Investigating the Relationship between Higher-order Personality Factors and Leadership

In the trait theory of leadership, the Big Five and facets are the main personality traits studied to identify effective leaders. Recently, higher-order personality factors – traits that are broader in content – have emerged as potentially meaningful constructs. As their nature seems aligned to leadership, their effects may be as strong as, if not more so, the effects of the Big Five and facets. This thesis investigated four issues: the effects of higher-order factors – the General Factor of Personality (GFP) and Big Two (Stability and Plasticity) – on leadership, how the effects compared to the Big Five and facets, the conceptual basis of higher-order factors and the way they relate to leadership, and practical issues related to different operationalisation approaches. Study 1 used meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between higher-order factors and leadership compared to the Big Five and whether any of the latter had unique effects. The mediating role of transformational leadership behaviour between the GFP and effective leadership was also examined as a partial test of the GFP’s substantive nature. Study 2 extended the comparison of effects to facets by using a dataset containing the California Psychological Inventory. The possible existence of curvilinear and interactive effects was also explored as well as practical matters related to extraction methods and the potential predictive benefits of using fewer factors at smaller sample sizes. Lastly, Study 3 undertook a quantitative review and used another dataset to investigate whether the higher-order factors of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) represent the GFP and Big Two. The findings had implications for their conceptual basis as the MBTI uniquely considers personality in terms of categorical types and preferences. Overall, higher-order factors had up to strong effects on leadership. The effects were higher than several individual narrower traits, most of which did not possess unique effects. However, the set of facets did appear to account for meaningful variance beyond the GFP. Support was also provided for the substantive nature of the GFP, particularly in terms of social characteristics. The higher-order factors corresponding to the GFP and Big Two did not emerge in the MBTI. Finally, different extraction methods produced similar results, and the use of fewer traits in the form of higher-order factors yielded better prediction than lower-order ones at smaller sample sizes