The influence of charismatic leadership on followers’ attentional processes

IF 9.1 1区管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT

Leadership Quarterly Pub Date : 2025-05-01 DOI:10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101854

Lara H. Engelbert , Michiel van Elk , Jan Theeuwes , Mark van Vugt

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We examined how followers process consistent versus inconsistent messages from a highly charismatic versus non-charismatic leader on a theme relevant to both leader and follower (i.e., climate change). We conducted a lab eye-tracking experiment (Study 1, N = 32) and an online reading experiment (Study 2, N = 1729) to observe followers’ reactions towards (written) information that they received from a leader with high versus low charisma and that was consistent or inconsistent with the leader’s previously expressed views. In Study 1, we found some evidence that participants spent longer reading consistent and inconsistent messages in the high (vs. low) charisma condition. There was no interaction between the charisma and message inconsistency factors. In Study 2, we observed that exposure to a message from a highly charismatic leader (vs. low charisma) increased reading times across consistent and inconsistent sentences. However, when excluding potentially endogenous variables from the analysis, we found some evidence that charisma moderates the processing of inconsistencies, such that participants spent longer reading inconsistent information in the high versus low charisma condition. We discuss the influence of charismatic signaling on followers’ attentional processes in the context of leadership and cognitive attention theories and provide recommendations for future research.

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魅力型领导对追随者注意过程的影响

我们研究了跟随者是如何处理一个与领导者和跟随者都相关的主题（即气候变化），从一个极具魅力和非魅力的领导者那里得到的一致和不一致的信息的。我们进行了一项实验室眼动追踪实验（研究1，N = 32）和一项在线阅读实验（研究2，N = 1729），以观察追随者对他们从高魅力领导者和低魅力领导者那里收到的（书面）信息的反应，这些信息与领导者先前表达的观点一致或不一致。在研究1中，我们发现一些证据表明，在高（相对于低）魅力条件下，参与者花更长的时间阅读一致和不一致的信息。个人魅力与信息不一致因素之间不存在交互作用。在研究2中，我们观察到，接触来自高魅力领导者（与低魅力领导者相比）的信息会增加阅读连贯和不连贯句子的时间。然而，当从分析中排除潜在的内生变量时，我们发现一些证据表明，魅力调节了不一致的处理，例如，参与者在高魅力条件下比在低魅力条件下花费更长的时间阅读不一致的信息。本文从领导理论和认知注意理论两方面探讨了魅力型信号对下属注意过程的影响，并对后续研究提出了建议。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Leadership Quarterly Multiple-

CiteScore

15.20

自引率

9.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Leadership Quarterly is a social-science journal dedicated to advancing our understanding of leadership as a phenomenon, how to study it, as well as its practical implications. Leadership Quarterly seeks contributions from various disciplinary perspectives, including psychology broadly defined (i.e., industrial-organizational, social, evolutionary, biological, differential), management (i.e., organizational behavior, strategy, organizational theory), political science, sociology, economics (i.e., personnel, behavioral, labor), anthropology, history, and methodology.Equally desirable are contributions from multidisciplinary perspectives.