#950 Zachary Garfield: An Evolutionary Take on Leadership, Reputation, and Conflict Resolution

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Center. I'm your host as always Ricard Lobs. And today I'm joined by Dr Zachary Garfield. He's assistant professor at Mohammed, the sixth Polytechnic University in the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences and co-director of the Omo Valley Research project. His research program focuses on relationships between individual behavioral strategies and group dynamics in the context of cultural transitions. And today we're focusing mostly on leadership from an evolutionary perspective, conflict resolution and other related topics. So Dr Garfield, welcome to the show. It's a big pleasure to everyone.

00:41 Zachary Garfield: Thank you, Ricardo. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to it.

00:44 Ricardo Lopes: So perhaps let's start with a bit of uh background here. So, um how do you approach leadership from an evolutionary perspective? And in this case, particularly from the perspective of evolutionary anthropology?

01:01 Zachary Garfield: Yeah, that's a, that's a great place to start. So leadership studies is obviously this, this huge field, you have a lot of work by scientists, economists, um the whole field of management. Um And so approaching it from an evolutionary perspective is a bit of a unique take. Uh And we attempt to really integrate all these diverse findings, all these diverse perspectives. Um Evolutionary anthropology as a sort of sub discipline of anthropology is in and of itself very multifaceted and interdisciplinary. So we're trying to integrate theories and perspectives from across the social sciences within a nat natural science framework. Um TAKING this comparative perspective, this cross cultural perspective. And so when it comes to thinking about leadership, um evolutionary anthropology thinks about how leadership is really, what's its adaptive role, what's the sort of cultural evolutionary dynamics underlying it? Um We were thinking about how leadership processes vary across different types of communities based on their economic or other cultural features. Um And it really suggests that leadership is this product of human evolutionary history. So we have some, some history that is, that is driving the processes and the variation that we see today. Uh And so what, what we use and exhibit today as a species is based on this evolutionary history. And so this is really um we see leadership as a tool and it's a tool that has an evolutionary history and it's a tool that's used to solve a particular problem. Uh And in most cases, that problem is the problem of group living or, or being in groups, existing in groups. And it might seem kind of obvious to us that, you know, we, we live in groups, that's just how life goes for a social species like us. Um And we humans like almost all primates who are obligated to social life. So we can't survive or thrive in isolation. Um But actually most mammals, about 70% of mammals do not live in groups, presumably because the cost of group living are, are so high. Um You know, in groups, we more easily spread disease, we can more easily get into conflicts over territory or mates for other resources. Um We might consume resources at a higher rate. And so if groups are going to persist, we need to overcome and offset these costs. And so leadership is one way we can organize and resolve a lot of these costs of group living and really, you know, gain the benefits from being in a group because it can be very advantageous. Uh And we're um you know, there are a lot of ways being in a group can really facilitate our individual survival in the production. We're obviously we're better protected. Uh We have helpers nearby, we have an easier time finding mates and we can work together to accomplish things that we couldn't on our own. So, effective leadership is a solution to this coordinate and motivation problem uh that groups face. And so um this perspective really emphasizes the importance of understanding leadership in the context of human adaptability and survival and across different domains of social interaction across different ecological settings.

04:09 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm But just to make one point clear because I think that is at a certain point there you mentioned uh a cultural evolutionary perspective. So when it comes to leadership, at least you in in your work approach, it not only from, let's say, uh more genetic slash biological evolutionary perspective, but you also include uh uh cultural evolutionary framework to, right. It's, I mean, it's not just about biology or perhaps some of the ways by which leadership might have evolved as an adaptation and we'll get into that later, but also about uh cultural evolutionary dynamics.

04:52 Zachary Garfield: Correct. Yes, definitely. And you know, even a lot of the, the management field is kind of found or come to this question, uh independent of any evolutionary perspective as well, the sort of question are leaders born or are leaders made. Um But clearly, it's, it's an interaction and it's a product of, of both processes. So, you know, there are physiological components that facilitates social influence. Um And, you know, some of the heritability studies have found that leadership traits, like basically every trait are heritable, you know, maybe between 40 60%. Um But yes, I am thinking about uh you know, physiological or psychological traits that facilitates influence, which could include things like physical formidability um or good decision making capacities. But also it depends on the, the social and the cultural environment that individuals are embedded within. Um And so, you know, who has uh knowledge or expertise within particular domains. Um And also the, the context in which the problems individuals are trying to solve um whether it has to do with intergroup conflict or within group operation. Um If there is some sort of um information that needs to be transmitted from one generation to the next. And so, yeah, you really need, and this is another big benefit of taking this evolutionary anthropological perspective. You need to think about both the cultural and the biological dynamics and how they're interrelated to really understand human leadership.

06:19 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm So I, I mean, this might sound like a sort of uh naive question, but I think it's an important one to address here. So when you look across different human societies and even if you're looking into other animals as models, how do you identify a leader? I mean, how do you say so that particular individual in that particular society plays a role as a leader?

06:48 Zachary Garfield: Yeah, that's an important point. And so operational leadership is really where we, we have to start. And so most of my colleagues and I think about leadership broadly and so we're defining leaders as individuals who have some disproportionate influence within a, within a group. And that's pretty basic, pretty broad definition. What we have to do then is to find the group. And so when you define the group, then you can think about is influence completely uniform or is there some variability? And if there's some variability, then you basically can identify individual leaders. And this definition is very useful because it allows us to think about the psychological, the behavioral dimensions of leadership in a very broad way. So a lot of my colleagues, maybe, for example, in, let's say, political science, if you talk about leadership, they might be thinking about people like heads of state. Um And that might be the sort of first uh uh idea that many individuals have in thinking about leaders. But from a behavioral perspective, from a psychological perspective, leadership is going on in so many different domains, not just, you know, at, at the nation level or at the group level, but anytime you have some individuals who are coming together and, and interacting together, there's likely to be variable social influence. And so this allows us to think about any type of group, um you know, a political group, a work group, um a religious group or ritual group, but also various social groups, you know, groups of kids playing are probably going to exhibit some leadership dynamics. Uh And families are probably going to exhibit some, some very obvious leadership dynamics, but probably some leadership dynamics that are central to human leadership interactions. And this is where a lot of our work has, has gone to and thinking about how leadership within the family might be shaping or have shaped the evolutionary history of our leadership psychology. So, yeah, when we think about a group of individuals, we can identify who has influence and we can do this in a variety of ways it could be, maybe based on some, some observational data it could be raised on, on peer ratings or there are a variety of ways we could get at that. Um But really in, in any group of individuals we can think about who has influence and, and that then is how we would define leadership.

09:02 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So what would be the main hypothesis out there in the particular context of evolutionary anthropology? But if you want, you can expand to other disciplines who also deal with leadership, who what that also deal with leadership? Uh What are the main hypothesis there in terms of evolutionary models to explaining the evolution of leadership?

