Antagonistic leadership refers to management behavior that employees perceive as aggressive, intimidating, blunt, or confrontational rather than supportive or collaborative. These behaviors show up in many workplaces, including laboratories.

Recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that whether antagonistic leadership is viewed as competent or destructive depends largely on how people see the social world. For laboratory leaders, this helps explain why harsh management styles sometimes persist even when they undermine morale, safety culture, and retention.

How worldviews shape leadership judgment

The study was led by Christine Nguyen and Daniel Ames, PhD, of Columbia Business School. They set out to understand why people disagree so sharply about whether confrontational leaders are effective.

“Why do some people see antagonistic behavior in leaders—especially when it’s particularly mean or forceful or disagreeable—as a sign of incompetence, while others view it as a mark of savvy leadership?” Nguyen said. “We suspect the answer might be not only about the leaders, but also about the people evaluating them and how those people see the world. In other words, beastly is in the eye of the beholder.”

People who believe society is highly competitive tend to value dominance and toughness. People who believe society is more cooperative tend to value trust and collaboration. Those beliefs shape how leadership behavior gets interpreted in any organization.

What antagonistic leadership looks like

In the research, antagonistic leadership included behaviors such as:

• Being abrasive or blunt
• Publicly blaming or calling out others
• Making threats or ultimatums
• Using intimidation to get compliance

These behaviors were contrasted with collaborative traits such as being kind, agreeable, and supportive.

Participants evaluated how these behaviors affected leadership effectiveness and workplace outcomes.

What the experiments showed

The researchers conducted a series of surveys and experiments with more than 2,000 participants. In each study, participants reviewed either hypothetical workplace scenarios or real-world leaders and rated the impact of antagonistic and collaborative behaviors.

Across all experiments, people who believed the world is more competitive consistently rated antagonistic leaders as more competent and effective. People who believed the world is more cooperative rated the same behaviors as less effective.

This pattern held even when participants evaluated well-known executives. When asked to think about leaders such as Tim Cook and Mary Barra, those with competitive worldviews assumed those leaders must have used confrontational tactics on their rise to the top.

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Why aggressive leaders keep their followers

One of the most revealing findings involved employee choice and retention.

Employees with stronger competitive jungle beliefs said they were more likely to choose, stay with, and tolerate antagonistic managers.

“When we asked employees about their current managers, we found that employees higher in competitive jungle beliefs currently had more antagonistic managers compared with those lower in competitive jungle beliefs,” Nguyen said. “This suggested to us that, over time, through processes like employees selectively joining and leaving, antagonistic leaders may find themselves surrounded by a subset of employees with stronger competitive jungle beliefs, who are more tolerant and approving of their behavior.”

In laboratories, this dynamic can allow intimidating leadership styles to persist even when they drive away staff who value collaboration, safety reporting, and psychological safety.

What this means for lab operations

Aggressive leadership can appear effective when it creates compliance or short-term output. However, laboratory work depends on error reporting, cross-team communication, and trust. A management style that relies on intimidation may suppress the very information lab leaders need to protect safety, quality, and scientific integrity.

“Our findings may help explain how and why antagonistic leaders might be endured, excused, or even celebrated by those who work with or under them, allowing them to attain and remain in positions of power,” Ames said.

For lab managers, this research highlights why leadership assessment must go beyond surface impressions of toughness and decisiveness and focus on how behavior affects the systems that laboratories rely on to function.

This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.