Autonomic Synchronization, Leadership Emergence, and the Roles of Drivers and Empaths

Synchronization of autonomic arousal levels within dyads and larger teams has been associated with several types of social-behavioral outcome. One previous study reported greater physiological influence (brain activity in one area of the parietal lobe associated with verbal activity) of leaders on followers than of followers on leaders; influence was measured pairwise within triadic problem solving groups. The present study explored synchronized autonomic arousal with leadership outcomes in two experiments with group sizes of three to eight members. Drivers, who had the greatest physiological impact on other team members were consistently less like the leader of the group. Empaths, who were the most receptive to autonomic signals from others, were not consistently associated with leadership roles, although they did show sensitivity to team dynamics in their ratings of cognitive and social sources of workload. The tentative conclusion, subject to future research, is that successful leadership requires a balance between the driver and empath orientations

Heuristics Associated with Forecasting Chaotic Events: A Rare Cognitive Ability

Chaos is a mathematical phenomenon in which seemingly random events are actually predictable by simple deterministic equations. Chaos has been identified in numerous situations requiring humans’ situation awareness, sense-making, and control. The management of chaos could be a rare skill, however, and the heuristics for doing so are not well understood. These hiatuses thus motivated a new theoretical issue in ergonomics science concerning the distribution of this ability across different chaotic attractors and some of the heuristics that might be used to forecast events. Untrained undergraduates (N = 147) forecasted number series from four chaotic attractors of varying levels of computational complexity. Performance was measured as the correlation between forecasted numbers and real numbers. Participants’ performance varied by type of attractor and whether the forecasts were made for one to four steps into the future. The less capable participants used moving averages strategies, whereas the best forecasters matched the real numbers more closely

Forecasting Chaotic Events and the Prediction of a Rare Cognitive Ability

People often live and work in chaotic environments, and thus need to forecast and control what will happen next. The management of chaos is an apparently rare skill, and it would be valuable to identify and develop this skill in the workforce. Untrained undergraduates (N = 147) forecasted number series from four chaotic attractors of varying levels of complexity. They contributed measurements of 16PF personality traits, general intelligence, field independence, and divergent thinking. The results indicated that field independence and personality traits associated with the creative personality profile were the most frequent correlates of performance on forecasting one to four steps into the future. It should be possible to adapt the experimental results to personnel selection and placement decisions that require the search for talent for forecasting