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REMARK A B LERE S E A R C H P SYC H O LOGY
WHY STRONG LEADERS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE BEST LEADERS
In times of crisis people tend to prefer leaders who are decisive, have authority and are sure of themselves. Indeed, these kinds of strong individuals may look like good leaders, but new research suggests the opposite might be true. Narcissistic leaders often seem like good leaders because we think their typical qualities like confidence and authority make them good leaders. However, research by Barbora Nevicka and her colleagues, published in Psychological Science, shows the opposite to be true. They divided participants into groups of three and gave them the task to jointly decide on a job candidate. One of the group members was randomly assigned to be the groups’ leader. Participants were instructed that each of the group members could contribute to this decision by giving their advice, but that the leader was responsible for the decision. Each of the members was given some information about the candidate in advance. In total, there were 45 pieces of
information. However, some of this information was given to all three participants while other information was only provided to one of the participants. The crux was that, in order to make the best decisionchoosing the best candidate- information that was not available to all three members of the group had to be shared. When this information was not shared, decisions were based solely on the information available to all three members, leading to a bad decision. After the leader made a decision, the group leaders filled in a questionnaire measuring narcissism while the others filled in questionnaires measuring the perceived authority and effectiveness of the leader. Moreover, participants indicated which of the 45 items of information they knew which is a measure of how well information was shared. Although narcissistic leaders were perceived by group members as more effective, compared to leaders who were not narcissistic, they made decisions of lower quality and less unique information was shared between group members.
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