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.     

Research Misconduct in the Age of Open Science: The Case of STAP Stem Cells

In early 2014, Dr Haruko Obokata and her co-authors caused a global media storm by publishing two scientific papers in Nature on stem cells. The papers proposed a surprisingly simple new method called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) to generate pluripotent stem cells for research purposes in a fast and inexpensive way. To the dismay of many, both papers were retracted within six months of their release due to data fabrication and falsification. The rise and fall of the STAP research illustrates the impacts of open science practices of quality control and validation on new scientific claims. In the STAP case, collective action generated through two online forums—the Knoepfler Lab Stem Cell Blog and PubPeer—exposed not only data manipulation in the two papers but also the irreproducibility of the purported new cellular reprogramming method. The case brings to the fore the tentative possibilities as well as potential pitfalls of ‘accelerated virtual witnessing’ through crowdsourced post-publication peer reviews that value accessibility and inclusiveness. Indeed, it calls for empirically grounded discussion on the ongoing reconfiguration of the shared system of values and norms or the moral economy of science.     

Virtually overcoming grammar learning with 3D application of Loci mnemonics?

The importance of contextual information for memory organization has been advocated by memory research and ancient mnemonic techniques (e.g., method of loci), yet it remains overlooked in most current study environments. Here, German noun gender was presented to 48 participants without prior knowledge of German, either without or within a provided spatial context consisting of a simulated virtual environment that could be explored freely. The three main findings were: in addition to reduced forgetting rate, memory was significantly enhanced when acquisition had occurred with a spatial context than without, in immediate, and delayed cued recall, as well as in delayed free recall. Second, visualization ability predicted spatial context efficiency as a memory aid for cued recall. Lastly, performance of the method of loci‐based method correlated with its perceived efficiency. This is the first study to experimentally demonstrate the potential effectiveness of computer‐induced spatial context on grammar learning.     

Future-Oriented Positive Mental Imagery Reduces Anxiety for Exposure to Public Speaking

Exposure therapy is the recommended treatment for anxiety disorders, but many anxious individuals are unwilling to expose themselves to feared situations. Episodic simulation of future situations contributes to adaptive emotion regulation and motivates behavior. This study investigated whether future-oriented positive mental imagery reduces anticipatory anxiety and distress during exposure, and increases exposure willingness and duration. Forty-three individuals with moderate public speaking anxiety were randomized to a standardized positive mental imagery exercise about future public speaking or no-task. All participants were then asked to present in a virtual reality environment. Anticipatory anxiety reduced in the positive mental imagery group, but not in the control group. Additionally, the positive mental imagery group reported lower distress during exposure than the control group, but groups did not differ in exposure willingness. Due to limited variance, effects on exposure duration could not be tested. Future-oriented positive mental imagery is promising to prepare individuals for exposure to previously avoided situations.     

我与另一个我:网络自我与现实自我的关系辨析

与现实自我相对,网络自我是个体在网络世界中的自我。在网络生活日益普及的今天,探讨网络自我与现实自我之间的关系具有重要意义。综合自我身份、外形及人格等方面的研究,可以得知网络自我在一定程度上是现实自我的虚拟投射,但对于一些容易受到社会评价的特征,个体会对网络自我进行适度的理想化。同时,网络平台属性以及用户个人特征都会影响网络自我与现实自我之间的关系。未来研究可以结合不同平台与场景、多种研究方法、在不同文化背景下对网络自我与现实自我之间的关系进行进一步探索。     

三维动静态场景下返回抑制的扩散

使用虚拟现实技术探讨三维动静态空间下返回抑制是否敏感于深度线索及返回抑制效应是否存在空间扩散。采用线索−靶子范式,分别设置三维静态和动态场景。结果发现：三维静态场景,不同深度及不同侧位置均发生返回抑制且产生效应大小有差异;三维动态场景,不同线索条件反应时无显著差异。结果表明,三维静态场景下,返回抑制敏感于深度线索,其效应在空间中存在扩散;客体运动破坏了返回抑制的产生及其效应的空间扩散。