Whom do we trust to lead us? effects of leaders’ dominance-based leadership, prestige-based leadership and physical formidability

Abstract

Drawing on evolutionary perspectives of leadership and hierarchy, we argue that hierarchical strategies and physical formidability of leaders affect followers’ trust. Specifically, prestige should increase trust, dominance should reduce trust and physical formidability should strengthen these effects. We tested these hypotheses in three experimental studies (total n = 1884), using survey and behavioral measures of trust. We found that a dominance-based leadership style consistently reduced trust in leaders whereas using a prestige-based leadership style consistently increased it. However, physical formidability didn’t moderate these effects, nor did it affect trust directly. Although more research seems needed to understand more fine-grained effects of physical formidability on different factors of trustworthiness, our results suggest that leadership styles are important predictors of how much leaders are trusted.