Personological dynamics of leadership

This study reports on the personality correlates of rated leadership using the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and 50 college football players. Subjects were also given leadership scores using a CPI-based leadership regression equation. Two findings are of interest. First, consistent with past research, leaders were characterized by high scores on CPI Scales for Dominance, Self-Acceptance, and Responsibility. Second, coaches' leadership ratings correlated .62 with scores on the leadership regression equation. This provides an additional cross validation of this leadership equation and supports the notion that a stable set of personality traits characterize leaders. Some theoretical implications are discussed.     

Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

Socialization is the important process by which individuals learn and then effectively apply the rules of appropriate societal behavior. Response modulation is a psychobiological process theorized to aid in socialization by allowing individuals to utilize contextual information to modify ongoing behavior appropriately. Using Hare’s (1991) Psychopathy Checklist and the Welsh (1956) anxiety scale, researchers have identified a relatively specific form of a response modulation deficit in low-anxious, Caucasian psychopaths. Preliminary evidence suggests that the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick & Hare, 2001) may be used to identify children with a similar vulnerability. Using a representative community sample of 308 16-year-olds from the Child Development Project (Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1990), we tested and corroborated the hypotheses that participants with relatively low anxiety and high APSD scores would display poorer passive avoidance learning and less interference on a spatially separated, picture-word Stroop task than controls. Consistent with hypotheses, the expected group differences in picture-word Stroop interference were found with male and female participants, whereas predicted differences in passive avoidance were specific to male participants. To the extent that response modulation deficits contributing to poor socialization among psychopathic adult offenders also characterize a subgroup of adolescents with mild conduct problems, clarification of the developmental processes that moderate the expression of this vulnerability could inform early interventions.     

Sharing food with infants in Hadza communities in Tanzania

By analyzing mealtime interactions of Tanzanian Hadza infants with their interactional partners, we explored how two foundational schemas, namely giving/sharing and autonomy are realized and fostered in infants. We focused on three aspects of the mealtime interactions, namely how the infants’ share was protected, whether independent eating was fostered by the infants’ interactional partners, and how infants were encouraged to share food. To answer these questions, we also considered the settings that were created for infant eating, persons involved, and characteristics of the foods. Hadza infants (N = 24) between the ages of approximately 6 and 27 months were video recorded in mealtime situations. The videos were analyzed qualitatively and revealed the following patterns: First, infants’ shares were protected by eating meals in secluded places or providing infants with separate dishes. Second, independent eating was situational. It can be limited according to the child’s interest in the food or by the interactional partner. Some caregivers subtly enhanced independence by appearing unaware of infants’ signals. Third, sharing was encouraged and supported when it occurred spontaneously. Infants were also asked to share and occasionally tricked into sharing. Tolerated scrounging seemed to be generally accepted by both infants and caregivers. However, we also observed conflicts in competitive situations and somewhat overwhelmed infants. These results are discussed in light of hunter-gatherers’ foundational schemas and livelihood changes observed in the Hadza.     

Social attitudes and education: Self-selection or socialization?

The aim of this study was to replicate earlier findings (Ekehammar et al., 1987) concerning the relationship between social attitudes and educational direction and field of study, by addressing further the causality issue. The sample comprised 256 Swedish adolescents from metropolitan Stockholm attending the two lowest grades in secondary school (modal age was 17 years). The main findings of the previous study were replicated, although the statistical power was weaker. Two higher-order attitude dimensions (labeled Political-economic conservatism and Social conservatism) discriminated between six groups, based on combinations of the two aspects of education. The main picture evidenced a socialization effect regarding Political-economic conservatism and a self-selection explanation for Social conservatism. Introducing intellectual ability as an independent variable in the causal model, affecting both educational direction and social attitudes, weakened the relationship, as compared to the previous study.     

Beyond organizational entry and newcomer stress: Building a self-reliant workforce

This article extends the organizational entry and newcomer stress literature by focusing on the importance of building a self-reliant workforce. It posits that newcomer socialization now and in the future requires building a workforce of self-reliant managers and employees who can function effectively in a dynamic, global workplace. This article suggests that socializing workers to be self-reliant helps employees and organizations to thrive in the uncertain economic environment that is the determining factor in the success of today's organizations. It further contends that by reducing ambiguity and increasing employability, employees are likely to suffer less distress and organizations are less likely to pay the price for distressed employees.     

