Implicit leadership theories: Content, structure, and generalizability

Abstract Although recent research has clearly demonstrated the effects of people's naive conceptions, or “implicit theories,” of leadership (ILTs) on leader ratings, there has been a lack of attention to the content of such theories and whether there is systematic variation of ILTs across leader stimuli and perceiver characteristics. The current research assessed the content and factor structure variation of ILTs for male and female perceivers (separately and combined) across three stimuli: leaders, effective leaders and supervisors. Results suggest eight distinct factors of ILTs (Sensitivity, Dedication, Tyranny, Charisma, Attractiveness, Masculinity, Intelligence and Strength) that remain relatively stable across both perceiver sex and stimuli. Implicit theories for leaders and effective leaders were typically more favorable than for supervisors. These findings suggest that implicit theories of leadership may vary in systematic ways and underscore the importance of reaching beyond mere recognition of the existence of such theories toward an understanding of variations in both the content and the structure of the implicit ways that people view leaders.

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