Is a happy leader a good leader? A meta-analytic investigation of leader trait affect and leadership

The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 558–577

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The Leadership Quarterly

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Is a happy leader a good leader? Ameta-analytic investigation ofleader trait affect and leadership

Dana L. Joseph a,⁎, Lindsay Y. Dhanani a,1,Winny Shen b,2, Bridget C.McHugh a,3, Mallory A.McCord a,4

a University of Central Florida, Department of Psychology, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., Orlando, FL 32816, USAb University of Waterloo, Department of Psychology, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 407 823 3912.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D.L. Joseph)

(B.C. McHugh), [email protected] (M.A. McCor1 Tel.: +1 321 662 7083.2 Tel.: +1 519 888 4567x31576.3 Tel.: +1 904 891 2993.4 Tel.: +1 407 782 2318.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.04.0011048-9843/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 1 May 2014Received in revised form 24 April 2015Accepted 29 April 2015Available online 21 May 2015

Editor: Shelly Dionneleadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness. Results show that leader positive

Organizational scholars have long been concerned with identifying traits that differentiateeffective leaders from ineffective leaders. Although there has been renewed interest in the roleof emotions in leadership, there is currently no quantitative summary of leader trait affectivityand leadership. Thus, the current paper meta-analyzed the relationship between leader traitaffectivity and several leadership criteria, including transformational leadership, transactional

affect is positively related to leadership criteria, whereas leader negative affect is negativelyrelated to leadership criteria, and regression analyses indicate that leader trait affect predictsleadership criteria above and beyond leader extraversion and neuroticism. Additionally,mediational analyses reveal that the relationship between leader trait affect and leadershipeffectiveness operates through transformational leadership. Taken together, these resultscontribute to the literature on emotions and leadership by highlighting the role of leader affectas a meaningful predictor of leadership.

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords:Transformational leadershipPositive affectNegative affectLeadershipMeta-analysis

Introduction

The inception of leadership theory in the organizational sciences began with a search to identify the traits of effective leaders(Carlyle, 1841; Terman, 1904). Over a century later, and despite Stogdill's (1948) declaration that “a person does not become a leaderby virtue of the possession of some combination of traits” (p. 64), the field has amassed a substantial literature showing moderaterelationships between various leader traits and leadership (see reviews by Hoffman, Woehr, Maldegan-Youngjohn & Lyons, 2011and Zaccaro, 2007). Results suggest that a wide array of individual differences are related to various leadership criteria, includingmeta-analytic work demonstrating relationships between leadership and intelligence (i.e., leadership emergence and leadershipeffectiveness; Lord, de Vader & Alliger, 1986; Judge, Colbert & Ilies, 2004), Big Five personality traits (i.e., transformational leadership,transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness; Bono& Judge, 2004; Judge, Bono, Ilies &Gerhardt, 2002;Woo, Chernyshenko, Stark & Conz, 2014), masculinity/dominance (i.e., leadership emergence; Lord et al., 1986), and creativity(i.e., leader–member exchange and transformational leadership; Dilchert, 2008).

, [email protected] (L.Y. Dhanani), [email protected] (W. Shen), [email protected]).

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558 D.L. Joseph et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 558–577

Although this body of work has examined cognitive and personality-related correlates of leadership, only recently has scholarlywork turned its attention to individual differences in emotion-related constructs and their relationship with leadership. Perhapsstimulated by the “affective revolution” in the organizational sciences (Barsade, Brief & Spataro, 2003, p. 3), this “revival of emotionsand leadership” (Rajah, Song & Arvey, 2011, p. 1107) has spawned a series of meta-analyses on emotional intelligence and leadership(Harms& Credé, 2010;Martin, 2008;Whitman, 2009) aswell as several comprehensive qualitative reviews on the role of emotions inleadership (e.g., Gooty, Connelly, Griffith & Gupta, 2010; Rajah et al., 2011). Despite integration of emotions and affect into modernleadership literature, one basic question remains: Is a happy leader a good leader? In other words, to what extent is leader traitaffectivity related to leadership styles, leader behaviors, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness?

The current paper seeks to quantitatively summarize prior work on the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership inorder to examine the extent to which a happy leader is a good leader. Ultimately, we seek to contribute to the trait leadershipliterature in the following ways. First, we estimate the relationship of leader trait positive and negative affect with several leadershipcriteria (i.e., transformational leadership behaviors, transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness).Second, we examine whether the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership criteria varies by the motivational focus oftrait affect. Specifically, in addition to the valence of affect (i.e., positive vs. negative), we note that trait affectivity can also be classifiedas either approach-focused (i.e., the tendency to experience emotions that motivate one towards a desired end state; e.g., traithappiness and anger) or avoidance-focused (i.e., the tendency to experience emotions that serve to avoid negative outcomes;e.g., trait relaxation and anxiety), which we examine as a moderator of the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership.Third, because prior research has questioned the extent to which positive affect and negative affect are distinct from extraversionand neuroticism, respectively (e.g., Tellegen, 1985), we investigatewhether leader trait positive and negative affect exhibit incremen-tal validity above and beyond extraversion and neuroticism in the prediction of leadership criteria. Finally, given prior research onleadership effectiveness as an outcome of transformational leadership behaviors (Judge & Piccolo, 2004), we also examine whetherthe relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness is mediated by transformational leadership behaviors(i.e., Are happy leaders more effective because they display more transformational behaviors?). In sum, the current paper serves toempirically evaluate the intuitive notion that a happy leader is a good leader; in doing so, we contribute broadly to theoreticalwork on emotions in organizational behavior and trait theories of leadership and to more specific literatures on antecedents oftransformational leadership and trait affect by examining both valence and motivational focus of trait affect.

Leader trait affect

Although prior research has disputed the exact definition of affect (Feldman-Barrett & Russell, 1999; Watson & Clark, 1999), traitaffect can be described as a person's “affective lens on the world” (Barsade & Gibson, 2007; p. 38), or a dispositional tendency to feelpositive emotions (i.e., trait positive affect) or negative emotions (i.e., trait negative affect; Watson & Clark, 1984). In contrast, stateaffect refers to a more short-term affective experience that can be described as either a mood or an emotion. Moods involve diffuseaffective states that are of shorter duration than trait affect, but of longer duration than emotions (Frijda, 1993), whereas emotionstend to have specific targets and are more brief and intense in comparison to mood and affect (Fisher, 2000; Frijda, 1993). Due toour interest in the trait theory of leadership (and insufficient numbers of primary studies to quantify links between leader state affectand leadership), the current paper focuses on leader trait affect as a stable, dispositional influence on leadership.

Although debates abound over the exact structure of affect, the current paper employsWatson and colleagues' conceptualizationof affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984;Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988; Watson & Tellegen, 1985) in which positive affect and negativeaffect represent two unipolar dimensions. Under this formulation, high positive affect involves the experience of elation, enthusiasm,and excitement, and high negative affect involves feelings of distress, fear, hostility, and nervousness (Watson, Wiese, Vaidya &Tellegen, 1999). The decision to adopt Watson and colleagues' conceptualization of affectivity was primarily guided by the literaturethat was included in the current meta-analysis; a preponderance of the studies included in the current paper employedWatson andClark's formulation of affect, which is consistent with the prevalence of this approach in psychology and management science(Schimmack &Grob, 2000). Moreover, our conceptualization of affect is consistent with evidence that has supported the dispositionalnature of positive and negative affect, including evidence of its heritability (Tellegen et al., 1988) and stability over time (Watson,2004), supporting the use of positive and negative affectivity as traits in the current study.

In addition to considering the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership, we note that recent literature has begun to offeramore fine-grained classification of affect that is based on regulatory focus (Baas, De Dreu &Nijstad, 2008). Specifically, regulatory focustheory (Higgins, 1997; Idson, Liberman & Higgins, 2000) suggests that emotional states may be classified into promotion-focused emo-tions, or those emotions thatmotivate one towards a desired end state, and prevention-focused emotions, or emotions thatmotivate oneto avoid negative outcomes. As such, trait positive affect can be divided into promotion-focused trait positive affect, or the tendency toexperience approach-oriented positive emotional states (e.g., happiness, elation), and prevention-focused trait positive affect, or the ten-dency to experience avoidance-oriented positive emotional states (e.g., relaxed, calm). Similarly, trait negative affect can also be brokendown into promotion-focused trait negative affect (e.g., anger, sadness) or prevention-focused trait negative affect (e.g., anxiety, fear, dis-gust; Baas et al., 2008). Given that promotion- and prevention-focused affect differ in their motivational consequences (i.e., promotion-focused trait affect motivates proactive, approach-oriented behaviors whereas prevention-focused trait affect motivates avoidance-oriented behaviors; e.g., Lanaj, Chang & Johnson, 2012) and prior meta-analytic work supports the differences in predictive validity forpromotion- and prevention-focused affect (Baas et al., 2008), we examine the regulatory focus of leader trait affect as a moderator ofthe relationship between leader trait affect and leadership. We note that although the current study focuses on prevention- andpromotion-oriented affect, scholars have additionally classified emotions based on their level of activation (i.e., high or low arousal;

559D.L. Joseph et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 26 (2015) 558–577

Damen, Van Knippenberg & Van Knippenberg, 2008; Waples & Connelly, 2008). For example, whereas anxiety is a prevention-focusedemotion and frustration is a promotion-focused emotion, both are high on activation (i.e., high arousal; Baas et al., 2008). We arguethat categorizing emotions based on regulatory focus is more informative when predicting leadership criteria because this distinctioncaptures differences in self-regulatory foci and action tendencies, which has stronger implications for goal-directed behavior and maybetter explain leadership behavior than the high/low arousal distinction. Therefore, we focus on promotion and prevention-focusedtrait affect in the current study as a moderator of the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership, which we describe inmore detail below. Prior to discussing the proposed relationships between leader trait affect and leadership, we first review the variousleadership criteria examined in the current study.