09:30 Zachary Garfield: Well, there would be a few, I mean, I think at the foundation, we can, we would predict that leadership is going to provide some benefits to individuals and also to groups. And so the process of leadership and followership should be beneficial for both leaders and followers, at least on average over the long term. Um Now it's a difficult task for leaders to really optimize outcomes for many diverse followers. So not every follower based on every leadership interaction is going to going to benefit necessarily. Um BUT over the long term, it should be a benefit for individuals and for groups. So that would be one hypothesis that we would predict. Um WE could also make some predictions about the traits of leaders. Um YOU know, they should be individuals who are able to solve the problems that that particular leadership is, is trying to accomplish. So it, it might include um physical formidability. If, if that's important, it might include intelligence, if that's important or special knowledge. And we can also make some predictions about the functions of leadership. So if leadership is this tool to solve the problem of the group living, we can sort of retrofit and think about, you know, what are the problems groups are going to face? And obviously, that's going to include a lot of potential conflicts, uh coordinate problems. So we could predict that leaders will be, you know, resolving conflicts and trying to, to manage coordinations and so forth. So those would be a few sort of key predictions and what many of the theories have kind of focused on?

10:57 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm And is it that one hypothesis has more support than the others or not?

11:06 Zachary Garfield: Well, as I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, leadership is so diverse. So it really depends on the context in which you're, you're you're thinking about. So I wouldn't necessarily suggest that any hypothesis or theory has more support, but each sort of partitioning leadership in a in some, in some way and focusing on it in a, in a more specific uh approach. Um So all the theories that I've worked with have have some support um but they all have shortcomings as well. And so a real challenge of the field is to uh integrate and sort of synthesize and, and reshape these theories as we get more and more empirical evidence. And so that's a problem that I think, you know, just traditional management studies has faced and that all the disciplines face in that day discipline, the sort of focus of a particular discipline constrains that maybe the methodologies also the sort of the data they look at and we need many different diverse sorts of data to really understand human leadership if, if that's the goal. Um And so the evolutionary approach, I think has been somewhat successful to this point, there's still obviously much work to be done. Um But we have begun to integrate fields, you know, insights from biology and political science and psychology and so forth. So I think all of these theories have important strengths but they don't have shortcomings. And that's what some of my work has been focused on, is trying to, trying to synthesize and trying to um make some contributions by connecting some dots. And, and a lot of my colleagues in the evolutionary social sciences are doing much of the same thing.

12:42 Ricardo Lopes: Is there good enough evidence to support the idea that leadership might have evolved as an adaptation for an an evolutionary adaptation, of course.

12:55 Zachary Garfield: Um Yeah, I think there are, there is so well for one, we, we see leadership in every human society um and many social animals, although they are, you know, like I said before, they're a minority of social species. Um But a number of biologists have suggested that all social species have some sort of leadership that doesn't necessarily mean that it's an adaptation. But it, it could be uh when it comes to human or maybe even like primates leadership. Uh There are some, some cues and some hints that there might be some sort of adaptive psychology underlying it. Uh For one is the sort of dominant style of leadership where individuals have influence based on capacities to instill fear in followers or to coerce or control um individuals physically based on physical strength. Um Although it could also be social strength um based on social capacities, and we do see, you know, there's some, there's a variety of findings that suggest that, you know, even when physical formidability should be uh should not be relevant for leadership dynamics. We still see people like who are taller, having social influence or who are stronger um being chosen or preferred as leaders. So that's a hint that our psychology has this sort of uh you know, this history of this primate heritage that's shaping who we prefer as leaders. Um So yeah, if you look at different heads of states, sometimes they're, they're taller than, than, than the average height. And you, you see a variety of, there's a variety of studies that show that um physical formidability is preferred in certain contexts as well. And so that kind of suggests that, you know, we have this, this, this evolutionary history where individuals who were physically formidable, were good leaders. That could be because they were um coercive, it could be because they were good at deterring free riders. It could be because they were good in between group competition. Um But something about those traits were probably useful over a long period of evolutionary history. And it seems that our psychology today um also has those biases. So that's, that's a hint that there might be a sort of adaptive leader follower psychology underlying a lot of the sort of sociopolitical processes that we exhibit today.

15:18 Ricardo Lopes: So as you mentioned, at a certain point there, when people think about leadership and leaders, we tend to think about heads of state, political leaders, reps leaders in companies and so on. But as an anthropologist, of course, uh you're also interested in looking across different uh human societies. And also I would guess from an evolutionary perspective, the more traditional ones are very important to look into because uh both the contemporary ones and the historical ones serve at least to some extent as good models to the kinds of societies we might have evolved in during our evolutionary history. So how does the leadership look like in more traditional societies? Like for example, hunter gatherers, horticulturalists and so on?

16:10 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So we evolutionary anthropologists, you know, we do uh tend to focus on rural, more subsistence based societies. And yeah, like you pointed out they do have many characteristics in common that we tend to associate with our long term evolutionary history. Uh It's of course important to point out that, you know, none of the ethnographically observed societies or contemporary hunter gatherers or small scale societies are, are perfect um replicas of our ancient evolutionary history. Uh But they are oftentimes in some cases, they're, they're living relatively independent of state level influences. Um They may be less market integrated as well. And so that is a very unique uh circumstance and the circumstance we think does apply to our long evolutionary history. And it basically means that individuals have to, you know, the communities have to, you know, solve the problem of groups living on their own with different systems of leadership. And so you don't necessarily have uh you know, state uh processes and influences, identifying or, or mandating certain individuals be leaders or not. And so that is a very unique opportunity. And so then, yes, we can think about in more egalitarian societies. What are the contexts of leadership? Now? It tends to be a much more nuanced and context specific. And that's important to emphasize that even in all egalitarian societies, it seems that there are individuals who emerge as leaders in some context and they may not have uh strong institutional control or course of authority. Um But leadership does emerge and it also typically is not based on some inherited status or, or wealth distinctions, there's a strong cultural ethos of sharing. Um And so leadership is really fluid in these social contexts, it tends to be based on individual skills. So, you know, what are your individual capacities? How can you best benefit the group? How can you solve the problems the group is facing? And then it's often linked to very specific context or needs. Um So it might depend on um culturally valued skills uh or whatever the group is particularly facing that in that exact context.

18:25 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm uh And so you've already mentioned that in an earlier question, but just to recap and also for people to get a better understanding of how things work in these more egalitarian societies. So what exactly are the functions of leaders in these societies? Because people might just think, oh, I mean, if they are all cooperating, if the society is egalitarian, then what do they need leaders for?

