Selected answers this enormous question by exploring how and why leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years. This unique approach leads the authors to present a bold and compelling new ?mismatch hypothesis?: the slowness of evolution means there is a crucial difference between modern ideas of leadership and the kind that our Stone Age brains are still wired for. We operate, at home and at work, as if we were still on the savannah.
Through fascinating examples drawn from politics, business, sport and beyond, across continents and cultures, eminent professor of psychology Mark van Vugt and leading science journalist Anjana Ahuja reveal the hidden importance of our evolutionary history. It explains why we like it when the boss asks after our kids, why Americans voted for Obama, why great footballers usually fail as managers, and how clever followers can control bad leaders.
Selected is the first book to explore how the evolution of leadership ? and followership ? affects us all, and, by doing so, it provides deep, practical insight into our personal and professional lives.
About the Authors
Mark van Vugt is Professor of Psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is Research Fellow at the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at the University of Kent. He obtained his PhD in 1996 from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. His research has been published in all the major science journals in the field and he is a regular contributor to the popular science media. He was chief editor of Cooperation in Modern Society (Routledge, 2000) and co-author of Applying Social Psychology (Sage, 2007). He is a fellow of the British Academy Centenary Project, ?Lucy to Language?, and currently serves as associate editor of the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He lives with his family near Amsterdam.
To find out more about Mark van Vugt, please visit www.professormarkvanvugt.com ? or to contact him about his work, email m.van.vugt@psy.vu.nl
Anjana Ahuja earned a PhD in space physics at Imperial College in London. She then worked at The Times for sixteen years as a feature writer and columnist, and first introduced Mark?s work to a wider audience through her comment column. She has held advisory posts at the Royal Society, the British Science Association and the British Council. Now freelance, she lives in London.
