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This article reexamines the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions or extent of leader emergence. We maintain that prior research on trait theories and leadership has been misinterpreted as applying to a leader’s effect on performance, when it actually pertains to the relation of leadership traits to leadership emergence. Further, based on current theories of social perceptions, several traits were expected to be strongly related to leadership perceptions. Using the meta-analytic technique of validity generalization, results supported this expectation with intelligence, masculinity-femininity, and dominance being significantly related to leadership perceptions. Also, findings showed that variability across studies in the relation of these traits to leadership perceptions could be explained largely by methodological factors, indicating that contingency theories of leadership perceptions may not be needed. Both of these results contrast with the conclusions of earlier nonquantitative literature reviews on traits and leadership perceptions and with conventional thinking in the leadership area.

Trait theories have not been seriously considered by leadership researchers since Mann (1959) and Stogdill (1948) reported that no traits consistently differentiated leaders from nonleaders across a variety of situations. The thesis of this article is that, first, these reviews have often been misinterpreted, and second, there are both theoretical and methodological reasons for reconsidering the relations between the traits of potential leaders and their tendency to be perceived as leaders by others.

The findings of the Mann and Stogdill reviews have been misinterpreted in three respects. First, though both reviews dealt with only leadership emergence or the perception of leadership in groups with no formal leader, many current theorists (Landy, 1985; Muchinsky, 1983) report that their conclusions pertain to the topic of leadership effectiveness. This confusion probably stems from the title of Mann’s (1959) review, “A Review of the Relationships Between Personality and Performance in Small Groups.” Though Mann mentions performance, the relations he investigated were between personality and attained leadership status as indexed by peer ratings, observer ratings, or by being formally nominated as a leader by group members. None...