18:54 Zachary Garfield: Exactly. Yeah, I think a key function that leaders in egalitarian societies are providing uh this really broad and, and probably universal is conflict resolution. Uh So you have lots of conflicts of interest. Uh And this occurs at every level of social organization, you know, you have conflicts within families, anyone who has been in a family or has kids or has partners knows that conflicts can emerge, regardless of how well integrated and cohesive. You are as a, as a sort of social unit and the same applies as you sort of scale up um in social groups, in ritual groups and, and then in larger scale kin groups, conflicts are just ubiquitous. And so you need individuals who can solve conflicts. And doing so requires having a sort of a good model of a mental model of all the individuals involved. You know, what is going to be uh an outcome that will most likely resolve this particular conflict. And that's very, it can be very difficult. It requires probably a lot of experience, knowledge, intelligence. Um And it seems that this sort of demand for conflict resolution has probably driven a lot of the other sort of status differentiation or hierarchies that we might see across the broadway societies. And we also see this function of conflict resolution in different nonhuman species as well. So there's probably a long evolutionary history of the need to resolve conflicts in social groups. So I think that's a really broad function that leaders are going to be serving. But then within different uh sort of social groups or economic groups, there's a lot of other functions as well. Um A key function from hunter gatherers has to do with subsistence. So um leading in, in hunting, for example, or in foraging, uh you know, individuals have there's informational asymmetry in the group. This is also another another phenomenon that will drive leadership emergence. So an individuals either know how to build tools or know how to hunt or know where to go to forge or to find and very important resources that's going to lead to some sort of leader follower dynamics. So yeah, things related to subsistence and resolving conflicts, I think would be what I would point to as being some of the most critical domains and where leadership emerges in egalitarian societies.

21:14 Ricardo Lopes: And so associated with that, what are then the kinds of uh psychological traits that people tend to prefer in leaders uh in this particular case, in more traditional societies. And then we can also talk about the more modern uh bigger scale societies. Of course.

21:33 Zachary Garfield: Well, we have found um in both cross cultural studies and also in some of my field work. Um THERE are a few traits that really seem to emerge as being preferred or at least common across a broad range of social contexts. And so one key trait that tends to emerge across a lot of different studies is having special knowledge or being intelligence now. And I'm kind of, I'm not gonna kind of put aside how to unpack the definition of intelligence and what that really means. Um But it seems that, you know, a lot of it's a lot of individuals, a lot of societies have some sort of endogenous cultural model that there are people who are good at making decisions that have special knowledge and that are effective at um you know, managing conversations about different topics and coming to solutions. So having this sort of cognitive capacity is seems to be really important and associated with leadership um being generous is also very important. So a lot of egalitarian societies, like I mentioned, have this strong ethos of, of sharing and individuals who are, are very prosocial uh are, are valued and respected and that sort of is a sort of feedback loop that's going to also be associated with social influence. Um The leadership isn't necessarily just this, you know, very altruistic behavior. So it can be mutually beneficial. And there are a lot of important theories to think about how, you know, leadership behavior and fellowship outcomes are should be and are mutually beneficial. But nonetheless, leaders are often also strategically nepotistic. So while they are offering some some policies or some outcomes for the group, they're able to shape those outcomes still in some way that's going to preferentially benefit themselves um or their kin. And so we have found evidence that leaders are tend to be strategically nepotistic across a wide variety of cultures. And that makes sense, you know, you are paying some cost to offer this service to the group. Um It's, it's an opportunity cost, it can be, it can be socially costly as well. And so individual leaders also need to reap some benefits uh from those investments. And we also see, not only do leaders get this sort of special status, often case is the case from prestige or other special positions, they're often getting a lot of material resources, um, and other, other, other resources that sort of offset the cost that they're, they're paying.

24:00 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. By the way, in these more traditional societies, do you find, do you usually find one single leader or could there be multiple leaders? Like, I don't know, I'm just guessing. But for example, a top hunter and a shaman, for example, could they both be leaders because they have different competences or not?

24:26 Zachary Garfield: Yes. That's exactly the case. So across a wide range of the ethnographic record, you see these sort of specialized leadership roles, um There tends to be sort of a maybe a community leader, a headman. Um There's often a term that's used or a big man and this individual tends to be someone who's sort of good at a lot of things uh widely respected probably in their sort of prime of their sort of adult years. Um BUT not necessarily an expert at any one particular thing. And they might be sort of a, a group representative. Um You know, sort of the first among equals is the phrase that's been used to apply to this position. But then you might have a military specialist if there is intergroup conflict. Um You might have a shaman as you mentioned, who is a sort of repository of, of ritual knowledge and provides a lot of other supernatural functions for the group. Um And you could have other leaders in particular domains, you could have um sort of um religious leaders or individuals who sort of are managing sort of cosmology that's passed on from one generation to the next. And in many societies and particularly more egalitarian um societies, you do have these being distinct roles where individuals, you know, different individuals are exhibiting leadership in these different domains. Um And they can be flexible too. So as maybe intergroup conflict um rises and falls, let's say over a period of time, the individual who might be this military leader, their influence will rise and fall as well. So the demands of the group will track um who has influence and to what degree. Now, what I find really interesting is that at some point, um certain societies, these different roles tend to tend to coalesce. And so if you think about like um Aztec and other uh early state level societies, you have these leaders who are the supernatural leader, also the, the military leader and the sort of sociopolitical leader as well. And so I think that's kind of an open question right now is when and how different individuals, these to be leaders and one individual sort of monopolizes these different domains. And there's some interesting work on um you know how chiefdoms emerge from a history of more, more hunter gatherer or horticultural type uh sociopolitical dynamics. Because in chiefdoms, you often do have um supernatural and economic and military force all being combined into a central role and then then really limits followers ability to sort of push back and have some bargaining power with their leader. And that seems to be an important dynamic that breaks a lot of the egalitarian dynamics and allows those, those leaders who re monopolize military, supernatural and political force to have that coercive authority that is otherwise often absent when those are distinct roles and when followers maintain a lot of, um, yeah, a lot of, um, sort of what's called reverse dominance or the ability to really push back against aggressive leadership.

27:41 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm uh Actually, I was also going to ask you about that specifically. So earlier, for example, when you also mentioned that leadership dynamics tend to be very fluid in more egalitarian societies, that also includes the possibility of particular leaders being replaced or even people just getting rid of them if for some reason, they're, they're not fulfilling their role or they try to curse or oppress people in their society, for example.

28:13 Zachary Garfield: Yes, exactly. And so, you know, a lot of egalitarian societies especially over, you know, across the ethnographic record have been highly mobile and they rely on a stochastic resource base. So, you know, whether it's hunted game or seasonal forged foods, um they could, they move around a lot and that mobility gives them a lot of freedom. And so if there is a particular, you know, up and coming domineering leader who's really trying to, to push their weights uh and getting a bit overboard individuals can break off and they can, the groups can vision and people can sort of go their own way. Um And yet in these more egalitarian societies, individuals have a lot of mechanisms to push back against, against, over really dominant leaders. And Christoph Bom, for example, has done a lot of work on this looking at uh actually evidence of what you would just what you could call assassinations effectively. Um If, if individuals are becoming too forceful, if not adhering to the sort of prosocial norms and offering benefits to followers, you know, people have access to, to spears to, to other weapons. Uh There's not a monopoly on military sort of control. So, yeah, people can, first of all usually push back. Uh OFTENTIMES they'll, you know, get elders involved, try and advise and get this individual to, you know, exhibit leadership and, you know, offer the services of leadership. But in a more prosocial, culturally um consistent way, if that doesn't work, then they can be ostracized and be punished, you know, worst case scenario, they can be uh deserted uh or in the extreme, they can be, yeah, they can be assassinated. Um So, yeah, this really holds leaders in check. Um And that is a sort of important component of leadership in these more egalitarian societies, the ability to really push back and control leaders if need be.

