
council members who were known to either sup- Wielding Words
port or oppose core student positions (regarding But, of course, leadership is not simply a mat-
cuts to university funding, for example). Chris ter of conforming to group norms. Anyone who is
was more popular to the extent that he showed a in the business of mobilizing people whether to

S O U R C E : T H E L I N K B E T W E E N L E A D E R S H I P A N D F O L L O W E R S H I P : H O W A F F I R M I N G S O C I A L I D E N T I T Y T R A N S L AT E S V I S I O N I N T O
preference for the council members who support- get them to the polls, to the ofce or to protest an

AC T I O N , B Y S . A . H A S L A M A N D M . J . P L AT O W, I N P E R S O N A L I T Y A N D S O C I A L P S Y C H O LO GY B U L L E T I N , V O L . 27, N O . 1 1 ; 2 0 0 1
ed the in-group position. And when Chris showed injustice must also work to shape and dene
such partiality, the undergraduates were more those norms. Presidents and other leaders most
likely to back him and devise ways to make his often mold social identities through words, as Bush
proposed projects succeed [see box below]. did in his 9/11 address.
People do not always prefer leaders who are The most effective leaders dene their groups
social identity to t with the policies they plan to
promote, enabling them to position those policies

Follow the Leader as expressions of what their constituents already

believe. In the Gettysburg Address, which begins,
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought

F
ollowers generate ideas that advance a leaders vision that forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived
is, they display followership only if that leader has in the in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all
past advanced the interests of the group. If the leader has been men are created equal, Abraham Lincoln strong-
either evenhanded or supportive of rival groups or positions, follow- ly emphasized the principle of equality to rally
ers ideas are unhelpful. people around his key policy objectives: unica-
tion of the states and emancipation of the slaves.
Ideas That Advance a Leaders Vision In fact, the Constitution contains many prin-
Ideas That Do Not Advance a Leaders Vision ciples, and no one stands above all others, accord-
ing to historian Garry Wills in his Pulitzer Prize
1 winning book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words
That Remade America (Simon & Schuster, 1992).
Number of Ideas*

Nevertheless, Lincoln elevated equality to a posi-

tion of supreme importance and made it the touch-
stone of American identity. After Lincolns ad-
dress, Americans interpreted the Constitution in
a new way. As Wills writes of the Gettysburg au-
0 dience: Everyone in that vast throng of thou-
Favors Even- Favors sands was having his or her intellectual pocket
rival groups handed followers
interests interests picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in
Leaders Prior Behavior its ideological luggage, that new constitution.
This reshaping of American identity as cen-
*Averaged across a large number of participants. tered on equality allowed Lincoln to unite and

28 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND Au g u s t / S e p te m b e r 2 0 07

2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.
 Abraham Lincoln
refocused American
identity around
equality just one
of the principles in
the U.S. Constitu-
tion to rally people
around his policy
of emancipation.

mobilize Americans around freeing the slaves a Center for Scientic Research, writes that the rev-
previously divisive issue. Through his skills as a olutionaries fashioned a whole new set of festivals
wordsmith, this supreme entrepreneur of identity to symbolize a France based on liberty, equality,
secured one of the greatest achievements in fraternity. In the past, people had paraded ac-
American history. cording to social rank, but now rich and poor pa-
raded together, organized by age instead. In con-
Identities and Realities trast, Adolf Hitler choreographed his Nuremberg
If Lincolns denition of American identity rallies to portray an authoritarian society. He
moved people to create a more equal society, then started among the masses, but at a strategic mo-
the realities of emancipation served to reinforce ment he would ascend a podium from where he
equality as the core of American identity. That is, could talk down to the serried and orderly ranks.
there is a reciprocal relation between social iden- No matter how skilled a person might be,
tity and social reality: identity inuences the type however, a leaders effectiveness does not lie en-
of society people create and that society in turn tirely in his or her own hands. As we have seen,
affects the identities people adopt. leaders are highly dependent on followers. Do fol-
An identity that is out of kilter with reality and lowers see their leader as one of them? Do follow-
that has no prospect of being realized, on the oth- ers nd their leaders visions of identity compel-
er hand, will soon be discarded in favor of more ling? Do followers learn the intended lessons from
viable alternatives. Our BBC Prison study provid- rituals and ceremonies? Our new psychological
ed a stark warning as to what happens if a leaders analysis tells us that for leadership to function
vision is not accompanied by a strategy for turning well, leaders and followers must be bound by a
that vision into reality. In this study the collapse shared identity and by the quest to use that iden-
of the guard system led participants to set up a tity as a blueprint for action.
commune whose members believed passionately The division of responsibility in this quest can
in equality. But the communes leaders failed to vary. In more authoritarian cases, leaders can
B E T T M A N N / C O R B I S ( l e f t ) ; T E T R A I M AG E S / C O R B I S ( r i g h t )

establish structures that either promoted equality claim sole jurisdiction over identity and punish
or controlled those who challenged the system. In anyone who dissents. In more democratic cases,
the end, the commune also tottered, and the en- leaders can engage the population in a dialogue
during inequality led even the most committed to over their shared identity and goals. Either way,
lose faith. They began to believe in a hierarchical the development of a shared social identity is the
world and turned to a tyrannical model of leader- basis of inuential and creative leadership. If you
ship that would bring their vision into being. control the denition of identity, you can change
The wise leader is not simply attuned to making the world. M
identities real but also helps followers experience
identities as real. In this vein, rituals and symbols (Further Reading)
provide perspective by reproducing a dramatized
Social Inuence. J. C. Turner. Open University Press, 1991.
representation of the world in miniature. In her
Self and Nation. S. D. Reicher and N. Hopkins. Sage, 2001.
book Festivals and the French Revolution (reprint- Leadership and Power. D. Van Knippenberg and M. A. Hogg. Sage, 2004.
ed by Harvard University Press in 1991), Mona The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Inuence and Power.
Ozouf, director of research at the French National S. A. Haslam, S. D. Reicher and M. J. Platow. Psychology Press (in press).

w w w. s c i a m m i n d .c o m SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 29

20 07 SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN, INC.