New study finds an evolutionary link between leadership and risk-taking behavior

People with leadership responsibilities rated themselves as more willing to take risks than people without those roles. A similar association appeared among chimpanzees, whose higher-ranking group members received higher risk-taking ratings from caregivers. The parallel raises a question about whether an appetite for uncertainty has long influenced who gains social standing.

A team led by Lou Marie Haux at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development examined that possibility in The Leadership Quarterly. The study combined German household survey records with assessments from chimpanzee sanctuaries in Uganda and Kenya. It found associations across species, without establishing that risk-taking causes individuals to become leaders.

The human analysis drew on 40,127 participants in Germany’s Socio-Economic Panel, a long-running household study. Together, they contributed 153,430 annual observations between 2015 and 2020. Participants ranged from 18 to 105 years old, and 20,904 were women. Forty-four respondents without a valid risk-preference response were excluded from the outcome models.

Respondents rated their general willingness to take risks on a scale from zero to 10. They also reported whether they currently held a leadership position and provided information about earned income. These were reports of general attitudes and occupational circumstances, rather than observations of particular risky workplace decisions.

Researchers grouped people according to whether they never reported leadership, reported it during some years or held a role throughout all six years. The last group averaged 6.2 on the risk scale, compared with 4.96 among those who never reported leadership. This comparison describes differences between groups, not a change caused by promotion.

The analysis accounted for age and gender when examining the human associations. People with higher average income also reported greater risk tolerance, although income was analyzed separately from leadership status. More than a third of annual income observations were missing. People with no usable income record were grouped with those reporting zero income.

The chimpanzee sample included 49 animals at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda and 37 at Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya. The animals ranged from two to 40 years old, and 47 were female. They lived in three mixed-sex social groups across the two sanctuaries.

Seventeen caregivers rated the animals’ willingness to take risks. Their experience with the chimpanzees typically extended across many years, providing familiarity with behavior beyond a single encounter. Ratings covered foraging, encounters with snakes, leaving territory, competition for rank, interactions with human strangers and overall risk-taking.

The researchers combined these assessments into risk-preference scores. Ten caregivers also assessed the chimpanzees’ positions within their group hierarchies, using group discussion or pooled individual rankings. Agreement among caregivers was high, supporting consistency in the assessments without making them direct measurements of every animal’s behavior.

Higher-ranking chimpanzees received higher risk-taking ratings, and the pattern appeared across most assessed domains. Willingness to trust strangers was an exception. The distinction suggests that social trust should not automatically be treated as interchangeable with other forms of risk tolerance.

This part of the analysis relied on ratings rather than experimentally altering the risks the animals faced. Such assessments can summarize behavior across many situations, although caregivers’ impressions may influence the scores. High agreement among observers therefore supports reliability without settling every question about what the ratings measure.

The association between status and risk preference appeared stronger among chimpanzees than among humans. Researchers standardized risk scores within each species to express differences relative to each sample. That procedure helps compare statistical patterns, but it does not make the underlying questionnaires or social roles equivalent.

Humans described their own risk preferences, while caregivers described the chimpanzees. Workplace leadership and monthly earnings also differ from dominance rank in an animal group. The authors explicitly treat these measures as species-appropriate proxies for leadership-related social position, rather than identical measures of leadership itself.

Average risk preference was higher among males than females in both samples. However, the models did not detect evidence that the association between leadership-related status and risk preference differed by sex or gender. This distinction concerns the relationship between two measures, not a finding that all groups had the same average attitudes.

The study also did not test whether risk-tolerant individuals made better decisions or led more effectively. Holding a position, influencing group movements and producing good outcomes are different questions. An association with status therefore cannot establish the value of taking a particular risk.

The repeated human observations allowed a closer look at people whose leadership status changed. An exploratory analysis included 1,300 participants who reported both leadership and non-leadership periods. They contributed 6,611 annual observations, enabling comparisons within the same individuals rather than only between different people.

Their reported risk preferences did not clearly shift with leadership status. The estimated association was close to zero, with uncertainty spanning a small negative to a small positive effect. This pattern fits relatively stable individual differences better than a clear increase in general risk tolerance after entering leadership.

However, stability does not prove that risk-taking selected people into those positions. The analysis was not an experiment assigning leadership roles, nor did it establish a causal effect of earlier risk preference on later appointment. Other characteristics could influence both an individual’s reported risk tolerance and their opportunities to gain status.

The same questions remain harder to address in the chimpanzee data. The study lacked longitudinal information tracing changes in individual risk preference alongside changes in rank. Repeated observations and behavioral tests would help distinguish whether risk tolerance precedes higher status, follows it or shares other underlying influences.

Haux and colleagues suggest that competition and uncertain environments could have favored risk-taking among individuals seeking or maintaining influence. Finding related patterns in humans and chimpanzees makes that possibility worth investigating. It does not demonstrate that their common ancestor had the same relationship or that a single adaptation explains both species.

The weaker human association also invites several interpretations. Education, professional credentials, inheritance and institutional rules provide routes to influence that differ from direct competition within chimpanzee hierarchies. The authors propose that such mechanisms could loosen the connection between risk-taking and leadership, but the study did not directly test that explanation.

The samples place further limits on generalization. Human participants came from one country, while sanctuary chimpanzees may differ from wild populations because of their environments and earlier experiences. Broader comparisons would need to account for different forms of human authority and variation among chimpanzee communities.

Bonobos offer another important comparison because they are also among humans’ closest living relatives and have different social dynamics. The researchers propose investigating how risk preference relates to rank in that species. Establishing whether similar relationships persist across species, settings and time would strengthen efforts to reconstruct the evolutionary history behind the association.

These resources combine recent primate research with foundational studies of social status and the measurement of risk preferences.

Leadership Under Risk: Male Vervet Monkeys' (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) Roles in Group Progression Across Potentially High-Risk Terrain
Field observations examine which monkeys lead crossings through potentially risky terrain, illustrating how leadership behavior depends on social and ecological context. (Ethology, June 2026)

Personality traits, rank attainment, and siring success throughout the lives of male chimpanzees of Gombe National Park
This study connects personality assessments with long-term records of rank and reproduction in wild chimpanzees, complementing the sanctuary-based comparison. (PeerJ, April 2023)

Chimpanzee and Human Risk Preferences Show Key Similarities
Earlier work by members of the research team combined caregiver ratings with behavioral experiments to investigate chimpanzee risk preferences across different measures. (Psychological Science, January 2023)

Research findings are available online in the journal The Leadership Quarterly.

The original story "New study finds an evolutionary link between leadership and risk-taking behavior" is published in The Brighter Side of News.

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