Leadership perceptions, gender, and dominant personality: The role of normality evaluations

•The relationship between dominant personality and perceived leadership depends on gender: dominance helps men but not women.•This dominance-gender interaction on TL perceptions operates via perceived normality(being seen as “normal” vs “strange”).•The indirect effect dominanceaperceived normalityaperceived TL is positive for men, but negative for women. Individuals with dominant personality tend to be perceived as leaders, but theory suggests the dominance advantage for leadership might depend upon gender. Role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) holds that gender role-incongruence (i.e., dominant personality traits among women) can be a liability, which we propose produces a dominance-gender interaction effect on leadership perceptions. We extend this theory by proposing and testing a novel conceptual mediator of the role congruity effect—perceived normality. Results show dominance predicts perceived transformational leadership, but only for men. This role congruity interaction effect is then explained by perceived normality (mediated moderation). The conditional indirect effect of dominance on leadership through perceived normality is positive for men, but negative for women—consistent with role congruity theory.