Personal indentity versus social identity in the desire to lead: a comparison of the relative efficiencies of dark triad, values, social dominance orientation, and group prototype in predicting the motivation to lead

As being the oldest one of the several approaches to the issue of leadership, the personality approach argues that it is the personality that underlies a person's desire for becoming a leader. On the other hand, the situational approach argues that the process of leadership should be explained by norms and values held by a group and the expectations towards the leader. The Social Identity perspective, as a recent representative of the situational approach, focuses on the group prototype for its analysis of leadership. This perspective claims that a person becomes a source of social influence when he or she exhibits prototypical behaviors. By drawing upon the obvious conflict between these two approaches, the present thesis focused on the test of some hypotheses that were derived from them. The essential aim of the present study was to compare personality and situational effects in predicting the motivation to lead. The other aim of the present study was to test whether individuals who have traits that reflect a desire for personal power, success, manipulation, and leading others could imitate the prototype of their groups for achieving their goals. The present study started with a pilot study that included 301 students who were members of several student associations in ten different universities. For measuring SDO, the Short form of the SDO-7 Scale was adapted to Turkish and employed in this stage. Among the ones who were volunteered to take part in a second study, 96 participants were selected by some criteria and invited to the main study. In this study, volunteers were given a fake group prototype scale and expected to rate the qualities in this scale that supposedly reflected the group qualities derived from the answers of other members of their associations. Results showed that dark triad, self-enhancement values, and seeing oneself as close to the group prototype were able to predict significant variance in individuals' motivation to lead. Specifically, higher SDO levels were associated with imitating the group prototype. Findings of the present study were discussed concerning their importance for the literature on the person-situation debate.