The effect of dark triad personality traits, level of political participation and cultural tendencies on the perception of democratic leadership

In this study, which aimed to examine the relationship between the perception of democratic leader and individual (psychosocial) and cultural factors in general terms, our first aim is to find out the roles of some socio-demographic variables in the perception of democratic leadership. The second aim was to investigate whether there are relationships among the scores of democratic leadership and the level of political participation, dark triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), and cultural tendencies (individualism, collectivism), and lastly to determine to what extent all these variables predict the perception of democratic leadership. For this purpose, a total of 412 (278 female, 134 male) students from various faculties of Afyon Kocatepe University were included in the study. The socio-demographic information form, democratic leadership scale, negative aspects of personality scale (Short-form Dark Triad Scale), political participation scale, individualism and collectivism cultural tendency scale were administered to the students through convenient sampling. The results revealed that the democratic leader perception scores of the students who were interested in politics by themselves and their families were significantly higher. The findings suggested that the perception of democratic leadership is positively and significantly predicted by political participation, horizontal collectivism and horizontal individualism cultural tendencies, and narcissism. The scores of horizontal collectivist cultural tendencies contributed the largest to the variance of democratic leadership. These results are discussed over the relevant literature findings. Keywords: Democratic leadership, Dark Triad personality traits, political participation, individualism, collectivism.