"How has social psychology contributed to understanding of (a) who might emerge as the leader of a group; and (b) what makes an effective leader?

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

“How has social psychology contributed to understanding of (a) who might emerge as the leader of a group; and (b) what makes an effective leader?

 

Over the centuries, the phenomenon of leadership has been highlighted through literature, art and music.  Even the Egyptian hieroglyphics written 5000 years ago include the terms leader and leadership (Bass, 1990).  In fact, leadership appears to be one of the universals of human behaviour.  While the concept itself has been scrupulously examined in many political and sociological investigations, the genuine psychological analysis into the subject has only begun in the early twentieth century.  Traditionally, the research is centered on the trait, behavioral and situational perspectives of leadership.  The earliest studies were concentrated on individual qualities that assist some persons to achieve power and authority with later research shifting focus on the conditions, which influence the effectiveness of leaders.  The findings led to suggest that leadership is as much an acquired skill as an inborn personal attribute.  In order to understand how leaders lead and who is likely to emerge as a leader, social psychology has adapted a variety of different theoretical emphasis and perspectives.  Such approach has given this old phenomenon its formal strength and scientific status.

Originally, the theorizing on the emergence of leaders was strongly influenced by the ‘great person’ or trait theory, which concentrated on personal attributes of leadership. The prevailing belief was that leaders are extraordinary people who rise to positions of power because they possess certain exceptional traits such as foresight, energy, courage, charisma and persuasiveness.  Those traits would have to be inborn rather than achieved.  Thus all that had to be done was to identify the traits associated with leadership and the future people of power could be predicted.  Consequently, hundreds of trait-based studies were conducted but results proved to be disappointing (Maurik, 2001).

While reviewing previous trait studies Mann (1959) discovered that there was some positive correlation, although fairly weak, between leadership status and intelligence, dominance, conservatism and masculinity.  Stogdill (1974) came to a similar conclusion after reviewing a large number of empirical studies on leadership in various contexts (including military, political parties, nursery schools etc.).  He found that leaders were only slightly more confident, intelligent and on average tend to be taller, older and more experienced than their followers.  Other studies (Costantini & Craik, 1980; Sorrentino & Field, 1986) have demonstrated that superior personal characteristics do not necessarily coincide with the attainment of leadership.  In general, leaders have not been shown to consistently differ from their followers in terms of their personality traits (Turner, 1991).  Therefore it is not possible to accurately predict who will emerge as a leader based solely on individual character traits.

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Despite its shaky beginning, trait theory has continued to exist by adopting more sophisticated platforms of measurement.  Findings based on those measures produced relatively more consistent results.  Lord et al (1986) re-examined the studies discussed by Mann (1959) and Stogdill (1974) and discovered that the correlation between intelligence and leadership perception was quite a bit higher than originally stated.  On this basis, it is now accepted that personality traits have higher associations with the position of an individual in the social strata.  There is however, one aspect of leadership, which is very prominent in its characteristic.  Leaders are mostly male, ...

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