Leader prototypes and prototype-contingent consensus in leader behavior descriptions

Abstract

A categorization model of leader perception suggests that people process and retrieve social information in terms of preexisting cognitive schemata. As a result, memory-based descriptions of leader behavior are thought to be systematically biased by individual prototypes of leadership. While direct evidence of schematic retrieval is difficult to show unequivocally, a corollary hypothesis derived from the model suggests that a collection of behavioral descriptions of different leaders should be very similar due to the common intrusion of leader prototypes. The results of the present study, in fact, revealed a significant tendency for individuals ( N = 60) with similar prototypes of leadership to describe the leader behavior of their supervisors in a similar fashion, even though none of the subjects interacted with the same supervisor. Moreover, consensual agreement in leader behavior descriptions was evident only when the subjects shared a common prototype (good or poor) which was consistent with the evaluative label (good leader/poor leader) ascribed to the supervisors. These results appear to be in full accord with the effects of cognitive categorization processes.