Leadership criteria

The full spectrum of leadership criteria may include a nearly infinite array of leadership behaviors, styles, and effectivenessconstructs, including transformational and transactional leadership (Bass, 1985), consideration and initiating structure (Kerr,Schreisheim, Murphy & Stogdill, 1974), charismatic leadership (House, 1977; Weber, 1947), authentic leadership (Avolio &Luthans, 2006), ethical leadership (Brown, 2005), leader–member exchange (Dansereau, Cashman & Graen, 1973), and leadershipemergence and effectiveness (Lord et al., 1986). In the current study, we examine leadership at multiple levels of specificity. First,in line with prior meta-analytic work on leadership (i.e., personality, Judge et al., 2002; intelligence, Judge et al., 2004), we examinethe relationship between leader trait affectivity and leadership, broadly-defined to include leadership styles, behaviors, emergence,and effectiveness criteria. Although this criterion is an all-encompassing representation of a compound leadership construct, wenote that it may bemore conceptually clear and informative to interpret relationships between leader trait affect and narrower lead-ership criteria.We therefore also examine leader trait affect and its relationshipwithmore specific leadership criteria, including trans-formational leadership behaviors, transactional leadership behaviors, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness. Weacknowledge that other leadership criteria, such as leader–member exchange and ethical leadership, are no less worthy of study asspecific criteria, but insufficient research currently exists to examine their specific relationships with leader trait affect meta-analytically (though they are included in our assessment of relationships with the broad leadership criterion), and we therefore donot focus on these criteria in our subsequent review.

As one of themost widely accepted lenses through which leadership is examined (Tejeda, Scandura & Pillai, 2001), transformationalleadership consists of four dimensions: (a) idealized influence, or the extent to which a leader displays conviction and behaves in a waythat causes followers to identify with him/her, (b) inspirational motivation, which involves communicating optimism and challengingfollowers tomeet high standards, (c) intellectual stimulation, or the extent towhich a leader takes risks, challenges assumptions, and en-courages follower creativity, and (d) individualized consideration, which is characterized by follower mentoring, attending to followerneeds, and listening to follower concerns (Bass, 1985; Bass & Riggio, 2006; Burns, 1978). Whereas transformational leadership theorycontains affect-related content (e.g., displays of optimism), transactional leadership, on the other hand, involves the degree to which aleader establishes a clear reward systemwith followers and takes action to uphold this exchange systemon the basis of follower behavior(Bass & Riggio, 2006). Specifically, transactional leadership involves (a) contingent reward, or providing rewards to followers for perfor-mance, (b) activemanagement by exception,which involves attending to followers'mistakes, and (c) passivemanagement by exception,which involves ignoring followers' mistakes until the problem becomes severe enough to require intervention (Avolio & Bass, 2002).Thus, transactional leadership is more of an economic exchange between leaders and followers (e.g., if followers perform well, theyare rewarded) and less of the type of emotional exchange that is involved in transformational leadership.

In addition to leadership behaviors, we are also interested in leadership outcomes, which can be broadly categorized intoleadership emergence and effectiveness (Lord et al., 1986). Leadership emergence involves perceptions about the extent to whichan individual is likely to become a leader and whether an individual actually becomes a leader (either through formal or informalchannels; Hogan, Curphy & Hogan, 1994). In comparison, leadership effectiveness typically involves an evaluation of a leader'sperformance in motivating and managing his/her unit, once in a leadership role, which can be measured via reports by the self orothers (e.g., supervisor, followers) or via a unit performance index (Hogan et al., 1994). We focus on both leadership emergenceand effectiveness in order to examine not only who becomes a leader, but also how effective these individuals are in leadershiproles, as prior work suggests that determinants of the two criteria can differ (e.g., Judge et al., 2002).

Additionally, we also estimate the extent to which the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness operatesthrough transformational leadership behaviors. A substantial body ofwork has demonstrated that transformational leadership behaviorsare positively related to leadership effectiveness (ρ= .64; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; see also Lowe, Kroeck & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), sug-gesting that individuals who display idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consider-ation are more effective leaders. The current paper examines whether transformational leadership behaviors mediate the relationshipbetween leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness (e.g., we test whether happy leaders are good leaders because they displaymore transformational leadership behaviors or are simply perceived to be more transformational), which we elaborate on below.

Trait affect & leadership

Recent research has noted the pervasive nature of affect in work environments and the extent to which affect is a critical componentof cognition, attitudes, andbehavior in theworkplace (Elfenbein, 2007; Kanfer&Klimoski, 2002). Relevant to the current study, the schol-arly literature on affect in the workplace has also highlighted the importance of emotions, mood, and affect in leadership processes(Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; Brief &Weiss, 2002). Extensive work on leader trait affect and leadership criteria has offered several theoretical


explanations for the current study's proposed relationship between leader trait affect and leadership. Althoughwe test whether transfor-mational leadership behaviors mediate the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness in the current study, wenote that we are unable to test other potential mediatingmechanisms (e.g., follower affect) due to lack of meta-analytic estimates of keyrelationships (e.g., leader affect and follower affect, follower affect and leadership effectiveness).

We also note that, below, we theorize about leader trait affectivity as a density distribution of state affect. This is in line with priorresearch showing that between-person differences on traits reflect differences in the mean or central tendencies of their within-person variations (Fleeson, 2001). For example, trait positive affect is characterized by a density distribution of state positive moodand emotions (e.g., happiness, excitement, enthusiasm;Watson, 1988). As such,when describing the theorized relationships betweenleader trait positive (negative) affect and leadership below, we discuss trait positive (negative) affect as the tendency to experiencestate positive (negative) affect. Below, we summarize prior theoretical and empirical work relating leader trait affect to leadership(i.e., transformational and transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness) by first discussing leadertrait positive affect, followed by leader trait negative affect.

Positive affect

Theoretical accounts of the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership criteria have typically proposed apositive relationship that is driven by (a) mood contagion processes (i.e., leader displays of positive affect imbue follower displaysof positive affect that subsequently result in high leadership ratings), (b) the relationship-building qualities of positive affect(i.e., positive affect strengthens the bond between leader and follower, resulting in higher leadership ratings), and (c) the notion ofaffect as information provided by the leader (i.e., positive affect serves as functional information provided by the leader to the followerand this information is a component of effective leadership).

Themood contagion explanation for the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership suggests that leaders whoare high on trait positive affect often display positive affective states and these episodes can influence follower positive affect throughemotion contagion processes (Bono & Ilies, 2006; Cherulnik, Donley, Wiewel & Miller, 2001; Eberly & Fong, 2013; Erez, Misangyi,Johnson, LePine & Halverson, 2008; Johnson, 2009; Newcombe & Ashkanasy, 2002; Sy, Côté & Saavedra, 2005). Some have evensuggested that the leader-to-follower emotion contagion process is leadership (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000), especially in the case oftransformational leadership where leaders utilize emotion to communicate a vision, motivate followers, and elicit positive behavioralchange (Rubin, Munz & Bommer, 2005; see also Conger & Kanungo, 1998). As noted by George and Brief (1992), “leaders who feelexcited, enthusiastic, and energetic themselves are likely to similarly energize their followers, as are leaders who feel distressedand hostile likely to negatively activate their followers” (p. 84). Leaders whomotivate their followers to perform via positive emotioncontagion processes should subsequently be rated higher on transformational leadership behaviors and leadership effectiveness.Similarly, leaders who stimulate positive affect in others are more likely to be selected into leadership positions (i.e., individualswho elicit positive feelings in others are more likely to emerge as leaders). In addition, the positive emotional states of followersthat result from leader positive affect may also cause selective recall biases when followers rate their leader's effectiveness (i.e., thepositive emotional state causes them to selectively recall only positive qualities and behaviors of their leader; Eberly & Fong, 2013).This selective recall bias would also result in a positive relationship between leader trait affect and leadership (via follower positiveaffect that creates “rose-colored glasses” when rating leader performance).

Beyond the mood contagion explanation for the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership, scholars haveproposed that leader positive affect can strengthen the relationship between leaders and followers, resulting in higher leadershipratings. For example, positive affect displayed by a leader can convey generosity, morality, sincerity, confidence, and competence,rendering follower attributions of leadership behaviors and leadership effectiveness to be more positive (Eberly & Fong, 2013). Inaddition to these follower attributions, positive affect displayed by a leader has also been related to liking of and attraction to theleader as well as perceptions of similarity between the leader and follower (Fox & Spector, 2000), which may also result in highertransformational leadership, leader emergence, and leader effectiveness ratings (i.e., the more I like my leader, the more positivelyI will rate him/her and vote him/her into leadership roles; e.g., Brown & Keeping, 2005).

Finally, positive emotions displayed by leaders who are high on trait positive affect are proposed to influence leadership becausepositive emotions convey important functional information to the follower. For example, positive emotional displays can serve aspositive feedback to the follower, conveying to the follower that he/she is meeting the leader's expectations and/or that the leaderholds positive perceptions about his/her relationship with the follower (Connelly & Ruark, 2010; Van Kleef et al., 2009; see alsoSchwartz, 1990). This type of positive feedback can subsequently result in positive transactional leadership ratings because theseemotional displays serve as rewards for positive follower behavior (Connelly & Ruark, 2010).

In summary, we expect to find a positive relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership criteria (i.e., leadershipeffectiveness, leadership emergence, transformational leadership, and transactional leadership) because high trait positive affectleaders tend to display state positive affect more frequently, which leads to follower state positive affect (i.e., mood contagion),strengthens leader–follower relationships, and/or provides functional information (i.e., feedback) to followers.

Hypothesis 1. Leader trait positive affect is positively related to (a) leadership effectiveness, (b) leadership emergence,(c) transformational leadership behaviors, and (d) transactional leadership behaviors.

