Follower Personality, Schema Structure, and Leadership Endorsement

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between followers'personalities and their cognitive schemas of self and leaders and examined whether these schemas were related to followers' endorsements of leadership styles. Undergraduates completed a five factor personality measure and explicit measures of their self-schemas and leadership schemas. Approximately one month later, they completed implicit measures of their self-scheams and leadership schemas and rated three types of leaders (charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented) in terms of liking or perceived effectiveness. Results showed that personality was related to both the self-schema and leadership schema such that people's self-schemas and their leadership schemas were consistent with their basic dispositional tendencies. In turn, the self-schema and leadership schema were useful in predicting leader liking and perceived leader effectiveness, respectfully. Explicit and implicit schema measures both supported hypothesized relationship, but they were differentially related to the variables of interest.