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In this research, we attempted to answer the question whether ethics-related characteristics of leaders are associated with follower perceptions of their ethical leadership and whether followers of ethical leaders differ in terms of their ethics-related characteristics because of their association with an ethical leader. Our research suggests that the answer is yes. We examined two important social cognition-based individual antecedents of ethical leadership, leader moral identity and leader moral attentiveness (the latter had not been previously studied). We also studied two follower ethics-related outcomes of ethical leadership, neither of which had been studied previously. Our results support the hypotheses that leaders' moral identity and moral attentiveness are associated with follower perceptions of their ethical leadership, which, in turn, are associated with followers' increased moral identity and moral attentiveness. Thus, followers of ethical leaders are higher in moral attentiveness and moral identity, meaning that they are more chronically attentive to moral issues and they say that moral identity is a more important part of their overall self-concept. Ethical leadership mediates this relationship for moral identity but not for moral attentiveness. Implications for Research This research makes a number of contributions. First, we advance the developing field of ethical leadership by expanding its nomological network to include moral attentiveness as an antecedent and both follower moral identity and moral attentiveness as outcomes. As to the antecedents, only a handful of studies (e.g., Mayer et al., 2012) have examined the antecedents of ethical leadership. But, the focus has been mostly on personality traits with little attention to ethics-related leader characteristics, such as moral identity and moral attentiveness. or exceptions). We tested the association of leaders' moral identity, and moral attentiveness with ethical leadership, expanding the answer to the question, who is more likely to be perceived as an ethical leader. Findings show that a leader's moral identity and moral attentiveness are positively related to follower perceptions of their ethical leadership. Our findings also extend previous research on moral attentiveness (Reynolds, 2008) and moral identity (e.g., Aquino & Reed, 2002; Aquino et al., 2009) and demonstrate the two variables' value as predictors of ethical leadership. Leader moral identity and moral attentiveness concern the leader's self-definition and associated schmas (in the case of moral identity) and attention mechanisms (in the case of moral attentiveness), both of which rely on social cognitive mechanisms (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Bandura, 1986; Reynolds, 2008). A particularly unique aspect of our study is the proposal and finding that the followers of ethical leaders (who are higher on moral identity and moral attentiveness) are themselves higher on moral identity and moral attentiveness, suggesting a kind of moral uplifting role for ethical leaders who act as attractive, legitimate, and credible role models for their followers (Burns, 1978; Bass, & Steidlmeier, 1999; Brown & Trevio, 2006; Zhu, Avolio, Riggio, & Sosik, 201 1) and who likely prime ethical self-concept and draw attention to ethical issues, activating followers' ethical schmas or creating new ones (Lord & Brown, 2004). The path coefficients for these two relationships are almost identical, suggesting that the followers of stronger ethical leaders are similarly elevated across these two dimensions. Again, relying on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) we proposed that it is primarily through social cognitive processes, including modeling that followers of ethical leaders become more attentive to moral issues that arise, and think of themselves more as moral people. Both moral attentiveness and moral identity have been thought of primarily as stable, trait-like characteristics. But, our research suggests that both are potentially malleable through exposure to a strong ethical leader. An interesting finding concerns the mediating role of ethical leadership. As indicated above, we found that ethical leadership fully mediates the effect of leader moral identity on follower moral identity, but does not mediate the effect of leader moral attentiveness on follower moral attentiveness. This finding suggests that the nature of the relationship between leaders' and followers' ethics-related characteristics differs for these two characteristics. Our findings suggest that a leader's moral identity may need to be demonstrated more clearly and explicitly by ethical leadership behaviors in order to be noticed and cognitively processed by followers such that it affects followers' own moral identity. By contrast, the moral attentiveness of followers appears to be more open to direct influence by the ethical leader. Moral attentiveness may not need to be demonstrated as explicitly by managers' ethical leadership behaviors because leader moral attentiveness is inherently more obvious, as shown in the direct relationship between leader moral attentiveness and follower moral attentiveness. This makes sense because, from a social learning (Bandura, 1986) perspective, followers are likely to attend to whatever leaders are attending to and learn, over time, to attend more to ethical issues themselves. Moral attentiveness may also be inherently more plastic because it does not implicate followers' identities, but only what they attend to. By contrast, we found no direct effect of leader moral identity on follower moral identity. This also makes sense because moral identity is less likely to be apparent to followers unless it is explicitly demonstrated through a variety of ethical leadership behaviors. Followers of a strong ethical leader who does all of the things strong ethical leaders do (e.g., treat employees well, make principled and fair decisions, hold everyone accountable to high standards) may be more inclined to align their own identities with that of the strong ethical leader. But, these are questions for future research. This investigation has been fruitful for exploring how leaders' individual moral characteristics can, directly and indirectly, influence followers' moral characteristics and has opened the door to further research. In other recent work, follower moral attentiveness was found to moderate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower unethical behavior (van Gils et al., 2015). Those followers who were more morally attentive were more likely to engage in deviant behaviors in response to an unethical leader. Future studies should examine the moderating role of follower moral attentiveness in ethical leadership outcomes as well. Similarly, follower moral identity may moderate such relationships. Rather than treating moral identity and moral attentiveness exclusively as stable trait-like constructs, our research suggests that we should also consider that they are somewhat malleable individual characteristics that can be influenced by significant others in the work context such as strong ethical leaders. Future research should conduct investigations over time to determine whether these leader influences "stick" with followers. In other words, do followers who have worked for a strong ethical leader maintain these ethical characteristics (higher moral identity and moral attentiveness) over time? And, what happens when a new leader arrives or the employee moves on to a new work group or organization? Are strong ethical leaders capable of affecting lasting changes in their followers? Lord and Brown (2004) noted that less research exists on the enduring effects of leaders on followers' self-concepts, making longitudinal research on this question even more important. Implications for Practice Our research has several practical implications. First, given the importance of ethical leadership found in this and other studies, it is worthwhile for organizations to utilize human resource practices such as selection, coaching, mentoring, training and other leader development tools to increase the level of ethical leadership in their organizations. Organizations should be able to assess managerial candidates' moral attentiveness and moral identity by using available scales. Second, organizations may be able to develop training or other programs aimed at enhancing leader moral identity and moral attentiveness. For example, Reynolds (1998) suggested that managers could be helped to develop critical moral reflection by being encouraged to think about the moral complexities they face and examine the underlying social, cultural, and other factors that can possibly influence moral attentiveness. Our research suggests that if leaders are more attentive to moral issues, their followers will be as well. So, future research should consider whether and how leaders can be developed in this way. Additionally, we learned that ethical leadership is important if we want to influence employees to think more about ethical issues, and to think of themselves as moral agents. Therefore, leaders must be made to understand the importance of their ethical role modeling not just for followers' attitudes and behaviors, but also for those followers as ethical persons. Whether the increased moral identity and moral attentiveness that comes from one's association with an ethical leader is lasting and continues beyond this association remains a question for future research. Perhaps it can be undone by a subsequent leader who is either more neutral or even unethical or abusive. Or, perhaps, once having a stronger moral identity and moral attentiveness, followers would strengthen their ethical resolve and courage in the face of unethical leadership in the future. Strengths and Limitations This study has a number of strengths. For example, we identified an additional ethics-related individual difference (e.g., moral attentiveness) as an antecedent for ethical leadership. Perhaps more importantly, we identified follower ethics-related outcomes that are associated with ethical leadership (moral identity and moral attentiveness). Regarding methods, we administered questionnaires to multiple parties (e.g. supervisors and followers) to reduce same source bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). We also collected data at two time points for leadership variables and follower outcome variables separately. Thus, cross sectional data bias was mitigated. In the first wave, leaders rated their own moral identity and moral attentiveness while followers in each work group rated their leader on ethical leadership. In the second wave, followers responded to questions regarding their moral identity and moral attentiveness. However, despite collecting data at two points in time, we cannot infer causality. For example, followers who have higher levels of moral attentiveness may have noticed and identified with leaders' ethical behaviors more and thus, rated the ethical leadership of their manager higher. In this regard, it would be ideal to collect data at three points in time, i.e. leaders reporting their moral identity/attentiveness at time 1, followers rating their managers' ethical leadership at time 2, and followers reporting their own moral identity/attentiveness at time 3. Also, taking an attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) perspective (Schneider, 1987), employees with stronger ethical characteristics may have been attracted to ethical leaders with these same characteristics or leaders high on these characteristics may have selected followers higher on these characteristics. However, our understanding and experience of work organizations suggest that followers rarely get the opportunity to select their supervisors and supervisors are looking for a broad array of characteristics beyond ethical ones. We also believe that the social cognitive perspective is more logical and more consistent with previous work in these areas. Nevertheless, future research should pursue experimental or longitudinal approaches to further investigate these relationships. Further, it is possible that ethical leaders influence followers with middle levels of moral identity and moral awareness more than those with extremely low levels of moral identity and moral awareness. This is because those followers with middle levels of moral identity and moral attentiveness may aspire to develop their moral selves more than those with lower levels. All of these questions deserve future research exploration. Although we relied primarily on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) to guide the development of hypotheses in this study, much remains unknown about the social cognitive processes at work such as priming and modeling. Future work should also delve more deeply into these influencing mechanisms regarding how ethical leadership develops followers' moral identity and moral attentiveness. A final strength of this paper is that we conducted this study in the Chinese context. Because research on ethical leadership in China remains sparse, this research contributed to cross-cultural studies on ethical leadership by finding that managers' ethical characteristics are associated with perceived ethical leadership, which in turn, are associated with followers' ethical characteristics. In this regard, we are extending earlier work on ethical leadership in a different cultural context (Whetten, 2009). In the future, it might be helpful to collect additional cultural variables (e.g., collectivism) that might influence or moderate these relationships.