There may exist distrust and other pre disposition behavior towards certain leaders. These forms of behavior are often perpetuated by certain aspects of expectation amongst the people around some individuals. Thus there are positive and negative ambitions. In negative ambitions, individuals talk of ambitions, arguments that trigger mistrusts and loss resulting to behavioral responses to the authoritative decisions. This argument explains how people would likely behave towards certain individuals such as politicians especially where gender is preferred.
There are some traits that have been seen as set back to political leaders despite the numerous admirable qualities that are often exhibited by other leaders. Qualities such as respect, respect and strong leadership are among those often admired in several leaders. However, being power hungry is always a precursor to lack of trust and impose a lot of judgment on a leader. This explains why leaders go extra miles to avoid situations that would make them considered non trustworthy. They get into a situation of not being able to hold powerful and high offices if they are perceived as power hungry and self-interested individuals, as such politicians try to exhibit positive images of themselves.
Research has proved that human are the exact example of power hungry and domineering leaders. For example, as Hibbing and Alford explains, people are able to respond immediately and negatively to decisions made by the decision makers who are believed to be power hungry.
Importantly, people are willing to act on these negative assessments even if doing so exerts individual costs. Anthropologists confirm that aversion to power seeking in leaders is an innate, universal human behavioral predisposition. "Upstartism" or "big man" behavior.
Others argue that “anti-big man” thesis does not mean that the leaders are not accepted but just particular type of leaders with specific traits may be discarded in a specific societal expectations. Leaders who use their opportunities to explore issues of collective interest and not personal gains are always welcomed in the society. Such kind of leaders serve the purpose of ensuring the continuum of good leadership that provide solution to the problems and are often committed to group problems. It is not only the ambition that shapes the political leaders but also group interest and not crave for the power. It thus calls for self-serving decisions making leaders to be involved in the big political decision making process.
The negative implications often have implications that in most cases have been identified but have never been explored. Male counterparts tend to be certain behavioral that are never addressed as part of theory. Female’s role in the male dominated society has never been defined in most cases. The dominance by the males shows how strong the male are biased. However, women are less concerned with the rivalry and status seeking and often keep checking on male behavior and in most cases, after certain period, female like male get involved in the rudeness men exhibit. Gender stereotypes are used to evaluate the traits of the political decision making process. Thus there is gender indifference in behavior as leaders respond to various styles of leadership. Thus given, nature and nurture share the same belief that physical aggressiveness, risk tolerance and status oriented towards dominancy and hierarchies are as a result of high probability of a big man, a leader with negative ambition that in most cases is a male leader. Innate anti-big-man predisposition makes evolutionary sense as the author puts it since it serves the purpose of producing good leaders whose competent is mainly based on the collective action problem solving with a group interest commitment and often discourage bad leaders. This I believe are leaders who put the group interests higher than the individual egocentric gain and are are more focused on the communal goals and are less in crave for power.
Work Cited.
Larimer W. Christopher, Hannagan J. Rebecca J. & Smith B. Kevin Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 614, The Biology of Political Behavior (Nov., 2007). Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