In addition to hypothesizing a general positive relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership, we also expect thestrength of this relationship to be moderated by the regulatory focus of trait affect. As previously mentioned, recent theoretical work


on the classification of emotions has suggested that trait positive affect can be separated into the tendency to experience promotion-focused emotions (e.g., happiness, elation) and prevention-focused emotions (e.g., relaxation, calm; Baas et al., 2008). Given thatpromotion-focused trait positive affect is approach-oriented and motivates an individual towards desired actions while reinforcingachievement of approach-oriented goals, this type of trait positive affect should fuel a leader with the enthusiasm and energynecessary to display positive leadership behaviors (e.g., transformational leadership). In comparison, prevention-focused positiveaffect may promote avoidance-oriented leadership (e.g., those who are highly relaxed may not display the energy or enthusiasmthat is characteristic of transformational leadership and may instead display more laissez-faire behaviors). Therefore, we expectregulatory focus of the emotion to moderate the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership such that therelationship is stronger when leader trait positive affect is promotion-focused rather than prevention-focused.

Hypothesis 2. The relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership criteria is stronger when leader trait positive affectis promotion-focused than when leader trait positive affect is prevention-focused.

Negative affect

Although some scholars have noted a “positive emotions bias”wherein the literature has tended to focus on the relationshipbetween positive affect and leadership while ignoring the relationship between negative affect and leadership (Gooty et al.,2010; Rajah et al., 2011), others have noted that the processes by which leader positive affect are related to leadership canalso be applied to the leader negative affect-leadership relationship. For example, recent evidence suggests mood contagionprocesses also operate between leader negative affect and follower negative affect (Johnson, 2008; Sy et al., 2005), and thiscontagion can result in lower ratings of transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness (Gaddis, Connelly &Mumford, 2004; Lewis, 2000; see also Barsade, 2002). One could also argue that negative affect contagion would hinder anindividual from being selected into leadership roles (i.e., there would be a negative relationship between negative affect andleadership emergence because an individual who makes others feel sad and anxious due to his/her own sadness and anxietyis not likely to be voted into a leadership position). Similarly, some have posited that leader displays of negative affect may elicitfollower perceptions of injustice because strong negative emotional displays violate follower expectations of traditionalreward/punishment structures (Connelly & Ruark, 2010), which could also result in lower ratings of transactional leadership(although one could argue that leader displays of negative affect and provision of negative feedback should be a part of a leader'stransactional exchange process with a follower who is underperforming). Therefore, we expect to find a negative relationshipbetween leader trait negative affect and leadership (i.e., leadership effectiveness, leadership emergence, transformationalleadership, and transactional leadership) because negative mood spillover and perceptions of injustice may damage followerratings of leadership behaviors, emergence, and effectiveness.

Hypothesis 3. Leader trait negative affect is negatively related to (a) leadership effectiveness, (b) leadership emergence,(c) transformational leadership behaviors, and (d) transactional leadership behaviors.

In addition to the hypothesized negative relationship between leader trait negative affect and leadership, we also posit that this rela-tionship will be more negative for prevention-focused negative affect in comparison to promotion-focused negative affect. Specifically,although both promotion- and prevention-focused emotional displays of negative mood and emotions may convey negative feedbackto a follower, the functional information conveyed in this feedback varies across promotion and prevention-focused emotions. For exam-ple, displays of anxiety and fear (i.e., prevention-focusednegative affect)may convey distrust in a follower and a lack of leader confidencein the unit, which would negatively impact a follower's rating of his/her leader. Similarly, anxiety has been shown to make leaders lesseffective communicators (Young, 1996), which likely impedes anxious individuals' ability to communicate a vision, deliver feedback, andengage in other critical transformational and transactional leadership behaviors. In comparison, displays of anger and frustration(i.e., promotion-focused negative affect) may not hinder leadership as greatly as prevention-focused negative affect because anger andfrustration have motivational properties. That is, the function of anger in relationships is to create an incentive for the target of theanger to resolve a conflict in the angry individual's favor (Sell, Tooby & Cosmides, 2009; Tooby, Cosmides, Sell, Lieberman & Sznycer,2008); in leader–follower relationships, a leader may display anger or frustration towards underperforming employees in order tosend a functional message to the follower (e.g., low performance is unacceptable), after which followers reciprocate with an attemptto repair the source of anger (e.g., followers improve their performance). As such, we expect the regulatory focus of trait affect to mod-erate the relationship between leader trait negative affect and leadership, such that prevention-focusednegative affect displays a strongernegative relationship with leadership than promotion-focused negative affect.

Hypothesis 4. The relationship between leader trait negative affect and leadership criteria is more negative when leader traitnegative affect is prevention-focused than when leader trait negative affect is promotion-focused.

Extraversion and neuroticism: is affect a unique predictor of leadership?

Although our above theoretical framework suggests that leader trait positive affect is positively related to leadership and leadertrait negative affect is negatively related to leadership, it is worth noting that positive and negative affect are strongly related toextraversion (r = .51) and neuroticism (r = .58; Watson et al., 1999), respectively. Given the meta-analytic evidence that suggests


extraversion and neuroticism are both predictors of leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004; Judge et al., 2002), this raises the questionof whether positive affect and negative affect predict unique variance in leadership above and beyond their personalitycorrelates. Despite the substantial extraversion-positive affect and neuroticism-negative affect relationships, positive andnegative affect capture broader representations of stable affective tendencies than extraversion and neuroticism. For example,extraversion has been found to overlap with some areas of the positive affect circumplex (i.e., high activation positive affect),while demonstrating little overlap with other areas (i.e., low activation positive affect; Smillie, DeYoung & Hall, in press).Further, neuroticism demonstrates conceptual overlap with discrete negative emotions such as anxiety and depression, butit fails to capture the full range of negative affect that individuals might experience (e.g., guilt and shame, which are notassessed in many measures of neuroticism; Beer, Watson & McDade-Montez, 2013). In support of this notion, extraversiontypically accounts for only 15–34% of the variance in positive affect and neuroticism accounts for only 25–36% of the variancein negative affect (see McNeil & Fleeson, 2006 for a review). Moreover, prior research demonstrates that trait affect can be astronger predictor of job-related outcomes than extraversion and neuroticism (i.e., task performance, Kaplan, Bradley,Luchman & Haynes, 2009; job attitudes and perceptions, Thoresen, Kaplan, Barsky, Warren & de Chermont, 2003). Therefore,in the current paper, we expect to find that leader trait affect demonstrates incremental validity beyond leader extraversionand neuroticism in the prediction of leadership criteria.

Hypothesis 5. Leader trait positive and negative affect exhibits incremental validity over leader trait extraversion and neuroticism inpredicting leadership criteria.

Transformational leadership as a mediator of trait affect and leadership effectiveness

Thus far, we have discussed leader trait affect as a predictor of various leadership criteria, including transformationalleadership and leadership effectiveness. As displayed in Figs. 1 and 2, we also propose that transformational leadershipmediates the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness. First, as reviewed earlier, it has beensuggested that leader positive emotional displays communicate a vision for the future, foster high quality followerrelationships, and engender positive emotions in followers (Bass & Avolio, 1994; Gooty et al., 2010; McColl-Kennedy &Anderson, 2002). Thus, we expect leader positive affect to be positively related to transformational leadership. Similarly,we expect that leader negative affect is negatively related to transformational leadership because negative affect displays hin-der positive leadership behaviors. [It is interesting to note that although previous theorizing suggests that transformationalleadership and positive affect are related, these discussions have been unclear regarding the direction of this relationship.Given the large body of evidence suggesting that individual differences, including trait affect, are stable across the adult life(e.g., Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000; Watson, 2004), we argue that it is more likely for stable affective tendencies to influenceleadership behaviors than vice versa.]

Second, we note that prior work indicates leadership effectiveness is an outcome of transformational leadership behaviors(ρ = .64; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; see also Lowe et al., 1996), suggesting that individuals who display idealized influence,inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration are more effective leaders. Taken together,this evidence suggests that individuals who are high on positive (negative) affect may be more (less) likely to adopttransformational leadership styles, causing these leaders to be perceived as more (less) effective. Given the affective natureof transformational leadership and the aforementioned theoretical links between leader trait affectivity and transformationalleadership behaviors, the current paper examines whether transformational leadership behaviors mediate the relationshipbetween leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness. We expect that transformational leadership fully mediates thisrelationship (e.g., we expect that happy leaders are good leaders because they display more transformational leadershipbehaviors).

Hypothesis 6. Transformational leadership behaviors mediate the relationship between leader trait affect and leadershipeffectiveness.

Method

Literature search

In an attempt to complete an exhaustive search of primary studies involving leader trait affect and leadership criteria, an onlineliterature search was conducted using PsycINFO (1887–2014), ProQuest (1861–2014), and Google Scholar. Reference lists fromreviews of emotions and leadership literature were also searched (e.g., Gooty et al., 2010; Rajah et al., 2011). The followingleadership-related keywords were used to locate articles (including several variations of these keywords): leader, leadership,leadership emergence, leadership effectiveness, and leadership styles. Emotion-related keywords (and several variations thereof)consisted of affect, negative affect, positive affect, emotion, negative emotion, positive emotion, emotional display, mood, happiness,anger, anxiety, guilt, fear, distress, excitement, hostility, depression, enthusiasm, and shame. All permutations of the aforementionedkeywords were utilized. Unpublished studies were located by searching annual conference programs of the Society for Industrial

Note. Standardized estimates. *p<.05

TraitPositive Affect

Transformational Leadership

Leadership Effectiveness

.45* .62*

.05

Fig. 1. Transformational leadership as a mediator of leader trait positive affect and leadership effectiveness.


and Organizational Psychology and the Academy of Management as well as by searching the ProQuest Theses and Dissertationsdatabase (1861–2014).

