“Your Cognition, My Territory”: Charismatic Leaders’ Management of Follower Cognitive Dissonance

Abstract

In their role as a leader and in the process of achieving their goals, charismatic leaders incorporate various strategies to utilize certain capabilities of their followers. One form of such strategies is to manage followers’ cognitive dissonance. To manage others’ dissonance could be implemented as acting to either reduce or induce it. In this paper, we propose that charismatic leaders may seek to, through various mechanisms, facilitate either cognitive discrepancy reduction or induction in followers. Drawing on the self-standards and the action-based models of cognitive dissonance theory, we explain how charismatic leaders are empowered to do so by the interaction of situational opportunities and their own motivations and abilities. Specifically, we focus on the relevant impression management techniques (i.e., amplifying, scripting, promotion, and exemplification) that charismatic leaders utilize in the process of managing followers’ dissonance. We also propose that the type of the charismatic relationship, i.e., personalized or socialized, formed between leaders and followers of certain characteristics, moderate this process.