30:12 Ricardo Lopes: Do we have a good idea of how societies go past the threshold where leadership can accumulate so much power that it can become more coercive and hold more control over the re uh for example, a particular leader over the rest of the individuals of a particular society. Does that have anything to do with being able to accumulate more resources or some other thing?

30:43 Zachary Garfield: Well, I think it has to do partly with, there's a few things going on but it has to do partly with the resource control. So when resources then can become monopolized, um property becomes demarcated territory, becomes more individually owned, this all helps facilitate. Um YEAH, course of the emergence of coercive influence. Um And then another important component is intergroup interactions. So when there's a strong threats of intergroup violence or intergroup attacks, individuals tend to prefer a more aggressive leader. And so, you know, we can think about variety of um outcomes in, in contemporary international politics. When intergroup threat is high, people tend to prefer a more dominant leader or they're willing to sacrifice certain individual liberties for the sake of being protected. Uh And we see that in across the ethnographic record as well, um as intergroup violence may go up or down, uh individuals are willing to relinquish some of that autonomy that is so essential to egalitarian societies. Um So, yeah, I think economic specialization or development or uh the ability to monopolize resources and intergroup threats, both play a role in this emergence of more social stratification of leadership.

32:06 Ricardo Lopes: A and also you were mentioning there are more modern industrialized or post industrial societies, I guess. And i it, it's also the case that when there's, for example, social and economic instability, people tend to prefer more authoritarian leaders, for example.

32:25 Zachary Garfield: Right. Yeah, exactly. Um You know, we can think about, you know, after 911 in the US, we have these shifts in policies that people are more willing to subscribe to. You can sort of pick your favorite historical example. Um There, there are countless examples. And so um this shows that leadership is, is an important function and one of those functions is protection. Um But there's sort of a sort of a double sided coin here and that there's uh relinquishing autonomy for protection also then can lead to, to costs as those, those those leaders then have the ability to be more exploitative and um channel more resources to their own outcomes. And there's less than sort of recourse for followers to keep them in check.

33:11 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm So at this point, can we say exactly what are the universal and variable dimensions of leadership across societies?

33:23 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So, you know, in my research, I've done a lot of cross cultural work where I I leverage the ethnographic record. So the ethnographic, the ethnographic record is just the, the collection of documents that anthropologists mostly have produced over the past maybe 200 years or so. Um And so we can access this record in a very user friendly way from a researcher perspective, we can review lots of different paragraphs and texts about leadership, for example. And so I've built databases that uses this very diverse ethnographic record of, of human societies. And with my colleagues, we've, you know, coded these paragraphs and we do the statistics and um inner reliability and all these things. And so this allows us to investigate the qualities of leaders, the functions. And we've also looked at the costs and benefits of leadership for both leaders and followers. And so with this methodology, we can offer some perspective on what traits seem to be universal, meaning they, they don't vary really across different societies based on their subsistence strategy. So let's say 100 Gers compared to agriculturists or based on the sort of social context in which leadership is emerging, maybe, for example, a political leader versus a kin group leader. Uh We also look at region, you know, these societies are distributed around the globe. And we also think about um leadership, gender. There's a big bias in the epigraphic record of leadership. It's heavily male bias, but we nonetheless do have some evidence on women's leadership. And when we've done all this, we found that there are a few traits that do seem to emerge as not really varying systematically along these lines. And so I've mentioned a few of these before, but the key is um having special knowledge, being intelligent, this is widespread across societies across different contexts, uh resolving conflicts and providing various sort of social functions seems to be the key job the leaders are doing. Um And then, you know, leaders are often wealthy, which that could be, that's obviously culturally determined what that wealth is. It's not necessarily, you know, having money in the bank, but uh you know, whatever the material, uh whatever material wealth there is in the particular community, leaders seem to be high on that. Um And then they're really benefiting their family and they're being generous. So these are some of the qualities that we see that um don't systematically vary across group type uh across the system type. Um ET cetera. Mhm

35:58 Ricardo Lopes: So you mentioned one specific thing there that I would like to ask you more about. So you mentioned that uh in the ethnographic record, uh it seems that uh the overwhelming evidence is that across most societies that we know of at least uh the leaders tend to be uh men. Uh But uh I, I mean, uh be because this gets us into very contentious discussions and questions, some of them perhaps sometimes point to some sex or gender differences that might be or might not be e evolved between men and women. So, um I, I mean, do you know if that really points to some evolved biological differences between men and women or not? Or that it could be more culture uh a more culturally based uh thing?

37:00 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So there's a lot we could unpack here and there's at least, you know, two important things I would want to think about. Ok, first of all, yes, you're exactly right. You know, we, when, when we talk about community level leaders or sort of like the political leader of a group, there is a huge male bias and that seems to be the case for, um, most societies, even including highly egalitarian societies. Um, NOW, in egalitarian societies, there is more gender equality, there is more opportunity for women to have sociopolitical influence. But nonetheless, it is still biased towards men. And there's been a number of cross cultural reports um and other empirical studies that have kind of consistently found this this result. Um However, if we go back to our conversations about how we define leadership, it depends on how you define leadership to get this result. If you're talking about community level, sociopolitical leaders, that's one thing. Um But one thing that's, you know, my colleagues and I have tried to emphasize is that leadership is occurring within any social group. And so if we think about leadership within kin groups or within families, um it might be the case that women are, are exhibiting much more leadership in these types of social groups. So it could be that there's um specializations in leadership based on sort of a division of labor or a gender or a sexual division. And that maybe men are offering more leadership at the group level, uh this sort of sociopolitical, higher level and women are often offering more leadership uh within smaller groups or within family groups. That's as a hypothesis. But I think there's some evidence that has led us to, to think this way. Um Yeah, so that's, that's one component. Another thing would be that now, what are the traits of leadership or is there some, you know, physiological or biological structure or, or, or traits driving men to be sociopolitical leaders or not? Well, I think what the evidence has suggested in, in my work and some of the work of my colleagues is that it's, it's not so much that it's gender or sex is a strong predictor of leadership, but it's that uh there seems to be specializations in, in behaviors and traits and the way, the way that men and women tend to um behave in an economic system and that seems to be driving the differences that we see. So for example, when we consider gender or sex in these statistical models, we often don't find that it's a strong predictor of differences in leadership. It seems more that there's a gender division, there's a sexual division of labor and that tends to be associated with leadership at the community level. Whereas women are more often engaging in, in household economic demands and working within smaller groups. There's a few men who then are offering more of these leadership services at the group level. And so it seems to be that this bias in male leadership at the community level might just be an effect or consequence of the sexual division of labor, which might be related to a variety of other things. But, you know, economic demand, um childcare and the way our societies are, are structured as a whole. So that wouldn't suggest that there's any that suggests that there isn't any, you know, physiological or psychological differences that favor male or female leaders at the, at the community level. But there's a variety of other economic and social structures that are facilitating that, that gender bias. Um

40:39 Ricardo Lopes: So I I have two more questions about that specifically about uh differences in leadership between men and women. So when we have women leaders uh do, do their traits tend to follow along the ones that characterize uh male leaders or do they tend to be slightly different?

