Charisma and Hunting

let's go stag

Charisma may have evolved as a way for hunters to judge who they could trust to coordinate hunts of large animals. (Grabo et. al., 2017—abstract.)

It was the philosopher Rousseau who first described a coordination problem, now commonly referred to as the Stag-Hunt game, which provides a possible model for the evolution of charismatic leadership. In his “Discourse on Inequality,” Rousseau describes a situation in which two (or more) players have decided to hunt a stag, which requires them to cooperate. Unlike the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which the rational choice is to defect, in the Stag Hunt the rational choice is for players to coordinate with each other (whether it is hunting the hare or the stag).

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It is precisely this role – helping individual agents move from the Hare equilibrium to the Stag equilibrium – which we propose has ultimately led to the selection of charismatic leadership in human societies

The charismatic leader is the one who others will follow on the hunt.

More accura…