IMPLICIT LEADERSHIP THEORIES - DEFINING LEADERS DESCRIBED AS WORTHY OF INFLUENCE

It is proposed that followers' implicit leadership theories for appoin ted and elected leaders considered worthy of influence consist of expe ctations organized around category prototypes. An assessment of colleg e students' leader prototypes yielded 14 key appointed leader behavior s and 19 key elected leader behaviors. Subsequent investigations provi ded evidence for the existence of this leader category. Participants, for whom a leader-worthy-of-influence category was suggested, seemed t o rely on associated prototypes during a leader behavior recognition t ask. They selectively recognized category-consistent information more than did a control group. Results are discussed with relation to the s ynthesis of the universal and situation-contingent behavior and trait approaches for predicting leadership effectiveness, leader selection a nd training, and cross-situational comparisons of leader selection and training, and cross-situational comparisons of leader categorizations .