41:04 Zachary Garfield: Well, it's, it depends, but there is some evidence that it does tend to be slightly different. Um There's also some interesting work in interest in psychology and management. There's been a lot of work on this. Uh So women leaders, but it depends on the study. So there's basically results aren't mixed. Um But there is some evidence that women leaders do tend to be more cooper and emphasize more participatory approaches. Um But this is obviously highly variable. Um So basically, what I take from this literature is that the sort of social and cultural context really plays an important role. Um But it does seem like that men are more prone to a certain style of leadership, particularly more aggressive leadership. Um Women do tend to be more um yeah, participatory and inclusive. And you see some evidence of this even among Children. Uh THERE'S not a lot of great work on social influence and leadership among Children. There is some uh and some of this work has found that uh younger girls tend to be more prosocial or tend to use more of these mixed strategies of getting social influence. Whereas young boys tend to be a bit more uh coercive. Um So, yeah, there is some evidence that there's sort of uh different profiles of leadership based on, based on gender. Um There's also a lot of work that suggests that women do tend to be more effective in conflict resolution in different cultural contexts. Um I've done some work among the chau, they're a relatively egalitarian border horticultural group. Uh And in the chau, their cultural model is really that women are good at resolving conflicts because uh men tend to be more aggressive, tend to be more hothead. And if there's a conflict between men or between anyone and a man gets involved to try and resolve it, he's gonna bring these, these biases and this sort of uh quick, quick temper and that's going to escalate the conflict. Whereas women on the other hand, are more, more reserved or at least more, less quick to be aggressive and um that's going to be more effective at resolving inter individual conflicts. So, in, in the childhood cultural model, women are much more skilled at providing leadership services and conflict resolution. Um I I recently did a study on conflict resolution with my colleague, Luke Glowacki among Hammer, this is a rural paulist community, very patriarchal, so very different than the chau it's not an egalitarian society. Uh It's, it's very socially stratified and biased towards um basically preferring um male influence and male ownership of property and so forth. But one interesting finding from the study was we found that in inter individual conflicts between men and women, women often do emerge as conflict mediators as well. So this is sort of one signal that in this very patriarchal society where women have less sociopolitical influence and less leadership opportunities uh offering conflict resolution services was an interesting opportunity for female leadership. And so this really also suggest that conflict resolution is probably a uh an important feature of women's leadership across a wide range of societies and something we wanna look more into.

44:31 Ricardo Lopes: Great. By, by the way, let me just mention that I have an interview with Dr Luke Lo Ai on the show for people who might be interested. We talked about human warfare. Uh So one more question before we move on to another topic about uh men and women leaders. So uh do you think that it would be fair to say, then that if uh human leadership and these differences between men and women is based or stems from the sexual division of labor and the sexual division of labor itself, at least as far as I understand, it depends a lot on ecological factors, on how the society is structured uh on economic factors and even to some extent, sometimes uh cultural factors, because of course, there's also uh gender roles and gender expectations. And we know even in our more modern industrialized societies, just over the past few decades, that we have certain expectations as to the roles that women could fulfill and now those have changed. So, um I mean, is that all correct? And if so then would it be fair to say that? I mean, those sort of more uh simplistic ideas that people sometimes have that men are more fit to be leaders or to fulfill leadership roles are just because they are biologically one way and women biologically another way. And of course, I'm not dismissing here evolved differences because that might also play a role in terms of the kinds of roles that men and women tend to fulfill in different societies. But that, that idea that it's just about men and women being biologically different. And that would explain why supposedly men are better leaders is too simplistic.

46:34 Zachary Garfield: Right. Well, yes, I think that is too simplistic. I think you're, you're right in that, you know, the gender, gender divisions of labor are playing an important role and those are like you said, it's gonna be culturally and economically constructed. So it's gonna do, it's gonna vary greatly based on socio-economic context. Um But I do think there, well, we have found widespread evidence of this sort of pushback effect that has been documented by management scholars and comes, comes from psychology. This is the idea that when women exhibit this more coercive uh uh as assertive leadership, they would otherwise be lauded as strong leadership. If it was a man, uh tend to receive, you know, pushback uh their, their bossy, you know, a whole number of negative uh affect of labels, get, get applied to women when they exhibit the exact same leadership characteristics that would otherwise be respected if they were to be a man. And so we might think that that is a product of um you know, a patriarchal system or the social stratification system. But surprisingly, we found evidence of a similar effect even in the chau community I mentioned earlier, uh you know, in chau, it is very gender egalitarian. Um WHEN you, if you talk to people, you know, they, there's no evidence of really a male or female bias. Um But when we did the sort of systematic data collection on a sample of individuals who were some were leaders, some are not, we collected data on a wide range of traits, including things like being respected, being prosocial, um being aggressive, getting in fights. We found that many of the men who were in these leadership positions were, were respected but were also feared and also were known for getting invites. And it displayed a lot of qualities of both, what we might call prestige and dominance. Um Their counterparts, their female counterparts. On the other hand, uh the women were also intelligent and respected and prosocial and all these things, but they systematically were not, uh described as being feared or getting in fights. So it seemed that even among the chau, you know, the women who were, um, a bit more aggressive were not in these elected leadership positions. So that was some evidence that there's a, a sort of pushback against women when they're trying, when they use these more assertive social strategies. Um Now what that means for, uh, our, our deep psychological biases. I, I'm, I'm less, I'm less sure. Um, BUT it does seem that there's, there's evidence that there's this sort of pushback against this aggressive female leadership in, in different contexts.

49:20 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's also very complicated to disentangle all of these things, biology and culture. And, uh, I mean, we have these average evolved sex differences and, uh o of course, people in human societies also take notice of that and that's perhaps one of the places where uh gender stereotypes stem from. But then, I mean, sometimes they get, uh they become part of culture and they get transmitted as such and then they can change over time in different conditions. But it's really, I guess it would be fair to say that it's really hard to disentangle many times what's bio, what's more biologically based or more culturally based or, or contextually based, even based on, for example, ecological factors and so on.

50:17 Zachary Garfield: Yes. Exactly. They're, they're very endogenous. They're strongly interrelated. There's lots of interaction effects. And so yeah, disentangling them is even um not even always necessarily the best question to be asking too. We can think about how and why different contexts are supporting different uh preferences in leadership and how that relates to gender. Um But yeah, it's very difficult to, to disentangle effectively.

50:40 Ricardo Lopes: And so another uh topic that I would like to explore with you here today is reputation and I guess that will also tie to some extent to leadership. So what is reputation in human societies?

