Biases in Leadership Perception: The Role of Implicit Leadership Theories, Attachment Style, Attentional Capacity, and Accuracy Motivation

Previous work suggested that followers’ insecure attachment style might bias the accuracy of follower leadership ratings (Davidovitz, Mikulincer, Shaver, Izsak, & Popper, 2007; Hansbrough, 2012), possibly also via followers’ implicit leadership theories (ILTs; Berson, Dan, & Yammarino, 2006; Keller, 2003). We argue that both followers’ attachment anxiety and avoidance—due to non-constructive emotion regulation and hence limited attentional capacity—lead to a biased leadership perception due to a greater usage of ILTs when rating a leader. In three online studies with full-time employed participants from the US and UK, we assessed both followers’ ILTs and leadership ratings together with their attachment style. Using an experimental design, Study 1 (N = 218) had participants rate a fictitious leader presented in a written vignette. In Study 2 (N = 217), participants rated their own supervisor. In Study 3 (N = 260), participants were asked to watch a video of a team meeting before rating the leader. Results indicated that the higher participants’ attachment avoidance, the more they relied on their ILTs when rating a leader. Study 3 found support suggesting that this was due to a decrease of attentional capacity. However, when under high working memory demands, the higher attachment avoidance, the less they relied on their ILTs, probably due to a breakdown of their defense-mechanism of blocking out information related to social perception (Edelstein & Gillath, 2008; Mikulincer, Dolev, & Shaver, 2004). Perceptual biases related to attachment anxiety were inconsistent. Results from Study 3 suggest that this might have been due to the interplay of a lack of attentional capacity and heightened accuracy motivation for participants high in attachment anxiety.