Psychologists Reveal Personality Trait That Leads to Power

Impulsive CEOs are often portrayed in films and the media. But is this personality trait really the sign of a good leader?

In a new study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers from UC San Diego's Rady School of Management and Texas A&M University found that powerful individuals may actually be, for the most part, the exact opposite of this conventional stereotype.

The research consisted of a series of seven experiments with roughly 3,500 participants in total. In each experiment, cohorts of students and working adults were asked to either read about or interact with individuals with varying levels of self-control, which was defined as how much people tended to behave in a way that aligned with their goals.

In one experiment, working adults were asked to imagine a scenario in which a colleague with a goal to get fit was offered dessert. The imaginary colleague then either ate a large dessert or abstained from dessert altogether. From this simple scenario, participants rated those who had abstained from dessert as being better suited to high-power roles because of their self-control and alignment with their fitness goals.

"What mattered for participants' judgments was whether the colleague acted in line with their goals," Pamela Smith, associate professor of management at the Rady School of Management and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "This pattern held across a variety of goals in our experiments, including saving money, being healthy and reading books."

Across all seven experiments, individuals with higher self-control were seen as being more powerful and better suited to powerful roles. Conversely, individuals were seen as less powerful and less suited to powerful positions when they failed to meet ambitious goals, even if their performance was the same as their peers.

For example, in one experiment, a group of undergraduate students was asked to interact with a group of individuals who had set various reading goals for themselves. Some set the ambitious goal of reading 200 pages a week, while others set a more moderate goal of reading 50 pages. All of the individuals read the same amount—100 pages—across the week, but those who did not meet their goal were seen as being less powerful compared to those who had overshot their lower starting expectation.

The researchers say that these findings could help those in managerial positions to be better leaders and gain support and approval from their workforce.

"To motivate their employees, organizations often want employees to set stretch goals – goals that are challenging and hard-to-reach," Rady School Ph.D. student Shuang Wu, the first author of the paper, said in a statement.

"However, we found that setting a stretch goal and not meeting it makes someone look less powerful than setting an easy goal and surpassing it."