Leadership representations in South Korea and the United States

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that culture is a critical factor affecting leadership perceptions. Although these studies provide useful information about cultural differences, they overlook the fundamental difference between East Asians and Westerners, a holistic view versus an analytic view. In addition, these studies are based on methodologies in which verbal or pictorial stimuli are presented by researchers under conditions of high capacity, which does not allow other representational differences to be observed. This study investigates leadership representations in South Korea and the United States based on hypotheses about fundamental differences in social cognitive processing among South Koreans and Americans, as revealed in spontaneously generated visual productions. The results suggest that South Koreans have a holistic view, whereas Americans have an analytic view of leadership representations. Implications and future directions for research on cultural differences in leadership representations are discussed.