What good leaders actually do: micro-level leadership behaviour,leader evaluations,and team decision quality

We supplement broad definitions of leadership behaviour with the concept of micro-level leadership behaviour, leaders’ verbal and non-verbal visible conduct and interaction. For the context of team decision-making, we identify two potentially beneficial micro-level leadership behaviours, question asking and behavioural mimicry. Specifically, we propose that under conditions of informational complexity and unshared information, participative leadership is most appropriate for team decision-making, that its effects are mediated by inquiring and empathy, and that question asking and mimicry are the behavioural micro-level manifestations of inquiring and empathy. We thus hypothesize that the effect of participative leadership on team decision quality and leader evaluation is mediated by question asking and mimicry. We conduct a laboratory experiment with student teams working on a hidden profile decision-making task and measure question asking through behavioural coding and mimicry with motion sensors. Results show that the effect of participative leadership on decision quality is mediated by question asking, and that the effect of participative leadership on leader evaluation as transformational is mediated by leaders’ behavioural mimicry and question asking. Under control of these micro-level behaviours, team decision quality and leader evaluations were unrelated.     

The power of prospection: mental contrasting and behavior change

People often immerse themselves in dreams and fantasies about a desired future. Though such future fantasies are pleasant, they do not necessarily lead to the effort required to attain the desired future. Indeed, the more positively people fantasize about their desired futures, the less effort they invest and the less successful they are in realizing these futures. However, when fantasies about a desired future are complemented with a clear sense of reality, people find the direction and energy needed to realize their fantasies. We review Fantasy Realization Theory, which explicates these ideas and led to the discovery of mental contrasting future and reality, a self‐regulation strategy of behavior change. Mental contrasting helps people figure out what they really want and wisely select, commit to, and actively pursue prioritized wishes while constructively dealing with setbacks. It helps them live a rewarding life through work, play, health, and relationships.     

Mood and memory for tightly organized social information

The frequently cited finding that mood-congruent information can be better recalled than mood-incongruent information is tested using categorically organized stimulus material which imposes a systematic structure on the recall process. A target person was described with respect to six categories of social behaviour, with predominantly desirable behaviours in some categories and predominantly undesirable behaviours in others. Participants were induced either an elated mood state or a neutral state using Velten's procedure. Instructions (impression formation versus memory) were also manipulated. Although the mood manipulation apparently worked and did influence the impression judgments of the target person, it did not selectively facilitate the recall of mood-congruent material, neither at the level of specific items nor at the categorical level. However, when only deviating behaviours are considered which do not fit the structural constraints, mood-congruent information is indeed better recalled. To interpret these results, it is argued that the manifestation of mood effects depends on the restrictions of different tasks or response modes. Three other findings were obtained: Superior recall of redundant, structurally consistent information compared with deviating information; an advantage of positive over negative information which is confined to the impression formation condition; and, surprisingly, an incongruency effect for the encoding mood which may reflect the deeper processing of incongruent material.     

The use of statistical,spatial-temporal,and intensional information in judgments of contingency

Judgments of the contingencies between the opinions expressed by three persons in a video-taped group discussion were investigated. Although a purely statistical interpretation of the contingency judgment task was called for by the experimental instruction, the intrusion of non-statistical information in the judgment process was demonstrated: Temporal contiguity (order of speech) and spatial contiguity (eye-contacts, body movements) systematically affected the estimated frequency of agreement among discussion participants. Similar biases were obtained in a memory test for the observed opinion statements which also suggests that intensional information (structural similarity of the discussants' arguments) influenced the cognitive representation of the contingencies. An attentional focus manipulation was also effective; attending to a certain pair of discussants resulted in higher agreement ratings for that pair. The implications of these findings for experiments which use purely statistical models of contingency as a normative criterion are discussed.     

Cognitive Procedural Learning in Amnesia

This group study examined the role of residual declarative memory and task-specific cognitive abilities for cognitive procedural learning in amnesia. 20 amnesic patients and 40 control subjects were studied, using four new cognitive tasks, as well as the Tower of Hanoi and a Mirror Reading task. On the cognitive tasks, but not on Mirror Reading, the learning of amnesic patients was significantly impaired relative to controls. Between- and within-group differences in learning were found to be statistically related to cognitive abilities that are involved in the processing of the procedural tasks. In amnesic patients, significant effects of residual declarative memory on learning scores were not observed, but there was indirect evidence for a role of memory in two tasks. The analysis of the correlative relationship between absolute procedural task performances and cognitive abilities indicated a prolonged dependence on nonspecific intellectual abilities in amnesic patients, suggesting a retarded transition to more advanced stages of skill acquisition.     

Voice quality analysis of American and German speakers

Six phoneticians rated the voices of 26 American and 22 German speakers on nine voice quality parameters which were discussed and illustrated by tape-recorded examples before the rating sessions. A reliability analysis showed highly significant interrater agreement on most parameters. Intercorrelations of the expert ratings and correlations with lay ratings of voice are reported and discussed. In concluding, empirical voice-personality relationships are reported and the role of sociocultural and atributional factors in this area is discussed.     

Eine neue Theorie zum Geschwindigkeitstranspositionsphänomen

Zusammenfassung Zwei bestehende Theorien zur Geschwindigkeitstransposition werden diskutiert. Das sind die Theorie der Analogie von physikalischer und phänomenaler Geschwindigkeit sowie die Frequenzgleichstellungstheorie. Es wird gezeigt, daß beide Theorie die Geschwindigkeitstransposition nur unzureichend erklären. Eine neue Theorie wird vorgestellt, die auf dem Geschwindigkeitskonstanzphänomen aufbaut. Diese Theorie bietet eine Erklärung für bislang unver-ständliche Erscheinungen bei der Geschwindigkeitstransposition. Außerdem werden vier Experimente beschrieben, die eindeutig beweisen, daß die Geschwindigkeitstransposition nicht durch Frequenzgleichstellung entsteht. Demgegenüber stehen die Experimentalergebnisse nicht im Widerspruch zur Geschwindigkeitskonstanztheorie. Abschließend wird die Bedeutung dieser Theorie für ingenieurspsyehologische Fragestellungen im Bereich des See-, Land-, Luft- und Raumverkehrs sowie der Kinematographie diskutiert.

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A new theory about the velocity transposition phenomenon

Summary Two existing theories concerning the velocity transposition phenomenon are discussed: the theory of the analogy between physical and subjective velocity and the theory of frequency matching. It is shown that both theories are not able to explain the velocity transposition completely. A new theory is introduced which is based on constancy effects in the perception of velocity. This theory gives an explanation for those velocity transposition effects which have not been understood up to now. Moreover four experiments are described which clearly demonstrate that the velocity transposition phenomenon is not produced by frequency matching. On the other hand the experimental results are not contrary to the new theory of constancy. At last the importance of this theory for human engineering guidance in the field of sea, land, air and space traffic is discussed beside its value for the cinematographer.

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Diese Arbeit ist ein Teil aus der Zulassungsarbeit, die der Verfasser zur Diplomprüfung für Studierende der Psychologie am Psychologischen Institut der Universität Hamburg vorgelegt hat. Die Arbeit wurde durch Herrn Prof. Dr. phil. K. Pawlik genehmigt.