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Leadership is an adaptive mechanism for facilitating social coordination in managing various environmental risks (e.g., war, infectious disease, resource acquisition). Why then are there differences between societies and organizations in prevailing norms about what constitutes good leadership? Here we test an evolutionarily-informed theory, proposing that both social and ecological risk factors favor the norm of a strong leader. Our prior work has found evidence that in culturally tighter societies, characterized by stricter social norms and punitive sentiments, the strong leader norm (SLN) prevails. Importantly, this trend is exacerbated in tighter societies with a locally male-biased sex ratio. In this experiment, we want to further explore the interactive effect of cultural tightness and sex ratio on the SLN by manipulating cultural tightness and sex ratio.

In this experiment, we want to replicate the results of our previous study: participants in the imbalanced sex ratio conditions will have a greater wish for a strong leader and preference for a dominant-looking leader. Further, we want to explore the mediating role of perceived threats and competition.

Pinyin is an alphabetic script that denotes pronunciations of Chinese characters. Studies have shown that Pinyin instruction enhances both phonological awareness (e.g., Shu et al., Developmental Science, 2008, 11, 171–181) and character reading (e.g., Lin et al., Psychological Science, 2010, 21, 1117–1122) in Chinese children. In the present study, we provided a 3‐week Pinyin intervention with a computer‐based Pinyin GraphoGame to disadvantaged migrant children with poor Pinyin skills. A total of 252 first graders who were children of migrant workers in a large Chinese city were assessed to identify poor Pinyin readers. Fifty‐six 7‐year‐old children with poor Pinyin skills were selected and randomly divided into a training group and a control group, with 28 children in each group. The training group played the Pinyin GraphoGame for 3 weeks, while the control group received school instruction only during the same period. Results showed that the children in the training group outperformed their peers in the control group on Pinyin reading accuracy and fluency, onset–rime and phonemic awareness, and character reading. These results suggest that the Pinyin GraphoGame may be a cost‐effective method to enhance Pinyin and literacy outcomes for underprivileged children in China. peerReviewed