“The present research is among the first to demonstrate a direct link between moral disengagement and leadership emergence.”
Purpose: To explore whether dishonest individuals are more or less likely to emerge as leaders, and one process through which this might take place.
Summary: Personality traits have long been linked to leadership emergence, with the finding that some individuals are more likely to emerge as leaders than others. To further understand the relationship, the focus of this research is to examine the association between individuals’ level of personality traits and its relation to leadership emergence using the HEXACO model of personality.
We found that the personality trait Honesty-Humility is the strongest predictor of moral disengagement, the act of disengaging moral standards from detrimental conduct in order to avoid feeling guilty. Further, dishonest people are less likely to emerge as leaders as rated by their peers and self-evaluation, and this is somewhat explained by the fact that dishonest people are more likely to morally disengage from unethical acts. The results of this research present the importance of the personality trait Honesty-Humility in understanding leadership emergence perception in groups.
Summary of Ogunfowora, B., & Bourdage, J. S. (2014). Does Honesty–Humility influence evaluations of leadership emergence? The mediating role of moral disengagement. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 95-99.
