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.     

Effects of ego-depletion on choice behaviour in a multi-attribute decision task

When a choice has to be made between two options and decision-relevant information about the options is completely available, the Take-The-Best (TTB) heuristic only considers the most important information that discriminates between the options and bases its choice on it. Choices in line with TTB thus allow a decision maker to save time and effort, and they may become more likely therefore under conditions of limited self-control strength (ego-depletion). Ego-depletion was manipulated prior to making a series of choices in a multi-attribute decision task. Choices could have been in line with either TTB or more effortful compensatory decision strategies. As predicted, compared with non-depleted participants, ego-depleted participants were more likely to make TTB-consistent choices.     

Perceptions of the Targets and Sources of COVID-19 Threat are Structured by Group Memberships and Responses are Influenced by Identification with Humankind

The purpose of this study was to investigate which social groups are perceived as a threat target and which are perceived as a threat source during the COVID-19 outbreak. In a German sample (N = 1454) we examined perceptions of social groups ranging from those that are psychologically close and smaller (family, friends, neighbors) to those that are more distal and larger (people living in Germany, humankind). We hypothesized that psychologically closer groups would be perceived as less affected by COVID-19 as well as less threatening than more psychologically distal groups. Based on social identity theorizing, we also hypothesized that stronger identification with humankind would change these patterns. Furthermore, we explored how these threat perceptions relate to adherence to COVID-19 health guidelines. In line with our hypotheses, latent random-slope modelling revealed that psychologically distal and larger groups were perceived as more affected by COVID-19 and as more threatening than psychologically closer and smaller groups. Including identification with humankind as a predictor into the threat target model resulted in a steeper increase in threat target perception patterns, whereas identification with humankind did not predict differences in threat source perceptions. Additionally, an increase in threat source perceptions across social groups was associated with more adherence to health guidelines, whereas an increase in threat target perceptions was not. We fully replicated these findings in a subgroup from the original sample (N = 989) four weeks later. We argue that societal recovery from this and other crises will be supported by an inclusive approach informed by a sense of our common identity as human beings.     

Being bullied at school: the case of high-achieving boys

Bullying victimization has been shown to negatively impact academic achievement. However, under certain circumstances, levels of academic achievement might also be a cause of bullying...     

Truth and Wishful Thinking: How Interindividual Differences in Communal Motives Manifest in Momentary Partner Perceptions

Although rooted in reality, partner perceptions often reflect wishful thinking due to perceivers' needs. Dispositional needs, or motives, can differ between persons; however, little is known about their differential associations with everyday partner perception. The present study used data from a 4-week experience sampling study (N = up to 60942 surveys from 510 individuals nested in 259 couples) to examine the effects of perceivers' partner-related implicit and explicit communal motives on the perception of (i) global communal partner behaviour and (ii) specific communal and uncommunal partner behaviours. The results of truth and bias models of judgement and quasi-signal detection analyses indicate that strong implicit communal approach motives and strong explicit communal motives are associated with the tendency to overestimate the partner's communal behaviour. Additionally, strong implicit communal approach motives were associated with the tendency to avoid perceptions of uncommunal partner behaviour. Neither implicit nor explicit communal motives had an effect on accuracy in the perception of particularly communal partner behaviour. The results highlight the relevance of both implicit and explicit communal motives for momentary partner perceptions and emphasise the benefits of dyadic microlongitudinal designs for a better understanding of the mechanisms through which individual differences manifest in couples' everyday lives. © 2019 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Time-delay discrimination training with impulsive children: Self-monitoring nonwait responses and the dimensions of prompts

This study investigated whether in time-delay discrimination training, the performance of impulsive children can be improved by requiring self-monitoring of the correctness of non wait responses, and to what extent these improvements are a function of the dimensions of the prompts. Four experiments, in each of which multiple prompts were used, one for each stimulus (S+, S–), were done. Comparisons between time delay of distinctive- and nondistinctive-feature prompts, with and without self-monitoring, were made across and within subjects. Time delay of distinctivefeature prompts without self-monitoring did not produce learning. The added requirement of self-monitoring nonwait responses led to a dramatic improvement in performance, but only when distinctivefeature cues were used for prompting and self-monitoring.     

“I'm prepared for this moment”: The role of mindfulness in the psychosocial health of women of color

This study utilized a phenomenological approach to explore how women of color (N = 7) engage in mindfulness practices to improve their psychosocial well-being, specifically as it relates to identity development and belongingness. Five themes emerged: awareness of mind–body connection, resilience in the face of discrimination, empathic perspective-taking, awareness of internalized biases, and global sense of belonging. Implications for counselors and future research are discussed.     

Think manager—think male,think follower—think female: Gender bias in implicit followership theories

Because of the overlap between the social roles of women and followers, we predicted that people would show a bias, that is, favor female followers over male followers. To support this hypothesis, we conducted two studies: An explicit test of the bias using a scenario design and an implicit association test (IAT)‐based study. Both studies show that the role of an ideal follower is more strongly associated with the female gender role, which seems to be caused partly by a more communal connotation of the follower role. This effect might contribute to the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions as they are perceived to be an ideal fit for followership positions; but it may also push men away from being followers and into leadership positions.     

Abstract Conceptual Feature Ratings Predict Gaze Within Written Word Arrays: Evidence From a Visual Wor(l)d Paradigm

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high‐dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm” (VWP). Healthy adults (n = 20) selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4‐item written word array comprising the target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe‐target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co‐occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information (not restricted to sensorimotor and emotion information) shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension.