Neural Mechanisms Underlying Social Intelligence and Their Relationship with the Performance of Sales Managers

Identifying the drivers of salespeople’s performance, strategies and moral behavior have been under the scrutiny of marketing scholars for many years. The functioning of the drivers of salespeople’s behaviors rests on processes going on in the minds of salespeople. However, research to date has used methods based only on verbal self-reports. Advances in techniques from neuroscience such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) suggest that despite their complexity and relative inaccessibility, mental processes can be measured more directly. Theory of Mind and mirror neurons are two mechanisms that operate at an automatic or reflexive level, and are important drivers of social intelligence. We use fMRI and field studies to investigate how individual differences in de functioning of these social intelligence mechanisms relate to the job performance and ethical orientations of salespeople. In addition, we use fMRI to analyse the psychometric properties of scales. Our results show that when salespeople are presented with social stimuli during fMRI, they display individual differences in the amount of neurological processing in regions that play key roles in social intelligence, and these individual differences show associations with salespeople’s performance, strategy and ethical orientations. Implications for training, selection & recruitment of salespeople are provided. The theoretical contributions relate to the field of Marketing, Social Neuroscience, and Personality

Theory of mind and empathic explanations of Machiavellianism: a neuroscience perspective

We study theory of mind (ToM) and empathic underpinnings of Machiavellianism by use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, where account managers are used as participants in 3 studies. Study 1 finds evidence for activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, left and right temporo-parietal junction, and left and right precuneus regions; all five regions are negatively correlated with Machiavellianism, suggesting that Machiavellians are less facile than non-Machiavellians with ToM skills. Study 2 presents evidence for activation of the left and right pars opercularis, left and right insula, and left precuneus regions; the former four regions of the motor neuron system were positively associated, and the latter negatively associated, with Machiavellianism, implying that Machiavellians resonate more readily with the emotions of others than non-Machiavellians. This is the first study to our knowledge to show a negative correlation between perspective taking and emotional sharing in empathic processes in general and Machiavellianism in particular. Study 3 tests implications of managerial control on both performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, as moderated by Machiavellianism in the field. Our study grounds the functioning of Machiavellianism in organizations in basic neuroscience processes, resolves some long-standing ambiguities with self-report investigations, and points to conditions under which Machiavellianism both inhibits and promotes performance and citizenship behavior