Need for structure predicts leadership preference.

Abstract

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Personal need for structure as a boundary condition for humor in leadership

“…Hence, people with a strong need for structure have a strong desire for workplace hierarchy (Friesen et al, 2014), perform better in clearly structured working tasks (Rietzschel, Slijkhuis, & van Yperen, 2014b), and are less innovative and creative (Rietzschel, Slijkhuis, & van Yperen, 2014a). Moreover, they prefer task-oriented leadership (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001) and react rather positively to close monitoring (Rietzschel et al, 2014b) and to prototypical leaders (Leicht, Crisp, & Randsley de Moura, 2013). On a more general level, people with high need for structure are more dogmatic and rigid, develop more routines, are more conscientious, are less open to experience, and have higher levels of neuroticism (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993;Machunsky & Meiser, 2006).…”

Prototypical Leaders Do Not Always Get Our Support: Impact of Self-Uncertainty and Need for Cognition

“…On the one hand, researchers have shown that prototype-relevant leadership information may be processed centrally rather than heuristically van Knippenberg & Wilke, 1992). On the other hand, it has been argued that prototypebased leadership judgments may rely on prototypicality as a heuristic that circumvents more laborious systematic inductive information processing (e.g., Leicht, Crisp, & Randsley de Moura, 2013). Our findings show that uncertainty moderates how people process prototype-relevant information centrally versus heuristically.…”

Contesting gender stereotypes stimulates generalized fairness in the selection of leaders

“…Despite research showing that participants self-esteem can be negatively impacted by strong CONTESTING STEREOTYPES AND LEADERSHIP 26 female role models due to social comparison processes (Hoyt, Burnette, & Innella, 2012) this research shows that role models who inspire participants to challenge their stereotypes can affect social cognitive processes and decrease the tendency to associate good leadership with being group prototypical (Leicht et al, 2013;Hogg et al, 2012). Since leadership judgments are strongly affected by how closely individuals match the group prototype and or a leadership stereotype (Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) showing that exposing participants to examples of counter-stereotypical individuals can debias these judgments and can positively affect occupational choices and increase equality within the workplace.…”

“…Research has shown that individuals who prefer a stable and structured environment are more inclined to use group prototypicality for leadership judgments (Leicht et al, 2013). Additionally participants who are high in need for structure decrease their performance when being exposed to a counter-stereotypic target (Goscłowska & Crisp, 2013).…”

“…The propensity to prefer group prototypical leaders, and those matching implicit leadership stereotypes can be partially explained by a reliance on heuristic thinking (Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003;Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011;Leicht, Crisp, & Randsley de Moura, 2013) -i.e., the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahnemann, 1982). We therefore argue that exposing people to gender counter-stereotypes also reduces a more general group prototypicality bias in the selection of leaders.…”