50:56 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So reputation, especially in egalitarian societies is sort of essential for becoming a leader. So it's, it was interesting to think about how that ties in the social influence. Um We typically define reputation as the sort of collective judgments of an individual social value um which is gonna be shaped by their behavior, their achievements and their contributions to their communities. And so it's not just the measure of what people think about an individual, but it's this sort of aggregation of beliefs and opinions and perceptions that define how an individual is viewed in terms of their, their character and their abilities and their overall worth to the group. Um So like we've been talking about it's gonna be very uh driven by social context, cultural context. So at its core reputation reflects how an individual's actions are aligning with the cultural norms and values of their society. So it could include domains like your moral character, but also things like competence and social skills, specific talents. Um You know, maybe being an adept hunter or skilled mediator might be important domains of reputation, thinking about what we've talked about so far. Um But the diversity in all these domains really highlights the fact that reputation isn't just a sort of monolithic construct, but it, it really varies depending upon um, the cultural context and societal structure.

52:28 Ricardo Lopes: And are there different domains of reputation?

52:33 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So that's an interesting question. I think, I mean, the obvious answer is yes, you know, we can have domains and we can have reputation in many different domains as, as a, as a parents, as a sibling. Um, IN your line of work in your hobbies and so forth. Uh But I think the, the interesting question though, is how many domains are there or when are there more or when are there less domains? Um And this, we can think about personality in a, in a similar way, for example, um Ricardo, you have a great reputation as being this exceptional podcast host. Um But to have that reputation, obviously, your social and economic context has to have podcasts. You can't have a reputation as being a great podcast host if you don't have podcasts. And so the opportunity for reputation is partly driven by, you know, the socio-economic context in which you are embedded in. Um, AND there's a, there's a line of thinking that suggests that as sort of our social and political systems are expanding in um in their component parts that creates more opportunity for reputations um to be uh to, to emerge. And so it can include a wide range of different sort of professional specializations, economic and political specializations and these are gonna be influenced and, and change over time. And so we can think about, we might think that, you know, the agricultural societies, for example, might value different qualities compared to hunter gatherer societies. Um SOCIETIES that engage in intergroup conflict might value different qualities than those which have less uh experience with intergroup conflict. So we really think about how uh cultural ecology is shaping the the range of reputations that are in a society. And if we go back to the the gender roles, we've been talking about um you know, different individuals based on gender might have different tasks or different challenges that they need to meet and therefore have different reputation domains. Um A key reputation, a key domain of reputation for women is often motherhood. Um Sarah H he's talked a lot about this. You see it in a lot of the work on female leadership. Um BEING a good mother, having successfully raised Children who, you know, have made it and sort of are successful members of the community that is usually a huge component of a female reputation in more subsistence based societies.

55:02 Ricardo Lopes: And so if there are different domains of reputation and some of those domains are highly specialized, particularly in our more bigger scale societies. Uh Does that point to um uh a bigger number of human hierarchies? I mean, what I mean by this is so you can be, for example, the best footballer in the world but but not the best at uh anything else or you might be the richest man in the world but not really competent in this or that different domain or the more competent political leader, the more competent podcast or whatever. So uh I I mean, o of course, then you might be the more competent uh something but not uh the people at the top in terms of the socio-economic hierarchy. But what I'm trying to ask you basically is uh does that uh complicate the way we understand the hierarchy in human societies? Because I guess that there are different in issues of hierarchy,

56:12 Zachary Garfield: right? Yeah, it very much does complicate. I think the way we can think about hierarchy, you know, we want to, you know, just even from a scientific or empirical perspective, have sort of a, a linear hierarchy where we can sort of think about and maybe a two dimensional framework, individuals are high or low and some metric, maybe we want to call it status. Um But like you point out that there are many different niches and groups that individuals are embedded in. So while it might be useful to think about sort of a, a sort of pyramid as the way to represent hierarchy, there's there's less space at the top. A few individuals are at the top. Most individuals are in the middle, at the bottom. I think we can think about this in the maybe like a three dimensional way where there are many different pyramids at many different axes. And like you pointed out, you might be high on one or a few but low on others. And we, I think we probably have some sort of uh psychology helping us decide how we are going to pursue status and what sort of reputations we are going to invest in pursuing. We all have to make these decisions. Some are probably made consciously so probably made subconsciously. But over the course of our development, we're I think all searching for domains in which we can compete for status and where we can develop strong reputations. But we have to make trade offs, you know, you can pursue academics and that might, you know, trade off uh with you know, maybe your, your uh physical fitness if you need to invest your time in only one domain or another. Um And so we are embedded in all these different social groups and we have higher and lower status and reputations and all these different domains. Um And then individuals who are exceptionally high status tend to probably be high on a few of them. Um And so, yeah, we can think about these different sort of pyramids at all, these different axes in which we are, we are constantly um embedded in our, in our status is also dynamic. It's not just fixed over time. So it is very complicated. And that's uh yes, that's why it's a really interesting topic to study.

58:15 Ricardo Lopes: And also to some extent, it provides you with many different avenues for you to acquire a social reputation and be successful, right? Because you might be, I don't know, one of the best academics in your particular field, but not be necessarily rich or have very high socio-economic status. But that's particularly from an evolutionary perspective, good enough because it grants you access to good enough social reputation to do good enough resources and so on for you to be evolutionarily successful and perhaps successful in some other regards.

59:00 Zachary Garfield: Right. Exactly. And I think it also has a lot of implications in terms of how we structure our social networks. Um INDIVIDUALS who are, you know, high in social status often are associated with other high status individuals, but it can be good to have a diverse social network. Um So we all kind of can understand this in your, in your social groups or your um professional groups. It's going to have a diversity of individuals who you can rely on, who can help you buffer risk, who can help you solve problems. And so you want to have a variety of, of high status individuals, but basically that, that diversity offers you a benefit because it allows you to buffer different, different costs that you're going to incur.

59:40 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And so to get into the last topic of our conversation today, let's talk a little bit more about conflict resolution. You've already mentioned that when we talked about it being one of the functions of leaders in smaller scale societies, but I guess in our and also bigger scale society. So, but what is conflict resolution more generally? And when we talk about conflict resolution, what different kinds of conflict uh might we need to resolve in human societies?

1:00:14 Zachary Garfield: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, conflict resolution is effectively, you know, these, these methods, these processes that individuals use to facilitate the peaceful ending of of some conflict. Um We can think about all different types of conflict. You know, evolutionary scientists are gonna be well aware of things like parent offspring conflict. Um So that shows that, you know, from day one, there's conflict even not necessarily at a, at a conscious level, but just uh uh preferences for resources or for, for, for status. Um And then, yeah, we are gonna have conflicts with everyone. We're involved with our, our siblings, our parents, our friends. Uh THIS involves this is gonna emerge when there's any sort of um disputes. Um And so I think, yeah, effective conflict resolution is going to involve some sort of process of negotiation or mediation or dialogue um to achieve these mutual acceptable agreements. Now, that's in a more informal context. Now, of course, there's conflict resolution can also take the form of a police officer coming to a scene and, and you know, giving a ticket and saying, ok, you're at fault here, you're the one that ran the red lights in this traffic accident. So you are going to have to, to pay for the the solution. Um But on a more inter individual level, uh it's gonna be much more, more nuanced and difficult and that's when this sort of conflict resolution service is gonna become much more important to, to solve these disputes. And that's going to involve understanding the root cause of the conflict probably and finding some way to resolve them that are acceptable to both parties and in more smaller scale social context, which could be uh you know, it could be a small scale society or it could be a smaller scale, you know, maybe professional group. It's very important that the individuals who are in conflict come back together and maintain some sort of social relationship because uh our social groups, our, our communities, our family groups are really dependent upon that interdependence. Um And if conflicts stand to break down that interdependence, that's a problem, not just for the individuals who are in conflict, but for everyone in that social group. And so it seems like leadership in more smaller scale, more face to face context is really focused on, you're not identifying someone who is at fault and someone needs to pay a fine or someone should say I'm sorry or something like that. But the key outcome is that the individuals who are in conflict uh resolve that conflict and restore uh their die cooper operation and basically find a way to move forward in a way that is gonna allow them to be good cooper partners. So that seems to be a sort of key outcome of conflict resolution uh either in small scale societies or in just more face to face social dynamics.