Inclusion criteria

Studies located in the initial searchwere then examined for compliancewith several inclusion criteria. First, the study had to assessleadership and leader trait affect (i.e., trait positive affect, trait negative affect, or a trait discrete emotion, such as trait anger; oursearch identified available effect sizes for the following discrete trait emotions: happiness, relaxation, enthusiasm, love, hope, anxiety,sadness, anger, contempt, and stress). Studieswere determined to havemeasured trait affect if themeasures includedwere explicitlydesigned to measure dispositional affect. Additionally, the study had to report an effect size or enough information to compute aneffect size (in cases where this information was not available, the authors were contacted for any missing information). Studiesreporting a correlation between bipolar affect (i.e., positive and negative affect were treated as opposite ends of a single continuum)and leadership were excluded. Our initial search yielded 9499 primary studies; 25 of these primary studies met the inclusion criteriaand were retained in the current meta-analysis.

Data coding

Included studies were coded for sample size, effect size, leadership measure, trait affect measure, reliability of the predictor andcriterion measures, and source of the criterion measure (e.g., self-report, follower-report). Source of the criterion measure wascoded in order to examine whether the proposed relationship between leader trait affect and leadership was affected by commonmethod bias in primary studies that used a self-report methodology to assess both leader trait affect and leadership. Based on Baaset al.'s (2008) discrete emotion classification scheme, we coded trait discrete emotions into the following categories: positivepromotion trait affect (i.e., happiness, optimism, hope, gratitude), positive prevention trait affect (i.e., relaxation), negative promotiontrait affect (i.e., anger, sadness), and negative prevention trait affect (i.e., anxiety, stress, pessimism). (Note: a paucity of primarystudies examining discrete trait emotions prevented us from reporting separate meta-analytic effects for each emotion.)

Sampleswere coded as having assessed transformational leadership, transactional leadership, or leadership emergence only if thestudy explicitly labeled the construct as such. Samples were coded as having assessed leadership effectiveness if: (a) the study used ameasure that was explicitly labeled as ameasure of leadership effectiveness, (b) the study used ameasure of the leader's performancein influencing his/her unit towards its goals (including self, peer, and subordinate ratings of leader effectiveness as well as behavioralchecklists that specificallymeasured leadership effectiveness), or (c) the study assessed performance of the leader's group (consistentwith prior meta-analyses of leadership effectiveness; see Judge et al., 2004). However, we also presentmeta-analytic effect sizes withmeasures of group performance excluded from the operationalization of leadership effectiveness in order to examineoperationalization of leadership effectiveness as a moderator. All effect sizes involving transformational leadership, transactionalleadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness were included in the meta-analytic effect size representing therelationship between trait affect and the broad leadership criterion (consistent with prior meta-analyses of leadership; Eagly,Makhijani & Klonsky, 1992; Judge et al., 2002), as were any additional studies located in our search that measured additionalleadership styles/behaviors (i.e., charismatic leadership, authentic leadership, leader–member exchange, ethical leadership).

Note. Standardized estimates. *p<.05

TraitNegative Affect

Transformational Leadership

Leadership Effectiveness

-.18* .62*

-.13*

Fig. 2. Transformational leadership as a mediator of leader trait negative affect and leadership effectiveness.

Table 1Primary studies included in the original meta-analyses of leader trait affect and leadership.

Citation N Trait affect measure Leadership measure Reliability oftrait affectmeasure

Reliability ofleadershipmeasure

r

Barsade, Ward,Turner, andSonnenfeld (2000)

205 Positive affect(Multidimensional PersonalityQuestionnaire;Tellegen (1982))

Leadership (participativeleadership rated by top-management)

.87 .90 − .03

Leadership effectiveness(firm performance)

.87 – − .02

BeShears (2004) 158 Positive affect (PANAS;Watson et al. (1988))

Transformational leadership(MLQ; Bass and Avolio (1997))

.89 .88 .65

158 Negative affect (PANAS;Watson et al. (1988))

Transformational leadership(MLQ; Bass and Avolio (1997))

.90 .88 − .25

Bono and Ilies (2006) Sample1: 103

Positive affect(Bono and Ilies (2006))

Transformational leadership(MLQ Form 5X; Avolio, Bass, and Jung (1999))

.91 .23

Sample2: 71


Transformational leadership (MLQ Form 5X;Avolio et al. (1999))

.96 .83 .45

Leadership effectiveness(follower ratings)

.95 .72

Sample4: 173


Leadership effectiveness(follower ratings)

– .88 .30

Brown and Keeping(2005)

307 Positive affect (PANAS;Watson et al. (1988))

Transformational leadership(MLQ Form 5X; Bass and Avolio (1995))

.90 .95 .31



.85 .95 .01

Chi, Chung, and Tsai(2011)

85 Positive affect (PANAS;Watson et al. (1988))


.92 .97 .33

Leadership effectiveness(group performance; Edmondson (1999))

.92 .95 .40

Cushman (1978) 20 Negative affect (The State-TraitAnxiety Inventory; Spielberger,Gorsuch,& Lushene (1970))

Leadership (Leader Behavior DescriptionQuestionnaire; Stogdill (1963))

– – .16

Damen et al. (2008) 71 Positive affect (Damen et al.(2008))

Leadership (perceived charisma;Damen et al. (2008))

– .90 .20

71 Negative affect (Damen et al.(2008))

Leadership (perceived charisma;Damen et al. (2008))

– .90 − .13

Delgado-Garcia andDe La Fuente-Sabate (2010)

51 Positive affect (PANAS; Watsonet al. (1988))

Leadership effectiveness (group performance;Delgado-Garcia andDe La Fuente-Sabate (2010))

.82 – .02


Leadership effectiveness (group performance;Delgado-Garcia andDe La Fuente-Sabate (2010))

.86 – .17

Fossedal (1984) Sample1: 20

Negative affect (The State-TraitAnxiety Inventory; Spielberger,et al. (1970)

Leadership effectiveness (LeadershipEffectiveness and Adaptability Questionnaire;Hersey and Blanchard (1981))

– – .06

Sample2: 21

Negative affect (The State-TraitAnxiety Inventory;Spielberger et al. 1970)

Leadership effectiveness (LeadershipEffectiveness and Adaptability Questionnaire;Hersey and Blanchard (1981))

– – − .07

George (1995) 53 Positive affect (PANAS; Watsonet al. (1988))

Transactional leadership (Podsakoff,Todor, Grover, and Huber (1984))

.91 .96 .31

Leadership effectiveness (group performance;George (1995))

.92 .41

Gorman (1975) 80 Negative affect (The State-TraitAnxiety Inventory; Spielbergeret al. (1970)

Leadership (Leader Behavior DescriptionQuestionnaire; Stogdill (1963))

– – .15

Li (2013) 76 Negative affect (PANAS; Watsonet al. (1988))

Leadership (Ethical Leadership Scale; Brown,Treviño, and Harrison (2005))

.90 .93 − .19

Melwani, Mueller,and Overbeck(2012)

Sample1: 100

Positive affect (viewer ratings) Leadership emergence (viewer ratings) – .98 .21

Negative affect (viewer ratings) – − .01Sample2: 51

Positive affect(group member ratings)

Leadership emergence (group member ratings) .35

Negative affect(group member ratings)

– – .04

Sample3: 212

Positive affect(group member ratings)

Leadership emergence (group member ratings) .43

Negative affect (group memberratings)

– – − .15

–Murensky (2000) 90 Positive affect (NEO-PI-R; Costa

and McCrae (1992))Leadership effectiveness (Balanced Scorecard;Murensky (2000))

– – .00

90 Negative affect (NEO-PI-R; Costaand McCrae (1992))

Leadership effectiveness (Balanced Scorecard;Murensky (2000))

– – − .06


Table 1 (continued)

Citation N Trait affect measure Leadership measure Reliability oftrait affectmeasure

Reliability ofleadershipmeasure

r

Nemanick (2000) 72 Positive affect (Trait Mood 4D;Huelsman, Nemanick, and Munz(1998))

Leadership (LMX; Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995);Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire;Stogdill (1963))

.92 .92 .56

72 Negative affect (Trait Mood 4D;Huelsman et al. (1998))

Leadership (LMX; Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995);Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire;Stogdill (1963))

.85 .92 − .39

Peterson, Walumbwa,Byron, andMyrowitz (2009)

105 Positive affect (hope scale;Snyder et al. (1991))

Transformational leadership (MLQ;Bass and Avolio (2004))

.76 .84 .41

Popper and Amit(2009)

286 Negative affect (Trait AnxietyInventory; Spielberger et al.(1970))

Leadership (Leadership DevelopmentQuestionnaire; Avolio and Gibbons (1988))

.88 .70 − .24

Renehan (2007) 162 Positive affect (The PsycHapInventory; Fordyce (1986))

Transformational leadership (MLQ;Bass and Avolio (2000))

– – .21

Transactional leadership (MLQ;Bass and Avolio (2000))

– – − .03

Rubin et al. (2005) 145 Positive affect (PANAS;Watson et al. (1988))

Transformational leadership(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Bommer (1996))

.84 .92 .29

Transactional leadership(Podsakoff et al. (1984))

.91 .12

Leadership effectiveness (firm performance)145 Negative affect (PANAS;

Watson et al. (1988))Transformational leadership(Podsakoff et al. (1996))

.75 .92 .00

Transactional leadership(Podsakoff et al. (1984))

.91 − .03

Schaubroeck andShao (2012)

833 Negative affect (frequency ofdisplays of anger and sadness)

Leadership (Leader Competence;Liden and Maslyn (1998))

.95 .97 − .30

Schaumberg andFlynn (2012)

Sample2: 144

Negative affect (shame andguilt)

Leadership emergence (group member ratings) .95 .96 − .04

Sample3: 139

Negative affect (shame andguilt)

Leadership effectiveness (leadershipperformance ratings)

.85 .93 .11

Staw and Barsade(1993)

111 Positive affect (single-itempositive affect measure andthe well-being subscale of theMPQ; Tellegen (1982))

Leadership emergence(Peterson et al. (2009))

.74 .90 .20

Wang (2011) 239 Positive affect (Bono et al.(2007))

Transformational leadership(MLQ 5 short form; Bass and Avolio (1995))

.89 .95 .69

Leadership effectiveness (group performance;Wang (2011))

.95 .22

239 Negative affect (Bono et al.(2007))

Transformational leadership(MLQ 5 short form; Bass and Avolio (1995))

.85 .95 − .43

Leadership effectiveness (group performance;Wang (2011))

.95 − .11

Williams (2009) 135 Positive affect (PANAS-X;Watson and Clark (1999))

Transformational leadership(MLQ-5X; Avolio and Bass (2002))

.87 .94 .20

Negative affect (PANAS-X;Watson and Clark (1999))

Transformational leadership(MLQ-5X; Avolio and Bass (2002))

.89 .94 − .13

Young (1996) 566 Negative affect (SocialAnxiousness Scale; Young(1996))

Leadership emergence (CPI Managerial PotentialScale; Gough (1984))

.89 .67 − .07

Leadership effectiveness (360-degree feedbackassessment)

.46 − .44

Note. N = sample size; r = observed correlation.


