Steve Reicher - Leading to the dark side: Understanding the roots of toxic leadership

International Congress of Applied Psychology, Montreal, June 2018 ‘State of the Art Lecture’ by Professor Stephen Reicher. Leading to the dark side: Understanding the roots of toxic leadership This talk outlines the new psychology of leadership and then uses this to address the relationship between leadership and democracy. More specifically it identifies the psychological conditions of toxic leadership. This analysis is then used to address the vexing question of how Donald Trump came to be elected as President of the United States. The answer lies in who best understood the principles of identity leadership and hence construe themselves as representative of ‘the people’. Hilary didn’t. Donald did.