The heritability of emergent leadership : age and gender as moderating factors

• In this study, we examined the moderating influences of gender and age with respect to testing the heritability of leadership emergence. A large data base of 12,112 twins from Sweden was used in the current study to decompose the variance of emergentleadership into an unobservable genetic component and environmental components that are either common or unshared among twin pairs. Consistent with prior leadership research on genetics, we found that a genetic factor is able to explain a significant proportion of the variation across individuals in predicting how twins perceive their emergentleadership behavior (about 44% for women and 37% for men). Furthermore, we also found that the magnitude of genetic influence on emergentleadership varied with age, but only for women with the heritability estimate being highest for the mid-age women versus lowest for the older women. Implications for advancing research on the genetic and environmental influences on leadership emergence are discussed.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Emergent Leadership

Behavioral Genetics

Gender

Age

Ledarskap under påfrestande förhållanden

Ledarskap under påfrestande förhållanden

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)