Two of the authors independently coded all included studies and the mean agreement between the two coders was 94%.Discrepancies between coders were resolved by discussing and reviewing the information until consensus was reached. All codedinformation from the primary studies included in the current meta-analysis is presented in Table 1.

Meta-analytic procedures

Analyseswere conducted usingHunter and Schmidt's (2004)meta-analytic procedures. Correctionsweremade for sampling errorand unreliability in both the predictor and the criterion using artifact distributions (mean internal consistencies: leader trait positiveaffect= .86, leader trait negative affect= .89, leadership= .91, transformational leadership behaviors= .90, transactional leadershipbehaviors = .93, leadership effectiveness = .88, and leadership emergence = .84).

Table 2Meta-analytic correlation matrix.

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Positive affect2. Negative affect − .22a

k studies 12N total observations 4457

3. Extraversion .62a − .30a

k studies 12 12N total observations 4457 4457

4. Neuroticism − .40a .70a − .19b

k studies 12 12 710N total observations 4457 4457 440,440

5. Leadership .37 − .22 .31c − .24c

k studies 20 21 60 48N total observations 2480 3765 11,705 8025

6. Leadership effectiveness .33 − .24 .24c − .22c –k studies 9 9 23 18N total observations 903 1225 – –

7. Transformational leadership .44 − .18 .24d − .17d – .64e

k studies 11 6 20 18 27N total observations 1569 1056 3692 3380 5415

8. Leadership emergence .28 − .13 .33c − .24c

k studies 4 6 37 30N total observations 474 1359 – –

Note: All correlations are corrected for unreliability in both the predictor and the criterion variables. The subscripts indicate the source of themeta-analytic correlations,which are as follows: aWatson et al. (1999), bOnes (1993), cJudge et al. (2002), dBono and Judge (2004), e Judge and Piccolo (2004). All meta-analytic estimates thatappear without a subscript are original analyses.


In order to estimate the unique effect of leader trait positive and negative affect on leadership after controlling for leader extraver-sion and neuroticism, a meta-analytic correlationmatrix was constructed (Viswesvaran & Ones, 1995) usingmeta-analytic estimatesfrom the current study combined with several previously published meta-analytic estimates. The meta-analytic correlation matrix ispresented in Table 2. All includedmeta-analytic correlations were corrected for unreliability in the predictor and criterion. Previouslypublished estimates of the relationship between trait affect and personalitywere taken fromWatson et al. (1999), aswas the relation-ship between trait positive affect and trait negative affect. Because Watson et al. (1999) did not report corrected correlations, theobserved correlations reported in Watson et al. were corrected for unreliability using the trait positive and negative affect artifactdistributions constructed in the current study (i.e., mean internal consistency of positive affect = .86; mean internal consistency ofnegative affect = .89) and the extraversion and neuroticism artifact distributions reported in Viswesvaran and Ones (2000, p. 231;unit-weighted internal consistency reliability for extraversion and neuroticism = .78). The meta-analytic intercorrelation betweenextraversion and neuroticism was taken from Ones (1993). The meta-analytic effect sizes for personality and the broad, inclusiveleadership criterion were taken from Judge et al. (2002) and the meta-analytic correlations between extraversion and neuroticismand transformational leadership were taken from Bono and Judge (2004). Effect sizes between neuroticism and extraversion andboth leadership emergence and leadership effectivenesswere taken from Judge et al. (2002). Lastly, themeta-analytic intercorrelationbetween leadership effectiveness and transformational leadership was extracted from Judge and Piccolo (2004).

Correlations between leader trait affect and leadership were those estimated as part of the current study. We used the minimummeta-analytic N to run regression analyses in order to be conservative in estimating the significance of our effects (i.e., moreconservative than using the harmonic mean N), which included testing (a) the incremental validity of leader trait positive affectover extraversion in predicting leadership criteria, (b) the incremental validity of leader trait negative affect over neuroticism inpredicting leadership criteria, and (c) the incremental validity of both leader trait positive and negative affect over extraversionand neuroticism in predicting leadership criteria. We also conducted relative importance analyses (Johnson, 2000; Johnson &LeBreton, 2004) to determine which construct (i.e., leader extraversion, neuroticism, positive affect, or negative affect) explainedthe most variance in each leadership criterion.

In order to examine the extent to which transformational leadership mediated the relationship between leader trait affect andleadership effectiveness, Figs. 1 and 2 were estimated via multiple regression using the minimum N of the meta-analytic correlationmatrix as the sample size (Fig. 1: minimum N= 1582; Fig. 2: minimum N= 1056). The significance of the indirect effect was deter-mined using a 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval (Preacher & Selig, 2012).

To examine the effect of publication bias in the currentmeta-analytic database, we conducted a trim-and-fill analysis on observedcorrelations using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Version 2.0 (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins & Rothstein, 2005). Results from the trim-and-fill analyses indicated there was no evidence of publication bias in the relationships between leader affectivity and leadership.However, because a substantial portion of the studies included in the meta-analysis were unpublished studies, we report effectsizes for unpublished and published studies to compare the strength of the trait affect-leadership relationship across both types of pri-mary studies.

Table 3Meta-analytic results for leader trait positive affect, trait negative affect, and leadership.

Variable k N r ρ SDρ 95% CI 80% CV % variance

Lower Upper Lower Upper

LeadershipTrait positive affect 20 2480 .33 .37 .20 .28 .46 .11 .63 16.56Promotion positive 7 773 .28 .33 .14 .22 .44 .15 .51 35.17Prevention positive 2 143 .15 .17 .40 − .34 .68 − .34 .68 9.94

Trait negative affect 21 3765 − .19 − .22 .16 − .29 − .15 − .42 − .02 21.23Promotion negative 8 1425 − .26 − .29 .19 − .42 − .16 − .53 − .05 14.45Prevention negative 10 2249 − .15 − .18 .14 − .27 − .09 − .36 .01 21.95

Publication typeTrait positive affect

Published 14 1623 .29 .32 .10 .26 .39 .20 .45 49.85Unpublished 6 857 .41 .47 .31 .25 .70 .07 .88 6.32

Trait negative affectPublished 10 2288 − .15 − .17 .14 − .26 − .08 − .35 .01 21.41Unpublished 11 1477 − .26 − .30 .16 − .39 − .20 − .50 − .10 26.26

Source of leadershipSelf-rated leadership

Trait positive affect 6 775 .34 .40 .23 .23 .57 .11 .70 14.56Trait negative affect 6 658 − .07 − .08 .17 − .22 .06 − .30 .14 28.02

Other-rated leadershipTrait positive affect 16 1777 .33 .37 .19 .28 .47 .13 .61 22.13Trait negative affect 15 2551 − .19 − .21 .15 − .29 − .13 − .40 − .02 24.59

Leadership effectivenessTrait positive affect 9 903 .28 .33 .19 .21 .45 .09 .57 24.58Ratings of effectiveness 3 334 .31 .36 .27 .08 .64 .02 .71 12.21Group performance 6 569 .27 .31 .12 .20 .42 .16 .46 47.74

Trait negative affect 9 1225 − .20 − .24 .27 − .40 − .09 − .59 .11 13.63Ratings of effectiveness 7 935 − .24 − .31 .31 − .50 − .13 − .71 .08 13.26Group performance 2 290 − .09 − .10 .08 − .22 .08 − .16 .03 59.43

Leadership emergenceTrait positive affect 4 474 .24 .28 .01 .19 .36 .27 .29 99.61Trait negative affect 6 1359 − .11 − .13 .05 − .19 − .06 − .20 − .06 67.88

Transformational leadershipTrait positive affect 11 1582 .38 .45 .19 .34 .56 .20 .70 16.53Trait negative affect 6 1056 − .16 − .18 .18 − .31 − .04 − .40 .05 18.14

Transactional leadershipTrait positive affect 3 360 .08 .09 .08 − .04 .23 − .01 .20 61.08

Note: k = the number of independent samples; N = sample size; r = sample size-weighted mean uncorrected correlation; ρ = mean corrected correlation(corrected for unreliability in the predictor and the criterion); SDρ = standard deviation of the corrected correlation; 95% CI = 95% confidence interval constructedaround ρ; 95% CV = 95% credibility interval constructed around ρ; % var accounted for = percent of variance accounted for by sampling error and corrected artifacts.


