The Center for Brain,Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management

The work at the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition is summarized.     

The role of personality in the selection of a major: With and without vocational self-efficacy and interests

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of personality traits measured by the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; [Tellegen, 2000] and [Tellegen and Waller, 2008]) in selecting educational majors. Personality traits were examined alone, and with the combination of Holland’s hexagonal confidence domains, as measured by the general confidence themes (GCT) of the Skills Confidence Inventory (SCI; Betz, Borgen, & Harmon, 2005), and Holland’s interest domains, as measured by the general occupational themes (GOTs) of the 2005 Strong Interest Inventory (SII; Donnay, Morris, Schaubhut, & Thompson, 2005). Personality traits significantly contributed to the discrimination of nine educational major families in a sample of 368 undergraduate decided students. When the set of confidence and interest scales was added to the personality traits, the conservative jack knife hit rate was almost doubled.     

Cognitive Resources and Leadership Performance

Le rôle et la fonction des ressources cognitives que sont les aptitudes intellectuelles, l'expérience et les connaissances spécialisées ont longtemps été une énigme tacitement ignorée dans la théorie du leadership. En pratique, tout protocole de sélection ou de promotion d'un manager ou d'un leader évalue soigneusement les aptitudes intellectuelles du candidat, ses connaissances et son expérience professionnelle. Pourtant, rien de tout cela n'est en forte corrélation, voire tout simplement en corrélation, avec les performances de leader. Cet article, qui s'appuie sur la théorie des ressources cognitives (CRT), fait la synthèse aussi bien des recherches récentes que de nouveaux travaux qui éclairent le rôle des ressources cognitives dans le phénomène de leadership, et en tire des indications permettant d'améliorer les performances des leaders.
The role and function of such cognitive resources as intellectual abilities, experience, and expertise, have presented a long-standing but tacitly ignored enigma in leadership theory. Practically all managerial and leadership selection and promotion processes carefully weigh the leader's intellectual abilities, expertise, and job-related experience. However, none of these correlates highly, if at all, with leadership performance. This paper, based on Cognitive Resource Theory (CRT), summarises recent research, as well as new findings, that clarifies the role of cognitive resources in the leadership process, and spells out implications for more effective leadership performance.