Motivated or Demotivated to Be Creative: The Role of Self‐Regulatory Focus in Transformational and Transactional Leadership Processes

Numerous studies have recognised the importance of transformational leadership style for encouraging employees’ creativity. Self‐regulation studies have highlighted the influence of a promotion focus on employees’ creative behaviours. Yet both leadership and self‐regulation theories have paid less attention to the role transactional leadership style and situational prevention regulatory focus may play in affecting employees’ creativity. In this article we present a theoretical model which examines transformational and transactional leadership styles and both promotion and prevention situational self‐regulatory focus (SRF). The model suggests that while transformational leadership promotes creativity, at least partially by enhancing follower's situational promotion SRF, transactional leadership style (transactional active) is aligned with followers’ prevention situational SRF, which is associated with leaders’ hindering of followers’ creativity. Findings from two studies, an experimental study (N = 189) and a field study (N = 343 employees and 75 managers), support this model, showing that the relationship between different types of leadership and creativity are more complex than previously regarded. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The dimensions of deception detection: Self‐reported deception cue use is underpinned by two broad factors

Many perceived cues to deception have been reported in the literature, but little attention has been paid to how they are combined when making deception judgments. The present research used a data‐driven approach to investigate how cues are integrated when evaluating veracity. Two hundred fifteen participants performed a deception detection task before completing a deception cue use questionnaire. A factor analysis of the questionnaire data produced two dimensions, one associated with nonverbal cues to anxiety and the other associated with detail and level of involvement. The present work extends our understanding of deception detection processes and underlines the importance of examining not only the cues that people use but also the way in which they use them.     

Behavioural Consistency Within the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: The Role of Personality and Situation

Mixed‐motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non‐cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed‐motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed‐motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one‐shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality features did not interact with each other and were about equally impactful in shaping cooperation. Crucially, however, despite the significant behavioural differences across game variants, considerable consistency in choices was found as well, which suggests that the game's motivational basis reliably impacts choice behaviour in spite of situational and personality variations. We discuss implications for theorizing on mixed‐motive situations and elaborate on the question how cooperation can be promoted. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Sex differences and the effect of instruction on reorientation abilities by humans

This study examined whether differences in the amount of information provided to men and women, in the form of verbal instruction, influenced their encoding during a reorientation task. When a navigator needs to orient, featural (e.g., colour or texture) and geometry (e.g., metric information) are used to determine which direction to begin traveling. The current study used a spatial reorientation task to examine how men and women use featural and geometric cues and whether the content of the task’s instructions influenced how these cues were used. Participants were trained to find a target location in a rectangular room with distinctive objects situated at each corner. Once the participants were accurately locating the target, various tests manipulating the spatial information were conducted. We found both men and women encoded the featural cues, and even though the features provided reliable information, participants generally showed an encoding of geometry. However, when participants were not provided with any information about the spatial aspects of the task in the instructions, they failed to encode geometry. We also found that women used distant featural cues as landmarks when the featural cue closest to the target was removed, whereas men did not. Yet, when the two types of cues were placed in conflict, both sexes weighed featural cues more heavily than geometric cues. The content of the task instructions also influenced how cues were relied upon in this conflict situation. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how spatial cues are used for reorientation.     

AINSWORTH'S STRANGE SITUATION PROCEDURE: THE ORIGIN OF AN INSTRUMENT

The American‐Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913–1999) developed the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) to measure mother‐child attachment and attachment theorists have used it ever since. When Ainsworth published the first results of the SSP in 1969, it seemed a completely novel and unique instrument. However, in this paper we will show that the SSP had many precursors and that the road to such an instrument was long and winding. Our analysis of hitherto little‐known studies on children in strange situations allowed us to compare these earlier attempts with the SSP. We argue that it was the combination of Ainsworth's working experience with William Blatz and John Bowlby, her own research in Uganda and Baltimore, and the strong connection of the SSP with attachment theory, that made the SSP differ enough from the other strange situation studies to become one of the most widely used instruments in developmental psychology today.     

Not all semantics: Similarities and differences in reminiscing function and content between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

This study explored why and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remember the past. Indigenous Australians traditionally share a strong oral tradition in which customs, personal and cultural histories, and other narratives are passed across groups and between generations by word of mouth. Drawing on this tradition, in which inherent value is placed on sharing knowledge and maintaining connectedness with others, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would be more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to report reminiscing to fulfil social functions (but not self or directive functions). Furthermore, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would recall personal past experiences more elaborately than would non-Indigenous Australians. In Study 1, 33 Indigenous Australians and 76 non-Indigenous Australians completed Webster's Reminiscence Functions Scale. As predicted, Indigenous participants reported higher scores on subscales related to social functions than did non-Indigenous Australians: particularly “Teach/Inform” and “Intimacy Maintenance”. They also scored higher on the “Identity” subscale. In Study 2, 15 Indigenous and 14 non-Indigenous Australians shared three memories from the distant and recent past. While Indigenous and non-Indigenous narratives did not differ in either emotion or elaboration, Indigenous Australians provided more memory context and detail by including a greater proportion of semantic memory content. Taken together, these findings suggest differences in both why and how Australians remember.     

The Effects of Stress on the Lives of Emerging Adult College Students: An Exploratory Analysis

This study systematically analyzed the personal reports of 20 emerging adult college students with regard to how stress affects their lives. Qualitative analyses revealed that stress influenced students' lives in both positive and negative ways. Implications of these findings for physical and mental health are discussed. Recommendations for counseling practice are provided.