ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Leadership solves collective action problems in small-scale societies.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed.
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- How to Select the Leader in a One-Shot Public Goods Game: Evidence from the Laboratory.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The social leverage effect: Institutions transform weak reputation effects into strong incentives for cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Cultural tightness and resilience against environmental shocks in nonindustrial societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Institutional complexity emerges from socioecological complexity in small-scale human societies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Collective action problems led to the cultural transformation of Sāmoa 800 years ago.PloS one · 2024Article
- Group Coordination Catalyzes Individual and Cultural Intelligence.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2024Article
- Identifying key socioecological factors influencing the expression of egalitarianism and inequality among foragers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Towards Description of Universals of Culture as an Aggression Control System.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2023Article
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- New perspectives on the evolution of women's cooperation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Key individuals catalyse intergroup violence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Intergroup conflict: origins, dynamics and consequences across taxa.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Large-sample-size assessment of socioeconomic predictors of community-level resource management occurrence.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2022Article
- Dominance in humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Social hierarchies and social networks in humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Optimizing the social utility of judicial punishment: An evolutionary biology and neuroscience perspective.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
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 from the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia and Nyangatom nomadic pastoralists of Ethiopia, we evaluate the traits of leaders and the contexts in which leadership becomes more institutional. We find that leaders tend to have more capital, in the form of age-related knowledge, body size or social connections. These attributes can reduce the costs leaders incur and increase the efficacy of leadership. Leadership becomes more institutional in domains of collective action, such as resolution of intragroup conflict, where collective action failure threatens group integrity. Together these data support the hypothesis that leadership is an important means by which collective action problems are overcome in small-scale societies.
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