Self-uncertainty and Support for Autocratic Leadership

Building on uncertainty-identity theory and the social identity theory of leadership we hypothesized that self-uncertainty would be associated with greater support for autocratic leaders, and less support for non-autocratic leaders. We surveyed organizational employees (N = 215); assessing the effect of self-uncertainty and how autocratic they perceived their organizational leader to be on measures of leader support. As predicted, less self-uncertain participants were more supportive of a non-autocratic than autocratic leader, whereas the opposite was the case for more self-uncertain participants—they were more supportive of an autocratic than non-autocratic leader. The effect was mediated by perceived group prototypicality of the leader. Implications for uncertainty-identity theory and for a wider analysis of the role of uncertainty in leadership are discussed.