Development of scenarios for leadership psychology research to reveal the relationships between leaders’ Dark Triad traits and Full Range Leadership styles

Abstract

Objective. The Full Range Leadership Model (Avolio, Bass, 2004) is one of the most popular leadership theories, while the Dark Triad (Paulhus, Williams, 2002) has become the most researched personality model that describes the “dark side” of personality. However, despite the popularity, there is still a lack of evidence about relationship between Dark Triad traits and Full Range Leadership styles. Besides, researchers confirm the need for reliable and valid instruments that could be used in such empirical studies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of scenarios that were developed and used to reveal the relationships between leaders’ Dark Triad traits and Full Range Leadership styles in the perception of potential employees. Methods. 40 students from psychology Bachelor’s and Master’s programs participated in this research (90% females, mean age – 24.90 (SD=5.52)). Five scenarios were developed to represent hypothetical leaders with different patterns of Dark Triad traits expression and were used as stimuli material for this quasiexperiment. Participants were asked to read one out of five scenarios and to fill in two questionnaires about the hypothetical leader: the Dirty Dozen scale (Jonason & Webster, 2010) to assess Dark Triad traits, and the Multifactorial Leadership Questionnaire (Avolio & Bass, 2004) to assess leadership styles and outcomes from Full-range leadership model. Data were collected via online survey. Results. All developed scenarios showed high reliability. However, results confirmed construct validity in only of four out of five scenarios. Relationships between Dark Triad traits and Full Range Leadership styles, and Dark Triad traits and leadership outcomes, were not significant. Conclusions. Developed Dark Triad leader scenarios could be an original and useful instrument for leadership psychology research. Some revisions should be made before the future usage of them.