Results

Table 3 displays the estimated meta-analytic relationships between leader trait affect and leadership, including the narrowerleadership criteria of transformational leadership, transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness. Weagain note that the broad, inclusive leadership criterion represents a compound construct that includes a constellation of leadershipbehaviors and styles and therefore, while we present results correlating leader trait affect with this broad criterion, we note that thenarrower leadership criteria may be of greater conceptual value. Supporting Hypothesis 1, leader trait positive affect exhibited apositive relationship with the broad, inclusive leadership criterion (ρ = .37; k = 20, N = 2480, 95% CI: .28, .46), as well as withthe more narrow criteria of leadership effectiveness (ρ = .33; k = 9, N = 903, 95% CI: .21, .45), leadership emergence (ρ = .28;k=4, N=474, 95% CI: .19, .36), transformational leadership (ρ= .45; k=11, N= 1582, 95% CI: .34, .56), and transactional leader-ship (ρ= .09; k= 3, N= 360, 95% CI:− .04, .23). However, the confidence interval for the relationship between positive affect andtransactional leadership included zero (i.e., the relationship is in the expected direction, but is not significant). RegardingHypothesis 2, moderator analyses show that the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership was strongerfor trait promotion positive affect (ρ = .33; k = 7, N = 773, 95% CI: .22, .44) than trait prevention positive affect (ρ = .17; k = 2,N= 143, 95% CI: − .34, .68). However, the prevention positive affect analyses are based on a small number of independent samplesand the confidence intervals between the two relationships are overlapping. Thus, this finding should be viewed as tentative andsubject to future replication and verification.

Supporting Hypothesis 3, leader trait negative affect displayed consistently negative relationships with the broad, inclusiveleadership criterion (ρ=− .22; k=21, N= 3765, 95% CI:− .29,− .15), as well as with themore narrow criteria of leadership effec-tiveness (ρ=− .24; k=9,N= 1225, 95% CI:− .40,− .09), leadership emergence (ρ=− .13; k=6,N= 1359, 95% CI:− .19,− .06),

Table 4Incremental validity of leader trait positive and negative affect predicting leadership over extraversion and neuroticism.

Predictor Leadership Transformational leadership Leadership emergence Leadership effectiveness

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Β R2 β R2 ΔR2 β R2 β R2 ΔR2 β R2 β R2 ΔR2 β R2 β R2 ΔR2

Extraversion .31⁎ .13⁎ .24⁎ − .06⁎ .33⁎ .25⁎ .24⁎ .06Positive affect .29⁎ .49⁎ .12⁎ .29⁎

.096⁎ .148⁎ .052⁎ .058⁎ .205⁎ .147⁎ .109⁎ .118⁎ .009⁎ .058⁎ .111⁎ .053⁎

Neuroticism − .24⁎ − .17⁎ − .17⁎ − .09⁎ − .24⁎ − .29⁎ − .22⁎ − .10⁎

Negative affect − .10⁎ − .12⁎ .07⁎ − .17⁎

.058⁎ .063⁎ .005⁎ .029⁎ .036⁎ .007⁎ .058⁎ .060⁎ .002⁎ .048⁎ .063⁎ .015⁎

Extraversion .27⁎ .11⁎ .22⁎ − .14⁎ .30⁎ .33⁎ .21⁎ .00Neuroticism − .19⁎ − .05 − .13⁎ .19⁎ − .18⁎ − .31⁎ − .18⁎ .04Positive affect .26⁎ .56⁎ .01 .30⁎

Negative affect − .10⁎ − .23⁎ .18⁎ − .20⁎

.130⁎ .163⁎ .033⁎ .074⁎ .229⁎ .155⁎ .142⁎ .157⁎ .015⁎ .089⁎ .139⁎ .050⁎

Note. Standardized regression coefficients.MinimumN for leadership: positive affect/extraversion = 2480; negative affect/neuroticism = 3765; positive affect/negative affect/extraversion/neuroticism = 2480. MinimumN for transformational leadership: positive affect/extraversion = 1582; negative affect/neuroticism = 1056; positive affect/negative affect/extraversion/neuroticism = 1056. Minimum N for leadership emergence: positive affect/extraversion = 570; negative affect/neuroticism = 1359; positive affect/negative affect/extraversion/neuroticism = 570. MinimumN for leadership effectiveness: positive affect/extraversion = 903; negative affect/neuroticism = 1225; positive affect/negative af-fect/extraversion/neuroticism = 903.⁎ p b .05.

568D.L.Joseph

etal./TheLeadership

Quarterly

26(2015)

558–577


and transformational leadership (ρ= − .18; k= 6, N= 1056, 95% CI: − .31, − .04). A lack of available literature prevented us fromestimating the relationship between leader trait negative affect and transactional leadership. RegardingHypothesis 4, a comparison oftrait promotion and prevention negative affect results indicated that prevention negative affect is less negatively related to leadership(ρ=− .18; k=10,N= 2249, 95% CI:− .27,− .09) than promotion negative affect (ρ=− .29; k=8,N= 1425, 95% CI:− .42,− .16)and the confidence intervals between these two relationships demonstrate only minimal overlap, which counters our original hy-pothesis. Although our original hypothesis argued that promotion-oriented negative affect would be associated with more effectiveleadership outcomes than prevention-oriented negative affect due to the motivational properties of promotion-oriented affect(e.g., followers may be more motivated to address leader anger than sadness via changes in behaviors or performance), our resultssuggest that the potential motivation properties of these emotions may not offset their damage to leader–follower relationshipsand/or group performance.

Several methodological moderators were examined as part of the current study, including the publication status of the primarystudy, the operationalization of leadership effectiveness, and the source of leadership ratings (i.e., self vs. other-report). Results ofthese analyses are presented in Table 3 as moderators of the broad leadership criterion. Although unpublished studies displayedstronger effects than published studies, confidence intervals around effect sizes from published and unpublished studies overlapped,suggesting these differences were not significant (consistent with our trim-and-fill analyses, which showed no evidence of publica-tion bias). Upon comparing the relationship between leader trait affectivity and leadership effectiveness across the two types of lead-ership effectiveness measures (i.e., ratings of leadership effectiveness and measures of group performance), results also suggest nosignificant differences in effect sizes across leadership effectiveness operationalizations for leader trait positive affect (ratings of effec-tiveness: ρ=.36, k=3,N=334, 95% CI: .08, .64;measure of groupperformance: ρ=.31, k=6,N=569, 95% CI: .20, .42). In contrast,the relationship between leader trait negative affect and leadership effectiveness appeared to be more negative when leadership ef-fectiveness was operationalized with ratings of leader effectiveness rather than with group performance measures (ratings of effec-tiveness: ρ = − .31, k = 7, N = 935, 95% CI: − .50, − .13; measure of group performance: ρ = − .10, k = 2, N = 290, 95% CI:− .22, .08); however, we note that the effect size involving leader negative affect and group measures of performance is based on asmall amount of primary data and should be interpretedwith caution. Upon examining the relationship between leader trait affectiv-ity and leadership as moderated by the source of leadership ratings, the results suggest no differences across self- and follower-ratedleadership correlatedwith leader trait positive affect (self-rated leadership: ρ= .40, k=6,N=775, 95% CI: .23, .57; other-rated lead-ership: ρ= .37, k=16,N= 1777, 95% CI: .28, .47) and larger, but also non-significant differences for leader trait negative affect (self-rated leadership: ρ=− .08, k= 6, N= 658, 95% CI: − .22, .06; other-rated leadership: ρ=− .21, k= 15, N= 2551, 95% CI: − .29,− .13). In general, our moderator analyses suggest minimal influences of the source of leadership ratings and operationalization ofleadership effectiveness on the estimated meta-analytic effects.

In order to examine the extent towhich the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership is distinct from the influence ofrelated personality traits, we ran themultiple regressions presented in Table 4, in whichwe estimated the unique effect of leader traitpositive affect over extraversion, leader trait negative affect over neuroticism, and both leader trait positive and negative affect overextraversion and neuroticism for each of four leadership criteria (i.e., leadership, transformational leadership, leadership emergence,and leadership effectiveness). It appears that leader trait positive affect explains a significant amount of unique variance above andbeyond leader extraversion when predicting broad leadership (ΔR2 = .05, p b .05), transformational leadership (ΔR2 = .15,p b .05), leadership emergence (ΔR2 = .01, p b .05), and leadership effectiveness (ΔR2 = .05, p b .05). Results of the relative impor-tance analyses corresponding to our incremental validity results are presented in Table 5. The results indicate that a majority of thetotal variance explained in our broad leadership criteria (63.8% of R2), transformational leadership (84.8% of R2), and leadership effec-tiveness (73.1% of R2) is attributable to leader trait positive affect rather than leader extraversion. However, the opposite pattern wasfound for leadership emergence, with extraversion predictingmore variance than positive affect (extraversion: 62.9% of ΔR2; positiveaffect: 37.1% of ΔR2).

In comparison, leader trait negative affect appears to significantly predict broad leadership (ΔR2 = .01, p b .05), transformationalleadership (ΔR2 = .01, p b .05), leadership emergence (ΔR2 = .002, p b .05), and leadership effectiveness (ΔR2 = .02, p b .05) aboveand beyond leader neuroticism, although these effects have minimal practical significance (i.e., only an additional 0.2–2% of the

Table 5Relative importance analyses.

Predictor Leadership Transformationalleadership

Leadership emergence Leadership effectiveness

Raw relativeweights

% of R2 Raw relativeweights



% of R2

Extraversion .053 36.2% .030 15.2% .074 62.9% .030 26.9%Positive affect .094 63.8% .166 84.8% .044 37.1% .081 73.1%

Neuroticism .036 57.3% .016 45.2% .051 83.7% .027 42.7%Negative affect .027 42.7% .020 54.8% .010 16.3% .036 57.3%

Extraversion .046 27.9% .026 12.1% .077 48.8% .023 16.5%Neuroticism .021 12.9% .011 5.2% .041 26.0% .016 11.5%Positive affect .078 47.5% .161 74.0% .031 19.6% .069 49.9%Negative affect .019 11.7% .019 8.8% .009 5.6% .031 22.1%


variance in these leadership criteria is explained by leader trait negative affect). In contrast to leader trait positive affect, the relativecontribution of leader trait negative affect to the prediction of broad leadership (42.7% of R2), transformational leadership (54.8% of R2),leadership emergence (16.3%ofR2), and leadership effectiveness (57.3%ofR2) appears to be similar to or less than that of leaderneuroticism.

