Cognitive complexity has been offered (Mitchell, 1970; Foa, Mitchell, and Fiedler, 1971) as an alternative conceptualization of Fiedler's (Fiedler, 1967) measure of leadership (i.e., the Least Preferred Coworker Scale—LPC). In order to establish the validity of this proposition, the completed LPC scales of 287 airmen were analyzed. ANOVA tests for linear trend revealed that, contrary to current theorizing, low LPC is more closely related to cognitive complexity (as operationalized by LPC item-variability) than is high LPC.
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