1:03:12 Ricardo Lopes: A and the very important thing here for people to understand is that we are basically participating in conflict resolution all the time. I mean, in our own families, our own communities and other smaller scale contexts, right? Because since we live now in societies where we are used to having, for example, legal systems in place and police to come um and resolve particular kinds of conflicts. Because of course, we don't know uh everyone around us and so we can't really keep everyone in check or negotiate with them. So we need something like police in our bigger scale societies. But it's something that is pretty much ubiquitous across societies and across different social contexts.

1:04:03 Zachary Garfield: Right? And now it's important to point out too, there are other, more, let's say institutional mechanisms to resolve conflicts as well. Um And that can be really useful to sort of detach the conflict resolution from a particular individual. So you have things like um different sort of supernatural mechanisms to identify who is at fault and who's not even in hunter gatherer societies. Um But then those become, I think much more elaborated uh as societies become larger and have more interconnected parts. But so when we have individuals resolving conflicts and when we have more institutional conflict resolution is an interesting question. But then the individuals who typically are able to offer these conflict resolution services tend to be people who have good social supports, uh who are known for their decision making capacities. Um I'm reanalyzing some of my data from uh the child right now. And one thing I found is that a good predictor of conflict resolution is not necessarily being high on dominance or high on prestige, these other important dimensions of leadership, it's really being high on good decision making capacities um and intelligence. So that suggests that conflict resolution is really, it's a, it's a difficult, it's a cognitively demanding task to analyze a conflict, understand the individuals involved and propose some outcome that's going to be mutually acceptable by both individuals. So it's not so much just being respected or being feared, but it's this important sort of socio cognitive capacity that I think really allows conflict resolution by individuals to be effective,

1:05:44 Ricardo Lopes: but for it to be effective, I mean, those threats have to be recognized in the particular individual that's going to play a role in conflict resolution by both parties that are part of the conflict, right? I mean, it has to be someone that people know as those traits and that they respect as someone that will be able to play a role in resolving that particular kind of conflict.

1:06:12 Zachary Garfield: Right. Exactly. And this is where reputation plays an important role in helping broadcast and identify individuals who possess those capacities.

1:06:21 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh, AND so, uh, I mean, are there different ways of resolving conflict and do they vary across societies?

1:06:33 Zachary Garfield: Um, YEAH, there are. So we kind of touch on this a little bit. Um, YOU know, it can involve discussion. Um, THERE'S a lot of consensus decision making that happens a lot of conflict resolution in 100 gatherers, but also in pastoralists based on my experiences and ethnography. I've read will involve a sort of gathering of respected individuals for a council and they'll resolve and that they'll discuss and debate and eventually come to some, they'll determine, you know, who is at fault and what should happen. And, you know, maybe one individual who was in dispute might not be super happy with the outcome, but it's a consensus, it's a large number of individuals and there's really no choice but for them to accept it. And so they basically have to accept that outcome to, to move forward and to basically, to continue to get along with other people in their society. So it can be basically this system. Um uh So that's kind of one way sort of council of elders or council of respective individuals. It can also be just one individual who might come, who might be around to resolve the conflict. Uh Also, uh the individuals in conflict might nominate or find an individual to advocate on their behalf, that sort of evokes a sort of sort of court of law type of system. Um But we see this in the pastor, this context, individuals might nominate their bond friend, which is someone who has a special sort of formalized social connection to them. And then these two individuals who are not unbiased because they are socially connected to the person in conflict but not directly involved in the conflict, they might then discuss and negotiate and, and find some system of some resolution. So those are ways in which individuals can resolve conflicts. Uh But we also talked about other more institutional systems as well. Uh The oracle bones is one sort of famous example from, from history from Ancient China, uh where there's these bones um that are, that are used in different um different contexts, sometimes they're burnt or, or other, other processes are applied to them. And then based on the, the cracks or the the patterns in the bones, someone who has expertise to do this can sort of uh um sort of discern some outcome based on, based on the social context. So it disassociates the decision from an individual and it makes the individuals in conflict more sort of bound to accept the outcome. And we see other examples of this across a wide range of societies. Um THE poison oracles. Another example from many hunter gatherer societies that typically involves uh either an individual or a chicken taking some poison and then whether it survives or dies is gonna be associated with a particular outcome. And then that's going to be sort of uh the final word when it comes to this particular outcome. So these are sort of social technologies that are going to, yeah, allow an individual practitioner to intervene, who's ideally un unbiased and to use this sort of external system that is maybe relatively random or in many cases uh to then apply some outcome. And on the whole over time, it should hopefully resolve conflicts in the interests of most individuals or at least allow individuals to come back and restore that cooper relationship and accept whatever some other uh outcome has has been.

1:10:10 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And so I guess that you've already touched more or less directly on this point. But I guess that one of the things that whenever people are resolving conflicts appeal to or rely on a lot would be social norms. Right. I mean, whether it's a particular individual, a high status individual with high reputation that comes in and tries to mediate the conflict resolution between both parties or if more or if it's of a collective decision and it's basically the entire community coming together to resolve the conflict. One of the things that people usually appeal to is social norms, uh shared values. Uh uh BECAUSE many times the way people resolve conflict is trying to decide who among both parties perhaps violated a particular social norm or something like that.

1:11:10 Zachary Garfield: Right. Yes, exactly. So if there's a norm that should identify, you know, who has transgressed that norm and, and who is responsible, um because it gets muddy when there are, you know, one conflict may lead to another and then sort of disentangling fault can be quite challenging. And so, and some of the reports I got collecting data from the hammer on conflict resolution. You know, there might be, you know, someone didn't keep their fence quite secure, so someone else's goat got in the field. Um BUT then maybe someone else like got upset at that person's goat and then maybe you violated some other social norm by you slandering them or saying things they shouldn't have said. So then it just becomes this, this mess. Um, BECAUSE there's lots of different, there's many different causes of fault all embedded in, in really what you, I think it was one conflict. Um, AND so that's when someone who really, uh, can peacefully and calmly understand both individuals perspectives and the norms that may or may not have been violated, uh, can help resolve that conflict. But, yeah, you're exactly right that um conflicts are often driven by social norms because there are violations of norms.

1:12:23 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I, I wanted to touch on that point because, uh I mean, I guess that when it comes to conflict resolution and als also many other ways we establish relationships with other people, we most of the time rely on arguments on things that are convincing to other people and in this particular case, social norm, shared values and so on, it tend to be very convincing.

