Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) are people's lay theories, definitions, or conceptualizations of leadership. In adults, they determine what actions we perceive as leadership, influence to whom we grant leadership status, and shape our own behaviors when we want to be seen as leader. Naturally, there has been an enduring interest in how these ILTs develop in children. Current theorizing on the development of leadership conceptualizations in children aligns with a stepwise progression mirroring Piaget's stage-based approach to cognitive development. However, contemporary approaches to cognitive development, such as Siegler's overlapping waves theory (OWT), acknowledge that children's development is linked to cognitive success and failure. This article integrates the findings from empirical studies into children's leadership conceptualizations and reinterprets them against OWT. This reinterpretation resolves findings that align poorly with a stepwise approach and demonstrates a strong fit with OWT. As such, children's leadership conceptualizations develop by generating and testing cognitive approaches-physical-spatiotemporal, functional, socioemotional, and humanitarian-and instead of progressing through these in order and according to age, they display variation and selection, that with experience and exposure, lay down selective combinations, which often engage multiple dimensions simultaneously. Consequently, the development of children's understanding of leaders is nonlinear, can be multidimensional, and is based on trial and error largely in response to their experiences. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for future research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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童年时期内隐领导理论的发展：通过重叠波理论的视角进行重新概念化。


内隐领导理论（ILT）是人们对领导力的外行理论、定义或概念化。对于成年人来说，它们决定我们认为哪些行为是领导力，影响我们授予领导地位的人，并在我们希望被视为领导者时塑造我们自己的行为。自然，人们对这些 ILT 如何在儿童中发育产生了持久的兴趣。目前关于儿童领导力概念化发展的理论与逐步发展相一致，反映了皮亚杰基于阶段的认知发展方法。然而，当代的认知发展方法，例如西格勒的重叠波理论（OWT），承认儿童的发展与认知的成功和失败有关。本文将实证研究的结果整合到儿童领导力概念中，并针对 OWT 重新解释它们。这种重新解释解决了与逐步方法不一致的发现，并证明了与 OWT 的紧密配合。因此，儿童的领导力概念化是通过生成和测试认知方法（物理时空、功能、社会情感和人道主义）来发展的，并且他们不是按顺序和根据年龄逐步发展这些方法，而是表现出变化和选择，即随着经验和接触，进行选择性组合，这些组合通常同时涉及多个维度。因此，儿童对领导者的理解的发展是非线性的，可以是多维的，并且主要基于根据他们的经历进行的尝试和错误。本文最后讨论了对未来研究和实践的影响。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。