Leadership under uncertainty: When leaders who are non-prototypical group members can gain support ☆

By David E. Rast, Amber M. Gaffney, M. Hogg, R. Crisp. 2012

112 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Social identity theory of leadership (Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) research confirms that group members support group prototypical leaders more strongly than non-prototypical leaders. Two studies examined the prediction derived from uncertainty–identity theory (Hogg, 2007) that this relationship between leader prototypicality and support weakens when group members have elevated self-related uncertainty, due to increased support for non-prototypical leaders. Student participants indicated their level of uncertainty and their support for a prospective student leader who was prototypical or non-prototypical of students at their university–prototypicality was a between-subjects variable in Study 1 ( N = 98), and a within-subjects variable in Study 2 ( N = 132). As predicted, participants supported the prototypical leader more strongly than the non-prototypical leader, but this effect was significantly weakened (Study 2) or disappeared (Study 1) under uncertainty, due to a significant increase in support for the non-prototypical leader. Implications for empowerment of non-prototypical leaders are discussed.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab68c92a6d34619e74881f516c822afbfcc75ac3

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Citations in the corpus

Uncertain Self in a Changing World: A Foundation for Radicalisation, Populism, and Autocratic Leadership (2020, result): “This reasoning was investigated in a pair of studies conducted by Rast and associates (Rast et al., 2012).”
Evaluation of and support for group prototypical leaders: a meta-analysis of twenty years of empirical research (2017, background): “This follows both the ingroup bias argument mentioned above (Hogg et al., 2012a; Rast et al., 2012, 2013), and the idea that leaders who are more prototypical tend to be seen as having the group’s best interests at heart, which makes group members trust that leader more (Giessner & Van Knippenberg,…”
Self-uncertainty and Support for Autocratic Leadership (2013, methodology): “Support was measured by six items (Rast et al., 2012) in which participants disagreed or agreed with: (a) this leader is very effective; (b) this leader represents the interests of our organization very well; (c) this leader fits well at our organization; (d) I am likely to trust this leader as a…”