Bouncing Back from Setbacks: On the Mediating Role of Team Resilience in the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of team resilience on different facets of effectiveness (team viability and quality of the group experience). Moreover, given the importance of team resilience for the organizational context, it was also our aim to contribute to the study of the conditions that promote team resilience, analyzing the role of transformational leadership. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between transformational leadership and team resilience stimulates positive team outcomes. Ninety teams (445 employees from 40 companies) were surveyed and path analysis was used in the test of the hypotheses. The results showed a positive direct effect of team resilience on both team viability and the quality of the group experience. Moreover, a positive relationship was also identified between transformational leadership and team resilience. Finally, support was found for the mediated effect of team resilience on the relationship between transformational leadership and the dimensions of team effectiveness considered. The findings of this study highlight the role of team resilience as an intervening process between transformational leadership and team effectiveness. Supervisors should promote team resilience, adopting transformational leadership behaviors, in order to contribute to increase team viability and the quality of the group experience.     

Self-Criticism,Neediness, and Distress in the Prediction of Suicide Ideation: Results from Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies

The aim of the present study was to test whether the maladaptive personality traits of self-criticism and neediness predict suicide ideation when controlling for general distress. Further, potential interactive effects on suicide ideation of the two traits and distress were also evaluated. Two studies with nonclinical samples were conducted. The first investigation was cross-sectional and involved a final sample of 202 community adults while the second study was longitudinal with a final sample of 207 college students. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that self-criticism, but not neediness, associated with suicide ideation and, in doing so, also interacted with distress. Neediness also tended to interact with self-criticism in the prediction of suicide ideation. Results from Study 2 were similar and confirmed the Study 1 results. Changes in self-criticism, but not changes in neediness, predicted changes in suicide ideation after statistically controlling for changes in distress. Changes in the interaction between self-criticism and distress predicted changes in suicide ideation and changes in the interaction between self-criticism and neediness tended to predict changes in suicide ideation. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for psychological intervention.     

Interwoven stories: our path of creativity and poetry named the ecodialogue center

The history of organizations and collectives is something alive. It is a network of memories, actions, collaborations, dreams, encounters, and disconnections that live within each of its members. The EcoDialogue Center is an academic space of the University of Veracruz for promoting dialogue between disciplines. In this article we are presenting the stories, both personal and collective, and the values and ideals that create our Center. We are using this opportunity to reflect on the cultural, geographical, emotional, intellectual, and societal conditions that have allowed this innovative process within the rules and customs of a university.     

Reading the Lives of Others: Biography as Political Thought in Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir

In this essay, I focus on two biographical works by Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir that I read as political texts: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (Arendt 1957 ) and “Must We Burn Sade?” (Beauvoir 2012 ). Reading Arendt's Varnhagen and Beauvoir's “Sade” side by side illuminates their shared preoccupation with lived experience and their common political premises: the antagonism between freedom and sovereignty, and the centrality of action and constructive relations with others. My argument is that these texts constitute an original style of political thinking, which I call politico‐biographical hermeneutics, or reading the life of others as exercises in political theory. Politico‐biographical hermeneutics, as I take it, is not a systematic methodology, but an approach to interpreting sociopolitical forces as they come to bear and are embodied and inscribed in the lived experiences, struggles, and works of representative or exemplary individuals. This approach identifies the political lessons of lived experience and supports one of the central claims of feminist philosophy, namely, that the personal and the political are not antithetical, but relational.     

Team Development: Definition,Measurement and Relationships with Team Effectiveness

This article describes the development and validation of a theory-based measure of team development. Drawing on 3 independent samples, including multisource and 2-wave data, we found support for the scale’s theoretical multidimensionality. Convergent and discriminant validity was established, and criterion-related validity was determined through the scale’s relation with 3 facets of team effectiveness: viability, extrarole performance, and reputation. We conclude that the 29-item measure is valid and reliable for the assessment of team development. Theoretically, we shed light on the dimensionality of team development and extend the available knowledge on its nomological network. Practical implications for enhancing team effectiveness via team development are discussed.     

Motivated attention to fear-related stimuli: Evidence for the enhanced processing of fear in the late positive potential

Differences in the processing of emotions like fear and sadness have important implications for our understanding of many psychological phenomena (e.g., attentional biases, psychopathology). The late positive potential (LPP) is an established event-related potential that reflects motivated attention to emotional stimuli at the neural level with excellent temporal resolution, but has been infrequently used to study differences across emotions. Drawing on functional theories of emotion suggesting that the quick processing of fear-inducing stimuli increases chances of survival, we hypothesized that fear-inducing pictures would produce larger LPP amplitudes compared to other emotions (happy and sad) in the early time windows of the LPP (e.g., 400–700, 700–1000 ms). The results supported our hypothesis, offering new, albeit preliminary, evidence of the differential processing of threat-related stimuli on the LPP.     

Empowerment,Leadership, and Sustainability in a Faith-Based Partnership to Improve Health

Community-based participatory research is a noted approach for improving community health and reducing health disparities. Community partnerships can serve as a catalyst for change in public health efforts. This article will apply empowerment theory and sustainability principles to an existing faith-based partnership. BRANCH Out is a partnership among 13 African American churches, the City of Milwaukee Health Department—Community Nutrition, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The partnership goal was to change inaccurate perceptions, knowledge and negative attitudes, and behaviors about chronic disease and promote healthy youth leadership. Faith-based empowerment can occur at the individual, organizational, and community level. BRANCH Out demonstrates how partnerships can be sustained in multiple ways. The partnership also highlights the unique contributions of churches to community health outcomes.     

Beliefs about group malleability and out‐group attitudes: The mediating role of perceived threat in interactions with out‐group members

Recent research suggests that inducing fixed (rather than malleable) beliefs about groups leads to more negative attitudes toward out‐groups. The present paper identifies the underlying mechanism of this effect. We show that individuals with a fixed belief about groups tend to construe intergroup settings as threatening situations that might reveal shortcomings of their in‐group (perceived threat). In the present research, we measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2) participants' lay theories about group malleability. We found that the extent to which individuals had an entity (versus an incremental) group theory influenced the level of threat they felt when interacting with out‐group members, and that perceived threat in turn affected their level of ethnocentrism and prejudice. These findings shed new light on the role of lay theories in intergroup attitudes and suggest new ways to reduce prejudice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.