Personality and leadership: a qualitative and quantitative review.

Full Abstract

This article provides a qualitative review of the trait perspective in leadership research, followed by a meta-analysis. The authors used the five-factor model as an organizing framework and meta-analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. Overall, the correlations with leadership were Neuroticism = -.24, Extraversion = .31, Openness to Experience = .24, Agreeableness = .08, and Conscientiousness = .28. Results indicated that the relations of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness with leadership generalized in that more than 90% of the individual correlations were greater than 0. Extraversion was the most consistent correlate of leadership across study settings and leadership criteria (leader emergence and leadership effectiveness). Overall, the five-factor model had a multiple correlation of .48 with leadership, indicating strong support for the leader trait perspective when traits are organized according to the five-factor model.

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Author information

Author/s: Judge, Timothy A (TA); Bono, Joyce E (JE); Ilies, Remus (R); Gerhardt, Megan W (MW);

Affiliation: Department of Management, Warrington College of Business, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611-7165, USA. tjudge(-atsign-)ufl.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Meta-Analysis

Journal: The Journal of applied psychology (J Appl Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Aug; vol 87 (issue 4) : pp 765-80

Dates: Created 2002/08/19; Completed 2002/09/06; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12184579, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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