Robin, this is the bit I was responding to. Seems to me that this refers to supporters rather than disinterested cheerleaders.

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But it does matter that they’re good-looking. That seems to refute those answers.

Well in order to be a cheerleader, they need to be able to lead; they have to have some clout with the crowd. We all know about the traits that allow some humans to lead others more effectively (good looking, charismatic, etc). However, in many cases I don’t think looks matter. Mascots have some sort of charisma, but obviously no “looks” when dressed in a large costume. Those guys who show up shirtless and overweight with painted team colors on their skin don’t have a lot going for them in the looks department either.

Hiring (or following) leaders with charisma just makes good business sense, even if it is only helpful because of ancient traits that emerged in tribal times.

But it does matter that they’re good-looking. That seems to refute those answers.

I think you’re stretching things a bit far. While everyone recognizes that many people like power (and so no one expects many CEOs to be terribly loyal), I think we can easily explain the success of insincere leaders. They provide public goods to their group, and so groups with good leaders tend to thrive and replace ones without. Stadiums and teams with good cheerleaders do the same. A good, disloyal CEO can pay more than a bad loyal one, and the numbers dictate there will be more of the former available.

It may be that people also recognize insincere leaders are playing the same status game as them, but I think we’d have insincere (cheer)leaders even if that wasn’t the case. It just seems like good economics to me.

Loyal fans like to cheer, chant, etc (or at least I suppose they do, I must have been born without the gene that made me care about such things). One person can’t start a chant unless s/he has pull with the crowd. Cheerleaders have this pull, and so can fulfill the crowd’s demand for cheers. Sincerity isn’t necissary to do this.

I’m not seeing anything irrational here, or with general leadership for that matter. Coordination is a service that doesn’t seem to require sincerity.

“We might eagerly point out when leaders on the other side sound insincere, but that is mostly hypocrisy, since we don’t care much about our leaders’ sincerity.”

And I will venture a response: of course not, because people are monkeys and have a unique ability to design situations that monkeys can understand in a seemingly non-monkey world.

In monkey world, juvenile males form hunting/exploring/military bands and patrol the fringes of the group’s territory. They struggle among themselves within and between bands for social order. Adult males spend a lot of time in male-only groups cultivating their hierarchy.

There are relatively frequent challenges for leadership among these males. Sometimes these challenges are actually physical, but often they are display challenges such as chest-beating, vocalization, stick-pounding, and dust-stirring.

These ancient structures may be reflected in, for example, hunter-gatherer groups, who while having a rather egalitarian structure compared to more specialized economies, still for the most part have an intricate system of male hunting-religious groups into which juvenile males are inducted.

Modern societies replace these structures with others, such as sports affiliation. (This may explain why few care that much about women’s sports in the same way they do men’s sports, even the most vocal Title IX advocates.) While we tell ourselves the fiction that it’s women who mostly care about relationships, actually men have to care even more than women to maintain their place in a constantly fluid order.

So for success, you have to belong to a group – and once inducted, you’re there. Evolution has perhaps given you a deep emotional component to find that place and be there. This is perhaps why people who move to different cities often retain their loyalty to the team of the previous city – they are emotionally fixed.

But due to leadership challenges, perhaps you have be able to adapt to new leaders in the same group. In fact, you may have to seek to join the struggle yourself. The goal is social hierarchy prima facie. Because that’s how monkeys work.

Thus people may not care that much about sincerity in cheerleaders, sports coaches, religious figures, CEOs, or politicians. We know the leader’s true goal is dominance per se, not particularly advancement of the supposed purpose of the group.

We understand on some level that these structures are really about sorting the male monkey order, and safely handling potentially destructive challenges, so we don’t actually have deep expectations of a leader’s sincerity to any “cause.” But because we have personal reasons to be emotionally invested in group membership, we want to have the status-boost of belonging to one that outwardly impresses others through display to enhance our individual position.

Of course each cultural structure will have its own methods of display, in the case of American football, cheerleaders.