The effect of performance cues and leader behavior on questionnaire ratings of leadership behavior

It has been suggested that questionnaire-based measures of leadership behavior reflect not only ratee behavior, but also a systematic bias introduced by the perceptual-memory processes of raters (Rush, M. C., Thomas, J. C., & Lord, R. G. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1977, 20, 93–110). This study experimentally manipulated both stimulus behavior and performance cues to examine their joint effect on LBDQ leadership ratings. Results showed highly significant main effects for both the performance cue and the stimulus behavior manipulations, but a nonsignificant interaction. The generalizability of these results to applied settings and their implications for leadership research employing questionnaire measures of behavior were carefully considered. Several possible means of reducing contextually related biases in future studies of leadership were suggested.

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