Relationships between emotional intelligence,perceived and actual leadership effectiveness in the military context

Despite the importance of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness, few studies have been conducted in real-life contexts and few have distinguished between perceived and actual leadership effectiveness. This repeated-measures study involving 86 officer cadets from the Republic of Singapore Air Force investigated these relationships in a military context. Quantitative data were collected from two self-report questionnaires: the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale and the Perceived Leadership Effectiveness Scale. These two self-report tools were also administered to the participants’ peers to examine the agreement between self and other assessments of emotional intelligence. A behavior-based leadership assessment rubric completed by the participants’ supervisors was used to determine actual leadership performance. Significant positive relationships were found between emotional intelligence and both perceived and actual leadership effectiveness, as assessed by peers and supervisors, respectively. This study contributes to the understanding of emotional intelligence as a global construct and demonstrates that it is significantly associated with leadership effectiveness in a military training context. The findings have practical implications for using emotional intelligence to enhance leadership effectiveness.     

Understanding Social Anxiety Disorder in Adolescents and Improving Treatment Outcomes: Applying the Cognitive Model of Clark and Wells (1995)

Social anxiety disorder is a condition characterised by a marked and persistent fear of being humiliated or scrutinised by others. Age-of-onset data point to adolescence as a developmentally sensitive period for the emergence of the condition, at a time when the peer group becomes increasingly important. Social anxiety in adolescence is associated with considerable impairment that persists through to adulthood. There are clear potential benefits to delivering effective interventions during adolescence. However, there is limited evidence on the specific efficacy of available therapies. This is in contrast to adults, for whom we have interventions with very specific treatment effects. One such treatment is individual cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is based on the cognitive model of social anxiety proposed by Clark and Wells (in: Heimberg, Leibowitz, Hope, Scheiber (eds) Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment and treatment, The Guilford Press, New York, 1995). The present review examines the potential application of this adult cognitive model to the understanding of adolescent social anxiety and considers additional adolescent-specific factors that need to be accommodated. It is suggested that a developmentally sensitive adoption of the cognitive model of social anxiety disorder (Clark and Wells 1995) for adolescents may lead to better treatment outcomes.     

From ultrafast to slow: Heating rate dependence of the glass transition temperature in metallic systems

When a solid crosses the glass transition, viscous flow sets in and the glass transforms into a supercooled liquid. The glass transition temperature exhibits a heating rate dependence which was previously observed to follow a Vogel–Fulcher–Tammann (VFT) equation. Here we report on a change in the heating rate dependence of the glass transition, determined by the distinct increase in the specific heat capacity, of a metallic glass. We combine standard techniques such as differential scanning calorimetry with recently developed ohmic heating techniques in order to cover seven orders of magnitude in heating rate. Contrary to previous reports, our results show that the change of the glass transition temperature cannot be described by a single VFT equation. Instead we find two distinct regimes which independently follow a VFT expression.     

Mapping the MMPI–2/MMPI–2–RF Restructured Clinical Scales Onto Mood Markers in an Israeli Sample

This study cross-culturally evaluated the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2/MMPI–2 Restructured Form (MMPI–2/MMPI–2–RF) emotion-focused Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales to examine whether their patterns of associations with positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) are as expected based on Tellegen, Watson, and Clark's (1999a Tellegen, A., Watson, D., &; Clark, L. A. (1999a). Further support for a hierarchical model of affect. Psychological Science, 10, 307–309.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1999b Tellegen, A., Watson, D., &; Clark, L. A. (1999b). On the dimensional and hierarchical structure of affect. Psychological Science, 10, 297–303.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) mood model. The sample was composed of 100 men and 133 women from psychiatric settings in Israel who completed the MMPI–2 and the Mood Check List (MCL; Zevon &; Tellegen, 1982 Zevon, M. A., &; Tellegen, A. (1982). The structure of mood change: An idiographic/nomothetic analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 111–122.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Results indicated that RCd was substantially correlated with both PA and NA in opposite directions, and that RC2 and RC7 were more highly correlated with PA and NA, respectively. Further, when compared with their Clinical Scale counterparts, RC2 and RC7 exhibited comparable convergent validities and improved discriminant properties. Findings provide support for Tellegen et al.'s (2003 Tellegen, A., Ben-Porath, Y. S., McNulty, J. L., Arbisi, P. A., Graham, J. R., &; Kaemmer, B. (2003). MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales: Development, validation, and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]) goal to link the RC scales to contemporary conceptualizations of mood.     

Perirhinal cortex resolves feature ambiguity in configural object recognition and perceptual oddity tasks

The perirhinal cortex (PRh) has a well-established role in object recognition memory. More recent studies suggest that PRh is also important for two-choice visual discrimination tasks. Specifically, it has been suggested that PRh contains conjunctive representations that help resolve feature ambiguity, which occurs when a task cannot easily be solved on the basis of features alone. However, no study has examined whether the ability of PRh to resolve configural feature ambiguity is related to its role in object recognition. Therefore, we examined whether bilateral excitotoxic lesions of PRh or PPRh (perirhinal plus post-rhinal cortices) in the rat would cause deficits in a configural spontaneous object recognition task, and a configural simultaneous oddity discrimination task, in which the task could not be solved on the basis of features, but could only be solved using conjunctive representations. As predicted by simulations using a computational model, rats with PPRh lesions were impaired during a minimal-delay configural object recognition task. These same rats were impaired during a zero-delay configural object recognition task. Furthermore, rats with localized PRh lesions were impaired in a configural simultaneous oddity discrimination task. These findings support the idea that PRh contains conjunctive representations for the resolution of feature ambiguity and that these representations underlie a dual role for PRh in memory and perception.     

A comparison of perceptions of counselling in Ireland and the United States

The present study compared 50 Irish and 50 US graduate and undergraduate psychology and counselling students on the ways they rated counsellors, counselling, and group counselling on a semantic differential. Males were also contrasted to females on these concepts. A 2 2 2 2 2 MANOVA was used for the data analysis where the independent variables were country, class, and gender, and the dependent variables were the evaluative and potency scales of the semantic differential for counsellors, counselling, and group counselling. The Irish sample rated the potency of counselling significantly higher as did women. Counselling graduates evaluated group counselling and counsellors significantly higher than psychology undergraduates.     

Racial discrimination and racial socialization as predictors of African American adolescents' racial identity development using latent transition analysis

The present study examined perceptions of racial discrimination and racial socialization on racial identity development among 566 African American adolescents over 3 years. Latent class analyses were used to estimate identity statuses (Diffuse, Foreclosed, Moratorium, and Achieved). The probabilities of transitioning from one stage to another were examined with latent transition analyses to determine the likelihood of youth progressing, regressing, or remaining constant. Racial socialization and perceptions of racial discrimination were examined as covariates to assess the association with changes in racial identity status. The results indicated that perceptions of racial discrimination were not linked to any changes in racial identity. Youth who reported higher levels of racial socialization were less likely to be in Diffuse or Foreclosed compared with the Achieved group.