"A right to lead": The role of leader legitimacy on group reactions to transgressive leadership

Research on the transgression credit shows that groups may sometimes turn a blind eye to ingroup leaders who transgress moral norms. Although there is substantial research investigating the underlying criteria of what makes a “good” leader, research often neglects to investigate the role of followers in leader-group dynamics. In this paper, we offer a novel approach to transgressive leadership by proposing that leader legitimacy is a key factor that determines whether followers’ reactions to transgressive leaders are positive or negative. Across two experiments, participants ascribed transgression credit only to transgressive ingroup leaders perceived as legitimate (Studies 1–2, total n = 308). Transgressive illegitimate leaders were viewed as more threatening to the group, were targeted for formal punishment, received less validation for their behavior, triggered negative emotions (anger and shame), and raised higher consensus for their removal from the leadership position than did legitimate leaders. This effect also occurred irrespective of the absence of formal social control measures implemented toward the transgressive leader (Study 2). Mediation analysis showed that leader illegitimacy triggered stronger feelings of group threat and stronger negative emotions which, consequently, fuelled agreement with collective protest against the transgressive leader. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Discouraging unethicality versus encouraging ethicality: Unraveling the differential effects of prevention‐ and promotion‐focused ethical leadership

Theory on the impact of ethical leadership has traditionally been based on a deontological approach to morality. Underlying this perspective is the assumption that all leader behaviors that encourage “normatively appropriate conduct” will influence followers in a similar fashion. Put differently, the current consensus seems to suggest that actions that focus on preventing unethical behavior—attending to “the wrong”—will have the same impact as actions that focus on promoting ethical behavior—attending to “the right.” Taking a within‐person approach, we draw upon social exchange theory to challenge this consensus and build theory that suggests a follower's felt trust from their leader will be differentially impacted by prevention‐ versus promotion‐focused ethical leadership. We also explore how these different types of ethical leadership may indirectly, through felt trust, impact citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior. Finally, we consider how the role of the “moral manager” may interact with the “moral person” by identifying leader moral hypocrisy as an important between‐person moderator of these effects. Given the importance of ethical decision‐making in organizations and the calls for increased ethical leadership, our findings have important implications for both theory and practice.     

Hurry up! The role of supervisors’ time urgency and self‐perceived status for autocratic leadership and subordinates’ well‐being

This study examines the connections among supervisors’ time urgency, their leadership behavior, and subordinate outcomes. Integrating cognitive perspectives on time urgency with contemporary thinking on the psychological experience of status, we reason that supervisors’ time‐urgent personality relates positively with their autocratic leadership behavior, and we cast supervisors’ self‐perceived status as a moderator of this linkage. Moreover, we enrich this leader‐centric perspective with a complementary, more follower‐centric view, recognizing that the consequences of supervisors’ time urgency likely extend beyond their own behavior to indirectly affect their subordinates’ well‐being at work. We tested our hypotheses using a field sample of 60 supervisors and 277 of their subordinates. Results indicate that (a) supervisors with higher time urgency are more likely to exhibit autocratic leadership behavior when they also perceive themselves as having relatively high status among subordinates, but not when perceiving lower status, and (b) supervisors’ time urgency exhibits a conditional indirect effect (via autocratic leadership) on subordinates’ work stress and time pressure experiences. Hence, this study illustrates an important boundary condition for the consequences of supervisors’ time urgency, and it demonstrates that this personality characteristic not only shapes supervisors’ leadership behavior but also affects the subordinates they are charged with leading.     

A new look at the attribution of moral responsibility: The underestimated relevance of social roles

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We will present an experiment to support this claim.     

TMS to the “occipital face area” affects recognition but not categorization of faces

The human cortical system for face perception is comprised of a network of connected regions including the middle fusiform gyrus (“fusiform face area” or FFA), the inferior occipital cortex (“occipital face area” or OFA), and the superior temporal sulcus. The traditional hierarchical feedforward model of visual processing suggests information flows from early visual cortex to the OFA for initial face feature analysis to higher order regions including the FFA for identity recognition. However, patient data suggest an alternative model. Patients with acquired prosopagnosia, an inability to visually recognize faces, have been documented with lesions to the OFA but who nevertheless show face-selective activation in the FFA. Moreover, their ability to categorize faces remains intact. This suggests that the FFA is not solely responsible for face recognition and the network is not strictly hierarchical, but may be organized in a reverse hierarchical fashion. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt processing in the OFA in neurologically-intact individuals and found participants’ ability to categorize intact versus scrambled faces was unaffected, however face identity discrimination was significantly impaired. This suggests that face categorization but not recognition can occur without the “earlier” OFA being online and indicates that “lower level” face category processing may be assumed by other intact face network regions such as the FFA. These results are consistent with the patient data and support a non-hierarchical, global-to-local model with re-entrant connections between the OFA and other face processing areas.     

青少年领导力发展的研究述评

青少年时期是领导力发展的最佳时机和关键时机。青少年领导力发展是指对青少年所实施的帮助其增强领导力意识、发展领导力素质及掌握领导力技巧的各种经历或活动。本文在回顾国内外青少年领导力发展的模式、途径和内容等相关研究的基础上,提出了青少年领导力发展的未来研究趋势,主要包括：（1）青少年领导力发展理论模式的实证检验;（2）体育课或体育活动中青少年领导力发展的实证探索;（3）中国背景下青少年领导力发展的实证研究。     

Personality and Campus Controversies: Preferred Boundaries as a Function of Openness to Experience

We explored the relationship between the “big five” personality factors of the Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness–Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985) and students' endorsement of two locally controversial activities—a Halloween street festival and the university's intercollegiate football program. Consistent with opponents' views of the kinds of students who take part in the Halloween street party, those who favored this activity scored low on agreeableness but high on openness to experience. Those who favored continuance of the football program scored low on openness. Results are discussed in terms of preferences for boundaries and structure within environments. The results add to the construct validity of the NEO–PI and to understanding of the openness construct.