Divorce is often viewed as a devastating event, and its negative impacts on individuals' mental and professional lives have been widely discussed. However, as divorce rates continue to rise, anecdotal evidence has emerged, showcasing divorcees who have reached the pinnacle of their careers and become outstanding leaders after divorce. This observation inspires our exploration of the impact of divorce on leadership emergence. Based on the phenomenon of altruism born from suffering, we propose that divorce can alter divorcees' prosocial value, subsequently influencing their leadership emergence. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study employs a person-centered approach to track divorcees’ prosocial value changes with latent class growth analysis. Our findings reveal that approximately half of the divorcees experience varying degrees of increase in prosocial values just before or after divorce (this pattern can also be replicated in another national survey database). Furthermore, the latent class membership of the prosocial value change trajectories is linked to whether divorced individuals become leaders after divorce. The results of this study provide theoretical and practical guidance for career development following divorce.