Changes in self-concept during occupational socialization of new recruits to the police

In a cross-sectional study five groups of male recruits (n = 369; ages 21 to 36) to a large English provincial police force were tested: one group at entry, three groups at different stages of their 2-year probationary period (one at one-quarter, one at one-half and one at three-quarters of the way through) and one immediately after the probationary period. Significant group effects were found on all 27 items of a set of self-concept statements, suggesting effects of entry-level occupational socialization on recruits' self-image. Changes from group to group during the course of training were examined using discriminant function analysis. Factor analysis yielded four clusters of items: isolation/vulnerability, tension/apprehension, self-worth and commitment/empathy; scores on all four fluctuated during training. Isolation and apprehension rose from a low base during training, and self-worth fell from a high base, but entry levels were recovered by completion of training, giving support for a weak version of the U-curve hypothesis of adaptation. However, high levels of commitment and empathy at entry were significantly depressed on completion of training. In addition, older trainees reported lower self-worth and higher apprehension. Results are interpreted in terms of adaptation during occupational socialization towards a more instrumental and cynical operational style.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Contending Place Identities

Although a considerable amount of research exists regarding the transfer of political orientations within the family, little systematic attention has been devoted to studying the transmission of place (territorial) identities in contexts where such identities constitute a basic cleavage of political competition. This article examines the transfer of place identities in Catalonia, Spain, where contending identities, along with left‐right ideology, give shape to a distinctive regional political life. Using data from region‐wide household surveys, we analyze the reproduction of place identities as observed in parent‐child pairs and triads and find that it exceeds the reproduction of other political orientations, including left‐right self‐location and party preference. The direct transmission model fares well against the rival hypothesis of indirect transmission via parental social characteristics and the competing impact of the local context. Parent‐child congruence varies according to the homogeneity of parental place identities, the same‐sex and cross‐sex combinations of parents and their children, and the ethnic composition of neighborhoods.     

When does procedural fairness promote organizational citizenship behavior? Integrating empowering leadership types in relational justice models

We examined how procedural fairness interacts with empowering leadership to promote employee OCB. We focused on two core empowering leadership types—encouraging self-development and encouraging independent action. An experiment revealed that leaders encouraging self-development made employees desire status information more (i.e., information regarding one’s value to the organization). Conversely, leaders encouraging independent action decreased employees’ desire for this type of information. Subsequently, a multisource field study (with a US and German sample) showed that encouraging self-development strengthened the relationship between procedural fairness and employee OCB, and this relationship was mediated by employees’ self-perceived status. Conversely, encouraging independent action weakened the procedural fairness-OCB relationship, as mediated by self-perceived status. This research integrates empowering leadership styles into relational fairness theories, highlighting that multiple leader behaviors should be examined in concert and that empowering leadership can have unintended consequences.     

Correspondence in parents' and children's concepts of god: Investigating the role of parental values,religious practices and executive functioning

This study examined the extent to which children's concepts of God correspond with their parents' concepts of God. It also examined how parent-context factors and children's executive functioning relate to parent–child conceptual similarity. Parent–child dyads from varied religious and racial backgrounds participated. Dyads had the greatest conceptual similarity concerning God's mind-dependent functions. Though correspondence between parents and children was lowest concerning God's body-dependent functions, dyads were more similar about those functions when parents engaged in more frequent religious practices with their child and thought God was important. Children's concepts of God were unrelated to religious practices, and parent–child conceptual similarity was unrelated to children's age and executive functioning. Simply put, variation among parents' anthropomorphic concepts of God drove variation in parent–child conceptual similarity. Overall, these findings suggest that embodied concepts of God may be most sensitive to cultural input and that socialization practices provide greater insight into parents' anthropomorphic concepts.     

The relative importance of proactive behaviors and outcomes for predicting newcomer learning,well-being,and work engagement

New employees can accelerate and optimize their socialization by behaving proactively, although the key behaviors vary across studies. Recent research suggests that newcomer proactive behaviors influence socialization through the mediating effect of corresponding proactive outcomes. This may partly explain differences across studies, along with possible variations in the relative importance of specific proactive behaviors. This study investigates further the mediating role of proactive outcomes, and the relative importance of different proactive behaviors and proactive outcomes in predicting newcomer learning, well-being, and work engagement. Based on a sample of 176 temporary agency workers, support for the mediating role of proactive outcomes was found, although some proactive behaviors were effective in their own right. Relative importance analyses revealed that different proactive behaviors were important for different socialization criteria. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.