Chapter 9 Social Psychology

Leadership

Getting group members to achieve the group’s goals

Defining Leadership

Not just compliance or an exercise of power.

Are they effective? (i.e., set goals and achieve them) Primarily object.

Are they good? (e.g., character, ethics, and morality) Subjective.

Great Person Theory

Perspective on leadership that attributes effective leadership to innate or acquired individual characteristics

Big Five

The five major personality dimensions of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellect/openness to experience

Autocratic Leaders

Leaders who use a style based on giving orders to followers

Democratic Leaders

Leaders who use a style based on consultation and obtaining agreement and consent from followers

Laissez-faire Leaders

Leaders who use a style based on disinterest in followers

Leadership Styles and Their Effects

Two key leadership roles:

Task specialist (concentrate on reaching solutions)

Socioemotional specialist (attentive to the feelings of group members)

Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ)

Scale devised by the Ohio State leadership researchers to measure leadership behavior and distinguish between “initiating structure” (task oriented) and “consideration” (welfare) dimensions. Generally agreed that the most effective leaders score high on both dimensions.

Contingency Theories

Theories of leadership that consider the leadership effectiveness of particular behaviors or behavioral styles to be contingent on the nature of the leadership situation

Least-preferred Coworker (LPC) Scale

Fielder’s scale for measuring leadership style in terms of favorability of attitude towards one’s least-preferred coworker. A high score indicates a relationship-oriented leadership style, and a low score indicates a task-oriented leadership style

Situational Control

Fielder’s classification of task characteristics in terms of how much control effective task performance requires. Task-oriented leaders are most effective when situational control is either high or low, while relationship-oriented leaders are most effective when situational control lies somewhere in the middle.

Normative Decision Theory (NDT)

A contingency theory of leadership that focuses on the effectiveness of different leadership styles in group decision-making contexts

Normative Decision Theory identifies three decision-making strategies among which leaders can choose:

Autocratic (subordinates input is not sought)

Consultative (subordinate input is sought, but leader makes final decision)

Group Decision-making (leader and subordinates are equal partners)

Path-goal Theory

A contingency theory of leadership that can also be classified as transactional theory—it focuses on how “structuring” and “consideration” behaviors motivate followers

Transactional Leadership

Approach to leadership that focuses on the transaction of resources between leader and followers. Also a style of leadership

Idiosyncrasy Credit

Hollander’s transactional theory, in which followers reward leaders for achieving group goals by allowing them to be relatively idiosyncratic

Behaviors that build idiosyncratic credit:

Initially conforming closely to group norms

Ensuring the group feels like the leader has been democratically elected

Seen to have competence to fulfill objectives

Seen to identify with the group, its ideals, and its aspirations

Leader-member Exchange Theory

Theory of leadership in which effective leadership rests on the ability of the leader to develop good-quality personalized exchange relationships with individual members

Vertical Dyad Linkage (VDL) Model

An early form of leadership-member exchange (LMX) theory in which a sharp distinction is drawn between dyadic leader-member relations: the subordinate is treated as either an ingroup member or an outgroup member

LMX Relationships

High LMX relationships lead to subordinates internalizing leader’s goals

Low LMX relationships lead to subordinates complying without internalization

Transformational Leadership

Approach to leadership that focuses on the way that leaders transform group goals and actions—mainly through the exercise of charisma. Also a style of leadership based on charisma

Three components of transformational leadership:

Individualized consideration (attention to followers’ needs)

Intellectual stimulation (challenging followers’ basic thinking)

Charismatic/inspiring leadership (provides energy)

Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire

The most popular and widely used scale for measuring transactional and transformational leadership

Charismatic leadership is a product of:

a) the leader’s personal charisma

b) followers’ reactions to the leader’s charisma in a particular situation

Leader Categorization Theory

We have a variety of schemas about how different types of leaders behave in different leadership situations. When a leader is categorized as a particular type of leader, the schema fills in details about how that leader will behave

Status Characteristics Theory

Theory of influence in groups that attributes greater influence to those who possess both task-relevant (specific status characteristics) and characteristics of a high-status group in society (diffuse status characteristics). Also called expectation states theory

