Cross-cultural variations in leadership perceptions and attribution of charisma to the leader

Leadership perception is based on (a) a recognition-based process that involves categorization of leaders’ characteristics into relevant stereotypes; and (b) an inference-based process that involves making attributions for leaders’ characteristics based on outcomes of salient events (Lord and Maher, 1993]). The present study examined the interactive effects of these two alternative processes of leadership perceptions on attributions of charisma cross-culturally. Groups of participants from either a collectivistic culture (Turkey) or an individualistic culture (United States) read a vignette about a prototypical or antiprototypical leader (manipulation of recognition-based process) whose company produced a slight or significant increase in sales (manipulation of inference-based process). The results showed that the co-occurrence of these two processes produced optimal attribution of charisma to the leader. In addition, the leaders’ prototypical characteristics were more effective in forming a leadership impression in an individualistic culture, whereas collectivistic people made attributions based on the company performance outcome.