In examining the unique effect of positive and negative leader trait affect together on leadership, it appears that leader trait affectexplains an additional 3% of the variance in the broad leadership criterion, 16% of the variance in transformational leadership, 2% of thevariance in leadership emergence, and 5% of the variance in leadership effectiveness after controlling for leader extraversion andneuroticism, supporting Hypothesis 5. Results of the corresponding relative importance analyses suggest that leader positive affectis the most important contributor to the explanation of three of the leadership criteria (broad leadership criterion: 47.5% of R2;transformational leadership: 74.0% of R2; leadership effectiveness: 49.9% of R2). However, extraversion explained the largest propor-tion of variance in leadership emergence (48.8% of R2), followed by neuroticism (26.0% of R2). This indicates that leadership emer-gence is better predicted by extraversion and neuroticism than leader trait affect, whereas the other leadership criteria are betterpredicted by leader trait affect than extraversion and neuroticism.

In order to examine the extent towhich the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness operates throughtransformational leadership behaviors (i.e., Hypothesis 6), the mediational models in Figs. 1 and 2 were estimated with multipleregression and the indirect effect of leader trait affect on leadership effectiveness was tested with a 95% Monte Carlo confidenceinterval (Preacher & Selig, 2012). Results indicate that the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leadership effectivenessis fully mediated by transformational leadership behaviors (i.e., the direct effect of leader trait positive affect on leadership effective-ness was not significant and the 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval of the indirect effect excluded zero; 95% CI: .23, .32; Fig. 1). Incomparison, the relationship between leader trait negative affect and leadership effectiveness appeared to be only partially mediatedby transformational leadership behaviors (i.e., the direct effect of leader trait negative affect on leadership effectiveness was signifi-cant and the 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval of the indirect effect excluded zero; 95% CI:− .15,− .08; Fig. 2).

In summary, our results suggest that leader trait positive affect is positively related to a broad leadership criterion, transformation-al leadership, transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness, while leader trait negative affect isnegatively related to a broad leadership criterion, transformational leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness.These effects appear to be unique from the effects of leader extraversion and neuroticism on leadership, and results from relativeimportance analyses highlight the dominant role of leader trait positive affect in the prediction of transformational leadership. Finally,results of the current paper also suggest that the effect of leader trait positive affect on leadership effectiveness operates entirely viatransformational leadership behaviors (Fig. 1), whereas the effect of leader trait negative affect on leadership effectiveness is onlypartially mediated by transformational leadership behaviors (Fig. 2).

Discussion

Ourmeta-analytic synthesis of the relationship between leader trait affectivity and leadership provides support for the importanceof affect and emotions in understanding leadership processes. Our analyses show that leader trait affectivity, particularly leader traitpositive affect, plays a significant role in predicting leadership criteria. Furthermore, these relationships are unlikely to be due tocommon rater effects, as they are of comparable magnitude when others' ratings of leadership are used as the dependent variable.Our results also demonstrate that the impact of leader trait affectivity cannot simply be explained by its shared variance with otherpersonality traits (i.e., extraversion and neuroticism), as leader trait affectivity explained a significant amount of variance beyondleader extraversion and neuroticism in the prediction of a broad leadership criterion, transformational leadership, leadershipemergence, and leadership effectiveness.

Although leader trait affectivity displayed a modest unique contribution in the prediction of the broad leadership criterion,leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness (i.e., 0.2%–5% of the variancewas uniquely explained by leader trait affect), leadertrait positive affect contributed a substantial portion of unique variance to the prediction of transformational leadership (15%),echoing prior scholars' arguments that transformational leadership is inherently affective (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000). In addition, ourrelative weights analyses show an interesting pattern of effects that varies across leadership criteria. Leader trait positive affect andextraversion explain almost equal amounts of variance in leadership, but over 80% of the variance explained in transformational lead-ership and nearly three-quarters of the variance explained in leadership effectiveness can be attributed to leader trait positive affect.Leadership emergence was the exception, with more variance being explained by extraversion and neuroticism than leader traitaffect. We speculate that this may be because the motivational properties and benefits of leader positive affect may not be apparentuntil followers are actively striving towards their goals (e.g., inspiring others in the face of obstacles, promoting creative solutions),while aspects of extraversion that are not affective in nature (e.g., dominance, sociability) are likely more salient and central topeople's schemas of what makes someone “leader-like” (e.g., dynamic, sensitive; Epitropaki & Martin, 2004). Thus, for three of ourfour leadership criteria, leader trait affect (especially leader trait positive affect) appears to play a critical role in leadership.

These findings also have implications for future research and practice. First, these results suggest that existing measures ofextraversion are not highly saturated with positive emotional content. Debate still exists regarding what constitutes the core ofextraversion, with some researchers positing that it is reward sensitivity (i.e., positive emotions; Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh & Shao,2000) and others positing that it is desire for social attention (Ashton, Lee & Paunonen, 2002). Although positive emotions areincluded as a facet of extraversion in the NEO model (Costa & McCrae, 1992), it may be that aggregating across extraversion facetsdilutes the unique predictive power of positive emotions or that items involving positive emotions are not systematically includedin other measures of extraversion. This suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to the facets that are included in extraversionmeasures and how different facets of extraversion are weighted when selecting leaders (cf. Judge & Bono, 2000). Measures of


extraversion that lack sufficient emotional contentmay need to be supplementedwith an additionalmeasure of trait positive affect tomaximize predictive validity when leadership criteria are of primary interest.

Second, ourmediation analyses show that leader trait positive affect influences leadership effectiveness through transformationalleadership behaviors. Thus, leaders high in trait positive affect are more effective because they either more frequently engage intransformational leadership behaviors (i.e., possess a vision, pay attention to the unique needs of followers, challenge followers tothink in unconventional ways, and inspire followers to put forth effort) or are perceived to be more transformational (i.e., leaderpositive affect imbues followers with “rose-colored glasses” that may inflate perceptions of transformational leadership regardlessof actual transformational behaviors). These findings are in linewith Fredrickson (2001), which argues that positive emotions broad-en the thought-action repertoire of individuals, opening one up to larger numbers of available cognitions and behaviors. In contrast,our results indicate that transformational leadership behaviors only partially mediate the relationship between leader trait negativeaffect and leadership effectiveness. Our speculation is that leader trait negative affect negatively impacts leadership effectiveness dueto a reduced likelihood in engaging in transformational leadership behaviors (and perhaps, transactional leadership behaviors, whichwe are unable to test in ourmodel due to insufficient prior studies on this relationship), butmay also decrease leadership effectivenessvia a greater likelihood of engaging in more ineffective/destructive leadership behaviors. In support of our argument, prior researchhas found that leader neuroticism is positively related to follower perceptions of abusive supervision (Taylor, 2012) and leadertrait anger is positively related to follower perceptions of leader petty tyranny (Kant, Skogstad, Torsheim & Einarsen, 2013).

Limitations

Although our study serves as a comprehensive synthesis of the literature to date, it is not without limitations. First, although ourstudy draws on well-established links between trait and state affect (e.g., Watson, 1988) and the well-accepted perspective ofpersonality traits as a density distribution of affective states (Fleeson, 2001), we did not cumulate relationshipswith leader state affectin our study, due to lack of available primary data, nor did we directly assess its precise location in the leadership influence process.Similarly, althoughwe draw on existing research demonstratingmood contagion effects between leaders and followers in generatingour hypotheses (e.g., Bono & Ilies, 2006), we are unable to directly test the role of follower affective states as mediating mechanismsbetween leader trait and state affect and leadership outcomes, given insufficient data to cumulate these relationships meta-analytically. Another limitation of our study is our inability to speak precisely to the role of discrete trait emotions (e.g., anger, sadness,happiness, and hope) in leadership. Our results suggest that leader promotion and prevention affective traits may have differentialrelationships with leadership, such that positive promotion-oriented affect demonstrates a stronger positive relationship withleadership and negative promotion-oriented affect demonstrates a stronger negative relationship with leadership. However, theseresults should be considered tentative given the small number of studies examining discrete trait emotions in the literature. Weencourage future leadership researchers to continue to explore the role of discrete emotions as they may have unique predictivevalue. For example, recently, Spence, Brown, Keeping, and Lian (2014) found that gratitude predicted helping behaviors at workabove and beyond positive affect.

Another limitation involves the lack of longitudinal data in ourmeta-analysis onwhich themediationalmodels presented in Figs. 1and 2 are based. Despite our empirical support for transformational leadership as the pathway through which trait affect influencesleadership effectiveness, we cannot draw strong causal inferences about the sequential nature of this pathway with the currentcross-sectional meta-analytic data. Although we tested an alternative model in which trait affect served as the mediator of therelationship between transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness and found that trait positive affect did not mediatethe relationship (i.e., the 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval of the indirect effect included zero; 95% CI: − .001, .05), we did findsome support for an alternative model in which negative affect partially mediated the relationship between transformational leader-ship and leadership effectiveness (i.e., the direct effect from transformational leadership to leadership effectiveness was significantand the 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval of the indirect effect excluded zero; 95% CI: .01, .03). Therefore, although it seems the-oretically appropriate for a stable personality trait such as trait affect to be related to one's display ofmore transformational behaviorsrather than the converse (i.e., personality is likely to cause behavior more so than the reverse), future research is needed to confirmthe empirical findings of the current paper with longitudinal data.