Social Identity Theory of Leadership

Development of social identity theory to explain leadership as an identity process whereby in salient groups prototypical leaders are more effective than less prototypical leaders

Correspondence Bias

A general attribution bias in which people have an inflated tendency to see behavior as reflecting (corresponding to) stable underlying personality attributes

Group Value Model

View that procedural justice within groups makes members feel valued, and thus leads to enhanced commitment to and identificaiton with the group

Relational Model of Authority in Groups

Tyler’s account of how effective authority in groups rests upon fairness- and justice-based relations between leader and followers

In judging fairness, followers evaluate a leader in terms of both:

Distributive justice and procedural justice

Distributive Justice

The fairness of the outcome of a decision

Procedural Justice

The fairness of the procedures used to make a decision

Social Dilemmas

Situations in which short-term personal gain is at odds with the long-term good of the group

Glass Ceiling

An invisible barrier that prevents women, and minorities in general, from attaining top leadership positions

Role Congruity Theory

Mainly applied to the gender gap in leadership—because social stereotypes of women are inconsistent with people’s schemas of effective leadership, women are evaluated as poor leaders

Stereotype Threat

Feeling that we will be judged and treated in terms of negative stereotypes of our group, and that we will inadvertently confirm these stereotypes through our behavior

Glass Cliff

A tendency for women rather than men to be appointed to precarious leadership positions associated with a high probability of failure and criticism

Intergroup Leadership

Often uses us verus them rhetoric.

Alternatively, it can be used to build a unified group identity.

Social Decisions Schemes

Explicit or implicit decision-making rules that relate individual opinions to a final group decision

Group Rules for Decisions

Intellective tasks (has a correct solution). Truth-wins rule.

Judgmental tasks (no correct solution). Majority-wins rule.

Strictness and distribution of power are also factors in decision-making.

Social Transition Scheme

Method for charting incremental changes in member opinions as a group moves towards a final decision. Can be intrusive.

Brainstorming

Uninhibited generation of as many ideas as possible in a group, in order to enhance group creativity

Do nominal groups or groups that interact generate more creative ideas when brainstorming?

Nominal groups

Why don’t brainstorming groups generate more creativity?

Evaluation apprehension

Social loafing and free riding

Production matching

Production blocking

Production Blocking

Reduction in individual creativity and productivity in brainstorming groups due to interruptions and turn taking

Illusion of Group Effectivity

Experience-based belief that we produce more and better ideas in groups than alone

Transactive Memory

Group members have a shared memory for who within the group remembers what and is the expert on what

Group Mind

McDougall’s idea that people develop a qualitatively different mode of thinking when in a group

Memory-assignment Systems

Groups can negotiate responsibility for different memory domains

Groups can assign memory domains on the basis of relative expertise

Groups can assign memory domains on the basis of access to information

Groupthink

A mode of thinking in highly cohesive groups in which the desire to reach unanimous agreement overrides the motivation to adopt proper rational decision-making procedures

Risky Shift

Tendency for group discussion to produce group decisions that are more risky than the mean of members’ pre-discussion opinions, but only if the pre-discussion mean already favored risk

Group Polarization

Tendency for group discussion to produce more extreme group decisions than the mean of members’ pre-discussion opinions, in the direction favored by the mean

Persuasive Arguments Theory

View that people in groups are persuaded by novel information that supports their initial position, and thus become more extreme in their endorsement of their initial position

Social Comparison Theory

Comparing our behaviors and opinions with those of others in order to establish the correct or socially approved way of thinking and behaving

Bandwagon effect

Pluralistic ignorance

Cultural Values Theory

The view that people in groups use members’ opinions about the position valued in the wider culture, and then adjust their views in that direction for social approval reasons

Social Identity Theory

Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorization, social comparison, and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties

Self-categorization Theory

Turner and associates’ theory of how the process of categorizing oneself as a group member produces social identity and group and intergroup behaviors

Recency

An order of presentation effect in which later presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition