Diversity mindsets and the performance of diverse teams

Diversity can enhance as well as disrupt team performance. Diversity beliefs and climates may play an important moderating role in these effects, but it is unclear what form these should take to promote the positive effects of diversity. Addressing this question in an integration of research in team cognition and diversity, we advance the concept of diversity mindsets, defined as team members’ mental representations of team diversity. These mindsets capture diversity-related goals and associated procedural implications for goal achievement. We develop theory about the accuracy, sharedness, and awareness of sharedness of mindsets as moderators of the diversity-performance relationship. We also identify the determinants of these aspects of diversity mindsets. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model for the management of diversity.     

Long-term adherence to a physical activity intervention: The role of telephone-assisted vs. self-administered coping plans and strategy use

Objective: This study investigated the role of coping plans and the use of selection, optimisation and compensation (SOC) strategies within an experimental evaluation of a 26-week physical exercise intervention.

Methods: Older women (N?=?86, M _age?=?73.7 years) were randomly assigned to a telephone-assisted or a self-administered coping planning intervention after 6 weeks’ participation in an exercise programme. The number of different coping plans formulated, exercise-specific SOC strategy use and their interaction were used to predict objectively measured long-term adherence to the intervention.

Results: The number of coping plans formulated (β?=?0.28) and goal-pursuit strategies reported (sum score of optimisation and compensation strategies, β?=?0.39) predicted adherence to the exercise programme over 20 weeks. The predictive strength of coping plans increased with decreasing numbers of goal-pursuit strategies (β?=??0.21). Women supported via telephone reported significantly more coping plans than did women in the self-administered coping planning group, F(1,80)?=?9.47, p?=?0.003.

Conclusion: Coping plans have a buffering effect on adherence levels when use of SOC strategies is low. Older women's adherence to physical activities may be improved if they are given direct support in generating coping plans involving strategies of selection, optimisation and compensation.     

Follower need for cognitive closure as moderator of the effectiveness of leader procedural fairness

Leader procedural fairness is an important factor in leadership effectiveness, but the study of the contingencies of its influence is still in its infancy. Addressing this issue we focus on the moderating role of follower need for cognitive closure, the disposition to reduce uncertainty and swiftly reach closure in judgement and decision. We propose that need for closure captures followers sensitivity to the uncertainty-reducing influence of leader procedural fairness. Across three studies designed to yield complementary evidence (two surveys and a scenario experiment), we find support for the hypothesis that perceived leader procedural fairness has a stronger (positive) relationship with leadership effectiveness for followers higher in need for closure. This support is found across a variety of indicators reflecting different aspects of leadership effectiveness: effort and performance, social identification, job satisfaction, and leader evaluations. We discuss how these findings advance our understanding of the uncertainty-reducing role of leader fairness.     

Creativity and Imitation: Effects of Regulatory Focus and Creative Exemplar Quality

In creative settings, exposure to creative exemplar products may invite imitation and as such influence creative performance. In understanding creativity, it, therefore, is important to be able to predict imitation of creative exemplar products. Regulatory focus theory can do so, and leads to predictions that deviate from the existing body of knowledge concerning regulatory focus and creativity in the absence of exemplar products. In this study, we proposed that high creative exemplar quality elicits more imitation—and thus lowered creativity—for promotion-focused individuals, whereas creative exemplar quality does not affect the creative process for prevention-focused individuals. To enable a relatively objective measurement of creativity and imitation, these predictions were tested in a laboratory experiment. Results supported predictions, indicating that knowledge about how strongly people engage in imitation in the face of a creative exemplar product leads to more adequate predictions how creative people really are.     

Possibilities and limits of mind-reading: A neurophilosophical perspective

Access to other minds once presupposed other individuals’ expressions and narrations. Today, several methods have been developed which can measure brain states relevant for assessments of mental states without 1st person overt external behavior or speech. Functional magnetic resonance imaging and trace conditioning are used clinically to identify patterns of activity in the brain that suggest the presence of consciousness in people suffering from severe consciousness disorders and methods to communicate cerebrally with patients who are motorically unable to communicate. The techniques are also used non-clinically to access subjective awareness in adults and infants. In this article we inspect technical and theoretical limits on brain–machine interface access to other minds. We argue that these techniques hold promises of important medical breakthroughs, open up new vistas of communication, and of understanding the infant mind. Yet they also give rise to ethical concerns, notably misuse as a consequence of hypes and misinterpretations.     

Weight for Stephen Finlay

According to Stephen Finlay, ‘A ought to X’ means that X-ing is more conducive to contextually salient ends than relevant alternatives. This in turn is analysed in terms of probability. I show why this theory of ‘ought’ is hard to square with a theory of a reason’s weight which could explain why ‘A ought to X’ logically entails that the balance of reasons favours that A X-es. I develop two theories of weight to illustrate my point. I first look at the prospects of a theory of weight based on expected utility theory. I then suggest a simpler theory. Although neither allows that ‘A ought to X’ logically entails that the balance of reasons favours that A X-es, this price may be accepted. For there remains a strong pragmatic relation between these claims.     

The Standard-Relational Theory of ‘Ought’ and the Oughtistic Theory of Reasons

In the context of his highly influential defence of compatibilism, P. F. Strawson 1962 Strawson, P. F. 1962. “Freedom and Resentment, in Fischer and Ravizza [1993]”. 45–66.  [Google Scholar] introduced the terms ‘reactive attitude’ and ‘objective attitude’ to the free-will lexicon. He argued, in effect, that relinquishing such reactive attitudes as resentment and moral indignation isn't a real possibility for us, since doing so would commit us to exclusive objectivity, a stance incompatible with ordinary interpersonal relationships. While most commentators have challenged Strawson's link between personal relationships and the reactive attitudes, Tamler Sommers 2007 Sommers, Tamler. 2007. The Objective Attitude. Philosophical Quarterly, 57/3: 321–41.  [Google Scholar] has taken up Strawson's claim that exclusive objectivity would preclude meaningful relationships. Here I set out a defence of this claim by identifying a kind of interpersonal caring that is plausibly both required for such relationships and excluded by the objective attitude. I then argue that this defence helps to support Strawson's more controversial claim about personal relationships and the reactive attitudes.     

Testing Practices and Attitudes Toward Tests and Testing: An International Survey

On behalf of the International Test Commission and the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations a world-wide survey on the opinions of professional psychologists on testing practices was carried out. The main objective of this study was to collect data for a better understanding of the state of psychological testing worldwide. These data could guide the actions and measures taken by ITC, EFPA, and other stakeholders. A questionnaire was administered to 20,467 professional psychologists from 29 countries. Five scales were constructed relating to: concern over incorrect test use, regulations on tests and testing, internet and computerized testing, appreciation of tests, and knowledge and training relating to test use. Equivalence across countries was evaluated using the alignment method, four scales demonstrated acceptable levels of invariance. Multilevel analysis was used to determine how scores were related to age, gender, and specialization, as well as how scores varied between countries. Although the results show a high appreciation of tests in general, the appreciation of internet and computerized testing is much lower. These scales show low variability over countries, whereas differences between countries on the other reported scales are much greater. This implies the need for some overarching improvements as well as country-specific actions.     

Training Leader Emotion Regulation and Leadership Effectiveness

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to test whether we could train the regulation of affective displays of leaders in terms of the emotion regulation strategy of deep acting (displaying feelings one also experiences) and display of positive affect. We also tested whether this resulted in improved leadership effectiveness (i.e., a mediation model in which the training results in greater leadership effectiveness through improved emotion regulation).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from a field experiment. We randomly assigned N = 31 leaders (rated by N = 60 subordinates) to a control group without training or an experimental group with emotion regulation training. Before and 2 weeks after the intervention, deep acting (leader-rated) and positive affective displays and leadership effectiveness (subordinate-rated) were assessed.

Findings

The training had positive effects on deep acting, positive affective displays, and leadership effectiveness. Deep acting and positive affect mediated the relationship between the intervention and leadership effectiveness.

Implications

We discuss how this helps build the case both for an emotional labor approach to leadership and for the leadership development potential of such an emotional labor approach.

Originality/Value

The findings of this study represent the first causal evidence that leader emotion regulation can be trained, improved emotion regulation results in greater leadership effectiveness and is one of the first empirical studies that integrates emotional labor theory to leadership effectiveness. It is therefore important from a theory development perspective.

     

Wanna trade? Product knowledge and the perceived differences between the gains and losses of trade

We examine the effect of ownership on behavioural decision making in the context of trade. Based on the notion that traders may experience loss aversion, and that this is negatively related to willingness to trade, we reason that willingness to trade is a function of perceived similarities between the gains and losses of a trade. More specifically, we predicted that willingness to trade is a function of the characteristics of the trader: The traders' product knowledge about the objects involved in the trade may affect willingness to trade by affecting the differences traders perceive between the objects involved. In two experiments, participants endowed with a bottle of wine were offered the opportunity to trade their wine for another wine. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that the more knowledgeable participants were about wine, the more reluctant they were to trade, irrespective of what wine they possessed. The results of Experiment 2, in which we manipulated product knowledge, corroborated these findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.