In addition to the need for longitudinal data to test the mediational models presented in the current paper, we note that withoutadditional data, we cannot tease apart the exact nature of this pathway. On one hand, it may be that leaders higher on trait positiveaffect truly engage in more transformational leadership behaviors, leading to more effective group and leadership outcomes.Alternatively, it is equally plausible that leaders high on trait positive affect influence their followers' affective states (i.e., viaemotional contagion processes causing followers to experience greater positive affect) and these affective states bias followers'reporting of leader behaviors (i.e., followers only perceive leaders to be more transformational; cf. Brown & Keeping, 2005).Hansbrough, Lord, and Schyns (2014) argue that followers high on positive affect, who are more sensitive to reward cues in theenvironment, may bemore likely to remember positive feedback and view neutral feedback as positive and therefore, are more likelyto selectively recall and report positive leadership experiences and behaviors. They also argue similar processes are likely at play forleader trait negative affect, leading to more negative ratings of leadership behaviors by followers. However, note that our results alsoshow that the relationship between leader trait positive affect and leader effectiveness is similar when using either follower ratings ofleader effectiveness or indices of group performance as the criterion. Therefore, our data suggest that even if the reason for the linkbetween leader trait affect and transformational leadership behaviors is due to biased follower perceptions of leader behaviors, leadertrait affect is still related to indicators of leadership effectiveness that are not susceptible to these types of follower rating biases


(i.e., measures of group performance). This may be because followers who perceive their leaders to bemore transformational, wheth-er accurately or inaccurately, feel more motivated and put forth more effort in their performance, leading to better group outcomes.

Finally, although we were able to examine several moderators of the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership(i.e., self vs. other ratings of leadership criteria and type of leadership criteria), the relatively small number of studies in some ofour analyses prohibited us from examining other potential moderators. For example, we were unable to conduct analyses of thepotential moderating effect of self vs. other ratings of leadership criteria nested within each type of leadership criteria(i.e., leadership effectiveness, leadership emergence, transformational leadership behaviors) due to a lack of studies. Furthermore,we were unable to meta-analytically replicate moderating effects suggested by previous primary studies. For example, Eberly andFong (2013) previously found that the degree towhich leaders and followers are interdependentmoderates the relationship betweenleader emotions and follower outcomes, such that followerswho aremore interdependentwith their leader aremore sensitive to theemotional displays of their leaders. In general, wewould like to draw attention to the small number of studies included in some of ourmeta-analytic effect sizes as a call for future research in this area. Although the affective revolution is now over ten years old (Barsadeet al., 2003), the insufficient data available to test self vs. other ratings of leadership within each leadership criterion and themoderating role of leader–follower interdependence should further emphasize the need for future work in this area.

Future research would also benefit from reporting relationships between affect and facets of transformational (i.e., idealizedinfluence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration) and transactional leadership(i.e., contingent reward, active management by exception, passive management by exception), as we were unable to meta-analyzefacet-level effects in the current study due to a lack of primary data. Recently, van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) have argued thatone of themajor flawswith the transformational leadership literature is that although it posits a multidimensional construct, it rarelyexamines the dimensions separately. Although the structure of transformational leadership is still under some debate, Saboe, Taing,Way, and Johnson (2015) argue that the different models all converge on and assess behaviors associated with providing supportand emphasizing group goals. Saboe et al. further found that the mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships betweenthese two transformational leadership dimensions and workplace outcomes (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors, turnoverintentions) differed, highlighting their distinctiveness. Conceptually, it appears that leader trait affect may be more strongly relatedto provision of support to followers than to emphasis on group goals. Therefore, we encourage future work to explore the possibilityof differential relationships between leader trait affect and dimensions of transformational leadership. Similarly, prior work hasdemonstrated that the dimensions of transactional leadership are differentially related to outcomes (e.g., well-being; Skakon,Nielsen, Borg & Guzman, 2010), and because two of the three studies included in our meta-analytic estimate of the relationshipbetween transactional leadership and leader trait affect only assessed contingent reward (the third study captured all threedimensions of transactional leadership), future research would benefit from examining whether our estimate that largely reflectsthe contingent reward dimension varies across other dimensions of transactional leadership.

Future research directions

Beyond the general need for additional empirical work on the relationship between leadership and affect, the present study alsohighlights a number of promising future research avenues involving the conceptualization and measurement of affect. Traditionally,researchers have focused on trait affect (i.e., typical levels of different types of emotional experiences), but a number of new affectiveconstructs that focus on affective variation have begun to appear in the literature. Kuppens, Van Mechelen, Nezlek, Dossche, andTimmermans (2007) introduced the constructs of affect pulse (i.e., inter-individual differences in intra-individual affect intensityvariability) and spin (i.e., inter-individual differences in intra-individual affect quality variability) and showed that they are notisomorphic with trait affect or existing personality traits (i.e., Big Five). Recently, Beal, Trougakos, Weiss, and Dalal (2013) examinedthe role of affect spin in theworkplace and found that customer serviceworkers whowere higher on affect spinweremore reactive toemotional demands at work, but also less fatigued by them. To our knowledge, no research to date has examined leaders' affect pulseor spin. Given the important role of leader trait affect shown in our current study, future research should examine whether leadertraits surrounding affect variability also play a key role in leadership processes, either independently or interactively with leadertrait affect.

Increasingly, scholars are studying affect and emotions from a dynamic perspective (e.g., Eid & Diener, 1999). This often requireslongitudinal designs examining variation in emotional experiences across time (e.g., daily diary, experience samplingmethodologies).Although there is some research linking variation in leader behaviors and follower emotions (e.g., Bono, Foldes, Vinson&Muros, 2007;Tims, Bakker & Xanthopoulou, 2011), less research has focused on examining dynamic co-variation in leaders' affect and behaviors.Thus, we encourage future research to examine within-person relationships between leader state positive and negative affect andleadership behaviors to complement the research we summarize here on between-person relationships of leader trait positive andnegative affect and leadership. Furthermore, we encourage future researchers to also examine the interplay between leaders' stateand trait affect in predicting leadership criteria. It may be that leaders who are high on trait positive affect may be more likely toengage in effective leadership behaviors in reaction to a high positive affective state as they may be more sensitive to the “rewards”of positive affective states than leaders who are low on trait positive affect (Lucas et al., 2000).

In the studies included in this meta-analysis, leader trait affect was almost exclusively measured with leader self-reports, whichlikely reflect genuinely felt emotions. However, because leaders may have to modulate their felt emotions via surface acting inorder to meet the display rules required by their organizations and to successfully manage the emotional demands of their roles(Humphrey, 2012), it is possible that the current review of (primarily) self-reported affect and leadership may not generalize tothe relationship between surface-acted emotions and leadership. Therefore, additional work may be necessary to capture the extent


to which surface-acted emotions (i.e., displayed emotions, possibly captured through other-reports of leader affect) are related toleadership. Although a relatively large literature on emotional labor now exists, the majority of the research focuses on emotionallabor among service employees engaging with customers, which typically reflects shorter-term exchange relationships and maynot generalize to the longer-term and more interdependent relationships that are shared by leaders and followers. Thus, futurework should seek to examine the impact of leader emotion regulation, emotional labor, and surface acting on follower perceptionsand behaviors (see Fisk & Friesen, 2012, for an exception).

Our work also highlights the need for future research to continue to disentangle the complex relationships between leader andfollower affect with ratings of leader behaviors and effectiveness. For example, although Eberly and Fong (2013) show that leaderaffect influences follower affect and, subsequently, ratings of leader effectiveness, the extent to which this occurs via followerperceptions of leader behaviors (i.e., selective follower encoding and/or recall of leader behaviors) is unclear. Our research suggeststhat future researchers need to more carefully consider whether ratings of leadership behaviors are high fidelity representations ofactual leader behaviors or whether these ratings better reflect followers' cognitions, beliefs, or schemas. These concerns have beenlong-raised by scholars in the implicit leadership theory literature, who noted that the structure of leadership ratings when ratinghypothetical and actual leaders are highly similar (e.g., Rush, Thomas & Lord, 1977). Recently, Hansbrough et al. (2014) suggestseveral approaches that researchers could employ to enhance the accuracy of follower ratings of leader behaviors, including theuse of rater training (e.g., frame of reference training, Sulsky & Day, 1994; source monitoring training, Martell & Evans, 2005),instructions that stress the importance of accuracy and request that raters avoid the use of stereotypic responses, methods thathelp raters to tap episodic (i.e., specific situations) rather than semantic memory (e.g., visualization techniques, Naidoo, Kohari,Lord & DuBois, 2010; critical incidents, Morgeson, 2005), and use of implicit measures of leadership. Beyond enhancing the accuracyof follower ratings, itmay be fruitful for future leadership research to be creative in choosing leadership criteria that are not perceptualin nature (e.g., objective criteria such as whether followers can restate the leader's vision when asked), which may reduce the biasesthat are involved in using perceptual leadership criteria. Thus, future research should investigate whether leader ratings andrelationships with leader trait affect obtained under these conditions differ from the current findings in the literature.

Finally,we brieflymention thatwhile the current paperwas able to examine the role of trait leader affect in leadership, as a helpfulreviewer pointed out, it is worth taking stock of the current findings to point out what is missing in the literature. In doing so, itappears that while a large proportion of the published work in this area has estimated the relationship between positive affect andtransformational leadership, very little work has examined the relationship between emotion and leadership in more complexways, including (a) estimating the relationship between discrete emotions and leadership, (b) estimating the relationship betweenaffect spin, affect pulse, and leadership (Kuppens et al., 2007), and (c) estimating the relationship between emotions, affect, andleadership within-person over time.

Conclusion

Overall, the presentwork highlights the critical role of leader emotions, particularly positive emotions, in leadership processes andgroup outcomes. Although our work establishes the central role of leader trait affectivity, it also highlights that much about leaderemotions and leadership processes, such as follower responses, remains understudied and underspecified in the literature to date,including the role of discrete emotions, variability in emotional experiences across time, leader emotional regulation, and the impactof leader emotions on other classes of leadership behaviors (e.g., abusive supervision, authentic leadership). This work alsounderscores the difficulties inherent in understanding the specific mechanisms at play in leadership processes due to the field'sheavy reliance on perceptual ratings of leadership phenomena. Taken together, our work summarizes the importance of leaderemotions to date and paves the way for more sophisticated and nuanced investigations of leader emotions in the future.

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Is a happy leader a good leader? A meta-analytic investigation of leader trait affect and leadership

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