1:12:50 Zachary Garfield: Right. Yes, exactly. So, um this is the sort of the, the law of the land, so to speak in any particular community. What is it that we, we agree on? And, and those are really indisputable. Now, there's variation in interpretation and individuals are trying to manipulate or, you know, use those norms to their advantage. Uh But ultimately, there's a, something is a norm was violated or not or this is a norm or it isn't. And when it comes to that interpretation, it's typically relying on, you know, the the body of the collective body of knowledge, you know, in the, in this case, it's usually elders who are the sort of authorities on what is the right way. Um And yeah, so by being a member of that social group, you're sort of uh consenting to comply with a set of social norms and those norms are often very difficult. And so some other work of mine is looking at how those norms are transmitted from one generation to the next. And it seems like these, you know, really opaque social norms for how to behave, you know, when should you defer to an elder or not or you know, what are the, the sort of way to behave in very nuanced situations? Um Even if you think about greetings, you know, greetings are sometimes ambiguous and hard, you know, should I, should I stand up and meet, talk to this person? Should I shake your hand? Should I not? Should we hug? Should we not? There's a lot of variation in what is the, the best in the appropriate social norm in a particular context. And it seems like, you know, particular leaders who are informed and have the opportunity and platform to, to teach these norms are very active in their teaching. And so in order to be successful in a cultural context, you have to learn these norms and learning these norms requires teaching. So I think this is a good example of how you know, individual capacities and social norms uh work together in a sort of cultural evolutionary process to allow individuals to exhibit proper behavior and, and be successful in their social groups.

1:14:52 Ricardo Lopes: By the way, when it comes to leaders, and this will be my last question. Uh EARLIER, we've talked about men and women, but there's perhaps one more demographic aspect that I would like to ask you about. So those leadership tend to correlate with age. So, I mean, I would imagine that people need enough time to become leaders to acquire the necessary competences. Uh I mean, I, I if it's, for example, becoming the best hunter, they need enough time to develop their hunting skills if it's becoming a sham and they need to acquire enough knowledge to get to that point and so on. But then I would imagine that after a certain point as they get older, as they become, as they become weaker, as their bodies become frail and as they experience cognitive decline as well, that perhaps, uh uh I mean, their leadership or the, uh they would be put out of their leadership positions because they are no longer respected as such or something like that, right? I, I mean, is, is this a correct view of things or?

1:16:05 Zachary Garfield: Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. And so this kind of comes back to what are more of the, the variable dimensions of leadership because uh age is one of the measures that we found in the cross cultural data that was variable. And we did find that age was more associated with being a leader of kin groups. And that probably is because in kin groups, a lot of the conflict resolute, a lot of the leadership is conflict resolution. And it's these old individuals who really know everyone and understand different individuals, states of mind and priorities um and biases and are able to offer either counsel or advice, um resolve conflicts and so forth. So I think age plays an important role in, in that ty that type of leadership. Um Yeah, I think you're right in that it requires some expertise and there's a expertise and age and experience are endogenous. So whether it's experience or age, it's obviously a little, it's obviously a mix of both. Um So age is often playing a role in that regard. It requires time to develop the capacities and the knowledge. Um But yeah, it does decline, but it's interesting. It, it does and it doesn't, I, I think of one example when I was working with the chau, there was the the oldest man. He was probably in his early nineties when I was doing some of my field work. And he had been, you know, this legendary guy. He had been an amazing hunter when he was younger. He had been captured by slave Raiders and had escapes. Uh YOU know, all of his sons were the high set guys in the group and he was just revered and respected. He was obviously way past his prime. He could barely see anymore. You know, he walked around, he got around quite well, but it still was a bit of a challenge and he had these, this way of telling stories that was really kind of comical and funny because he was from a different generation, a different era. And so the younger people really kind of saw him in a kind of a comical way. Um But at the same time, they respected him. So he had certainly lost uh sort of social influence. He wasn't involved in resolving conflicts or organizing uh collective actions or really doing anything related to leadership at all, even though let's say maybe 2030 40 years ago, he would have been, but he was still very respected. So I think he certainly had lost some component of that sort of day to day leadership behaviors, but he still had a very important place in society. So I think this kind of gets back to something we mentioned earlier in that there are all these different sort of axes of social status or social influence and some are gonna decline and, and limit your ability to be a leader or have influence. Uh But some might be more robust. Uh AND they might just change over time. And there's a very important developmental process of leadership which I think you, you touched on quite well. Uh SOME of this based on capacities and skills as those decline, that influence will decline as well. But other is based on social value that, that may not decline. And um I think some of that is gonna be robust to the, you know, the process of senescence while others are not.

1:19:13 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So would you like to tell us what kind of things you're working on at the moment and you will be working on in the near future?

1:19:24 Zachary Garfield: Yeah, thanks. I mean, I'm working really heavily with my colleague, Lolo Ay, who we might talk about earlier. We're collecting data from a number of different pastoral communities in Southwest Ethiopia to really track how transitions in their economic and political structures are related to other features of their culture and health outcomes. So, we've been doing a lot of field work among among hammer communities and other pastoralist communities in Southwest Ethiopia. Um And then sort of on a more theoretical level. I'm working on a few different ideas about how um teaching and leadership are co evolving and driving human co-operation. That's one project. Another project I'm working on is looking at the different forms of capital that are associated with leadership. Um We've kind of touched on some of this, that's something I'm working on now. And um we're also working on a long term social networks project where we're looking at between group, social relationships between group friendships in the OMO Valley in Ethiopia and how uh these relationships across cultural groups are being used to buffer risk or not and sort of how they're, how they're driving uh the sort of social, social structures of different societies. Um So those are a few things. I'm, I'm working on at the moment

1:20:43 Ricardo Lopes: and if people are interested, where can they find you when you work on the internet?

1:20:49 Zachary Garfield: Yeah. So you can find me on math on Twitter blue sky there. Um You can also check out our website uh the Omo Valley research project.org. So in addition to doing our, our anthropological scientific work, uh Luke and I are also heavily active in a sort of a philanthropic component. So we're always looking for um individual donations. We're able to use this money to support the education of rural students. So there are a few individuals who have come from these rural pastoralist villages who have finished high school and they're often really interested in going to university to often study things like be science or, or medicine or business. Um You know, they want to help their communities in any way they can. And so we identify these individuals, we have a grants committee. Um AND then we're able to fund their education. So that's been really rewarding and exciting to, you know, see these kids who have come from, you know, rural villages, uh kind of progress and, and go through and pursue education. So, yeah, you can check us out um on the oval research project.org to, to learn more about that.

1:21:58 Ricardo Lopes: So I will be leaving links to all of that in the description box of this interview. And Doctor Garfield, thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you and hopefully somewhere in the future, we might have another conversation because I really love the work you're doing.

1:22:16 Zachary Garfield: Thank you so much, Ricardo. Thank you for all your work to promote um human evolutionary, social science across such a, a broad audience. I really appreciate it and it's a great service for, for our communities.

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