This paper explores why voicers fail to gain leadership recognition from peers. Departing from traditional voice research, which focuses on who speaks what can be viewed as leader-like, we highlight the social dynamics that occur after speaking up. Specifically, we look at the impact of voice amplification, a seemingly prosocial reaction from peers. By revisiting voice and competition literature, we propose a two-dimensional conceptualization: self-centric voice amplification, which shifts attention to the amplifier, and prosocial voice amplification, which promotes the voicer’s contributions. Integrating social information processing theory and status characteristics theory, we theorize the consequences of engaging in self-centric voice amplification in terms of both the voicer’s and the amplifier’s leadership emergence. Across a vignette experiment (Study 1) and a critical incident experiment (Study 2), we found that self-centric voice amplification can be an effective tactic for amplifiers to compete for leadership against voicers by reducing perceptions of the voicers’ competence. At the same time, self-centric voice amplification promotes amplifiers’ leadership emergence by signaling their desire for advancement, albeit at the cost of perceived warmth. Furthermore, we also found that self-centric voice amplification was more effective for male (vs. female) amplifiers, such that the negative effect on voicers’ competence and leadership emergence is especially pronounced when the amplifier was a male.
