When   Friday, November 20, 2009   Time   11:00 AM - 12:00 PM  
Where   Swift Hall/annex Room 414 2029 Sheridan Rd.   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student
Contact   Bobby Cheon   847-467-9923  
Group   Social Psychology Program

This week's speaker is ROBERT LIVINGSTON, a professor in the Management and Organizations department.  His talk will take place from 11 am to noon in 414 Swift Hall.

Empowering the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Paradoxical Importance of Social versus Prosocial Traits in Leader Emergence

This research assessed the relative importance of two distinct interpersonal dimensions in leader emergence, namely “social” (e.g., outgoing, extraverted) and “prosocial” (e.g., helpful, generous) orientation. Participants in Study 1 were asked directly which qualities they want in an ideal leader and indicated a strong preference for prosocial over social traits. Participants in Study 2 interacted face-to-face in small groups and then were given the opportunity to select a leader to allocate resources. Participants assigned more weight to social as compared with prosocial traits as indicated by their voting behavior. Participants’ tendency to weigh social information more heavily when selecting a leader was mediated by the potential leader’s perceived status. Study 2 further demonstrated that sociability was negatively associated with benevolent behavior among elected leaders whereas prosociability was positively associated with leader benevolence. Taken together, these findings support the existence of a paradoxical tendency for people to elect social, high-status leaders, despite their stated preference for prosocial, benevolent leaders, and despite the fact that social leaders are more likely to abuse their power when allocating group resources.