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

Abstract

Social identity theory of leadership research confirms that followers prefer group prototypical to non-prototypical leaders. Drawing on uncertainty–identity theory, we argue that self-uncertainty interacts with need for cognition (NC) to influence this preference. Student participants (N = 100) reported their self-uncertainty and NC before evaluating a prospective prototypical or non-prototypical student leader. We reasoned that self-uncertainty is a cognitive demand causing low NC participants to use prototypicality as a leadership heuristic—uncertainty strengthens the leader prototypicality advantage. In contrast, high NC participants rely less on prototypicality as a heuristic—uncertainty weakens the leader prototypicality advantage. These hypotheses were supported—elevated uncertainty strengthened the leader prototypicality advantage when NC was low, but weakened it when NC was high.