Respectful leadership:Reducing performance challenges posed by leader role incongruence and gender dissimilarity

We investigate how respectful leadership can help overcome the challenges for follower performance that female leaders face when working (especially with male) followers. First, based on role congruity theory, we illustrate the biases faced by female leaders. Second, based on research on gender (dis-)similarity, we propose that these biases should be particularly pronounced when working with a male follower. Finally, we propose that respectful leadership is most conducive to performance in female leader–male follower dyads compared with all other gender configurations. A multi-source field study (N = 214) provides partial support for our hypothesis. While our hypothesized effect was confirmed, respectful leadership seems to be generally effective for female leaders irrespective of follower gender, thus lending greater support in this context to the arguments of role congruity rather than gender dissimilarity

When what we get is not what we want - The role of implemented versus desired merger patterns in support for mergers and perceived fairness

By integrating an intergroup perspective on mergers with discrepancy theories, we argue that merger partners aim for merger patterns that best benefit their group’s standing. Importantly, we hypothesize and show that the discrepancy between what merger partners want and what they actually get affects outcomes essential to merger success. Specifically, we demonstrate that perceived fit between the implemented and the desired merger pattern predicts support for the merger. We further show that this effect is mediated by perceived fairness (Study 1) and emotional reactions to the merger (Study 2). Our findings are generalized across a field study that investigate a real merger between two institutions of higher education (Study 1) and an experiment (Study 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Fix the Game, Not the Dame: Restoring Equity in Leadership Evaluations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.Female leaders continue to face bias in the workplace compared to male leaders. When employees are evaluated differently because of who they are rather than how they perform, an ethical dilemma arises for leaders and organizations. Thus, bridging role congruity and social identity leadership theories, we propose that gender biases in leadership evaluations can be overcome by manipulating diversity at the team level. Across two multiple-source, multiple-wave, and randomized field experiments, we test whether team gender composition restores gender equity in leadership evaluations. In Study 1, we find that male leaders are rated as more prototypical in male-dominated groups, an advantage that is eliminated in gender-balanced groups. In Study 2, we replicate and extend this finding by showing that leader gender and team gender composition interact to predict trust in the leader via perceptions of leader prototypicality. The results show causal support for the social identity model of organizational leadership and a boundary condition of role congruity theory. Beyond moral arguments of fairness, our findings also show how, in the case of gender, team diversity can create a more level playing field for leaders. Finally, we outline the implications of our results for leaders, organizations, business ethics, and society

On the ups and downs of emotion:testing between conceptual-metaphor and polarity accounts of emotional valence–spatial location interactions

In the past decade, many studies have focused on the relationship between emotional valence and vertical spatial positions from a processing perspective. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) work on conceptual metaphor has traditionally motivated these investigations, but recent work (Lakens in J Exp Psychol: Learn, Mem Cogn, 38: 726–736, 2012) has suggested that polarity-based perspectives offer an alternative account of response time patterns. We contrasted the predictions of these two theories using a new facial emotion recognition task, in which participants made speeded responses to happy or sad faces on a display, with the spatial location of those faces being manipulated. In three experiments (two-alternative forced choice tasks and a go/no-go task), we found a pattern of responses consistent with a polarity-based account, but inconsistent with key predictions of the conceptual-metaphor account. Overall, congruency effects were observed for positively valenced items, but not for negatively valenced items. These findings demonstrate that polarity effects extend to nonlinguistic stimuli and beyond two-alternative forced choice tasks. We discuss the results in terms of common-coding approaches to task–response mappings

Eye Gaze and Head Posture Jointly Influence Judgments of Dominance, Physical Strength, and Anger

Social status hierarchies are a universal principle of organization in human societies. Status judgments are often influenced by perceptions of the face and posture. Two important nonverbal cues of social status are head postures and eye gaze. Prior research has shown contradictory results and little is known about the interaction of these two cues. Study 1 investigated how eye gaze (direct vs. averted) and head postures (bowed vs. neutral vs. raised) impact judgments of dominance and physical strength. Judgments of dominance were influenced more than judgments of physical strength. Furthermore, raised heads implied dominance and strength, but in contrast to common assumptions, a bowed head conveyed dominance if the eyes gazed at the observer. Study 2 showed that bowed heads with direct gaze conveyed anger, potentially explaining the increased judgments of dominance. Taken together, the results show that head posture and gaze interactively modulated status-related traits and emotions, namely, dominance, strength, and anger, and help clarify prior incompatible findings on head postures and eye gaze. This is a pre-print of an article published in Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-018-0276-