Democratic societies across the Globe have seen a rise in public support for dominant, strong and masculine leaders over the last decades. One prominent trigger of citizens’ support for dominant leaders is presence of intergroup conflict and the tendency to perceive the social world as inherently conflict-ridden. However, the concept of “dominant leaders” is less clearly understood. In this article, we clarify the concept of dominant leaders building on recent theoretical syntheses about social perceptions from the psychological sciences. Subsequently, the concept of dominant leaders is operationalized based on two well-validated models of personality impressions, The Big Five and HEXACO models, leading to novel predictions about citizen preferences for leader personality in times of conflict and peace. We test these predictions across four original empirical survey experiments from three countries (Denmark, Germany and the United States). Results reveal that citizens in times of threats from intergroup conflict prefer leaders who are less agreeable, humble, honest and open to new experiences (with results for the remaining personality dimensions being more mixed). Importantly, this pattern does not obtain for disease threats (Study 3), while it replicates across two kinds of intergroup conflicts, terrorist attacks and interstate aggression (Study 4). This suggests that citizen preferences for leader personality is distinctly attuned to threats of intergroup conflict. Results are discussed in relation to theoretical models of leader evaluations and implications for political leaders and citizens.