Abstract
Opinion leadership describes an individual's tendency to informally influence others’ attitudes and overt behaviors. In contrast to contemporary views of opinion leadership as a highly domain-specific trait, this paper introduces a multi-faceted personality trait, generalized opinion leadership (GOL) that characterizes exceptionally influential individuals independent of a specific subject area. Two studies report on the psychometric properties of a scale to assess GOL. Study 1 is based on three independent samples (N = 1,575, N = 1,275, and N = 231) and demonstrates the factorial structure of the instrument and its measurement invariance across sex, age, and educational levels. Study 2 (N = 310) analyzes multitrait-multiinformant data to highlight the scale's discriminant validity with regard to innovativeness and trendsetting.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 88-101 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | The Journal of Psychology - Interdisciplinary and Applied |
| Volume | 150 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Fields of science
- 501012 Media psychology
- 501 Psychology
- 501003 Occupational psychology
- 501015 Organisational psychology
JKU Focus areas
- Management and Innovation
- Social Systems, Markets and Welfare States
- Social and Economic Sciences (in general)