Serving first for the benefit of others: preliminary evidence for a hierarchical conceptualization of servant leadership

In this paper, we examine servant leadership as a promising leadership style for today's dynamic sales environments. Conceptual and empirical literature points to servant leadership's strong potential in facilitating benefits to salespeople and the organization. Yet that same literature evidences a problematic lack of consensus regarding components that distinctly reflect servant leadership. Existing conceptualizations include dimensions like humility and providing direction, which clearly overlap with various other leadership styles. In this paper, we first consider unique distinctives of servant leadership. We then propose an extension of the augmentation hypothesis from the transactional and transformational leadership literature. Specifically, we posit that servant leadership distinctives are hierarchically built on transformational characteristics, which themselves are built on transactional characteristics. Using secondary data from a sample of professional salespeople, we apply Guttman scaling and show this hierarchical conceptualization to be empirically tenable. We demonstrate that sales leadership at higher levels on the hierarchy produces incremental gains in salesperson satisfaction, salesperson performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and corporate social responsibility. We confirm our findings in a validation sample and demonstrate an additional relationship with customer-directed extra-role behaviors. Our results imply that sales organizations can reap enhanced multi-faceted benefits through higher levels of servant leadership.     

Individual differences and correlates of highly superior autobiographical memory

Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is a recently identified ability that has been difficult to explain with existing memory science. The present study measured HSAM participants’ and age/gender-matched controls’ on a number of behavioural measures to test three main hypotheses: imaginative absorption, emotional arousal, and sleep. HSAM participants were significantly higher than controls on the dispositions absorption and fantasy proneness. These two dispositions also were associated with a measure of HSAM ability within the hyperthymesia participants. The emotional-arousal hypothesis yielded only weak support. The sleep hypothesis was not supported in terms of quantity, but sleep quality may be a small factor worthy of further research. Other individual differences are also documented using a predominantly exploratory analysis. Speculative pathways describing how the tendencies to absorb and fantasise could lead to enhanced autobiographical memory are discussed.     

Crashing Memory 2.0: False Memories in Adults for an Upsetting Childhood Event

Previous crashing memory studies have shown that adults can be led to believe they witnessed video footage of news events for which no video footage actually exists. The current study is the first to investigate adults' tendency to report memories of viewing footage that took place when they were children: the plane crash in Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. We found that in a computer questionnaire, 33% indicated a false memory with at least one false detail. In a more detailed face‐to‐face interview, only 13% of the group described a detailed false memory. Familiarity with the news story, fantasy proneness, alcohol use, and frequency of negative emotions after 9/11 were all associated with a Persistent False Memory. Participants who had received prior suggestion were more likely to later report false memories in the subsequent interview. We discuss our novel results and the importance of the paradigm.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Historical Hostility in the African American Client: Implications for Counseling

“Historical hostility” may function as a psychological factor in the lives of African Americans in the United States. Historical hostility is a pattern of responses that many African Americans exhibit, which may stem from their prolonged subjection to inferior treatment in American society. Strategies for addressing historical hostility in African Americans are provided.     

CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES

Philosophical Studies -     

Control Beliefs and Faith as Stress Moderators for Korean American Versus Caucasian American Protestants

Examined relationships among negative life events, four locus of control attributions (Internality, Powerful Others, Chance, and God Control), and psychological distress for Korean American versus Caucasian American Protestants. Negative events and Powerful Others beliefs were positively related to distress, whereas Internality was negatively related to distress. Ethnicity and God Control interacted: The relationship between God Control beliefs and anxiety was negative for Caucasians but positive for Koreans. Three-way interactions (Ethnicity × Locus of Control × Negative Events) also emerged. As Caucasians' Powerful Others beliefs increased, the positive relationship between negative events and depression became stronger; Koreans' Powerful Others beliefs had no such effect. As Caucasians' God Control beliefs increased, the negative event–depression relationship changed from positive to negative; the reverse was true for Koreans. Findings support the value of assessing ethnoculture and religiousness in stressful life events research.     

Personal privacy in the health care system: employer-sponsored insurance, managed care, and integrated delivery systems

Widespread collection and use of identifiable information can promote social goods while, at the same time, infringing on personal privacy. Information systems are developing within the context of a fundamental transformation in the organization, delivery, and financing of health care. Changes in the health care system include rapid development of employer-sponsored health coverage, managed care organizations, and integrated delivery systems. These complex, multifaceted arrangements for delivering and paying for health care require ever-more-sophisticated information systems that facilitate extensive sharing of personal data. Systemic flows of sensitive health information occur both vertically and horizontally among employers, hospitals, insurers, laboratories, and suppliers. Beyond this complex web of vertical and horizontal sharing are the multiple demands for information management, quality assurance, research, governmental regulation, and public health. Theoretical problems exist with the law and ethics of informational privacy. The traditional method of exercising control over personal health information is through informed consent. Informed consent, however, within a modern health information infrastructure becomes highly complex. In this kind of environment, the doctrine of informed consent is flawed and does not provide sufficient control over personal information to assure adequate protection of privacy.