The social cognitive neuroscience of organisations

Social cognitive neuroscience is an emerging branch of cognitive neuroscience that bridges together social psychology and neuroscience. At its core is an understanding of the relationship between the brain and social interaction. The social cognitive neuroscientist places empirical endeavor within a three–stage framework, and questions falling under the SCN rubric undergo interrogation at each of these three levels. Firstly, we seek to understand a neuroscience of social interactions at the social level. Here we need to understand the motivational and other social factors that drive our behavior and experience in the real world. It goes without saying that any study of the cognitive neuroscience of socially interactive behavior must first be informed by social psychological theory to maintain ecological validity. Second, the social cognitive neuroscientist must be an adroit cognitive psychologist and be able to examine interactive behavior from the cognitive level. It is here that information–processing models and theories are applied to the understanding of our social behavior. Finally, studies at the neural level seek to inform us about the cortical structures, as well as the way they interact with other, in the mediation of the previous cognitive level. This volume brings together contributions from leading thinkers in both the social cognitive neurosciences and business to provide a comprehensive introduction and overview of a social cognitive neuroscience of the business brain. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/nyas. ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full–text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member

Attribution of social dominance and maleness to schematic faces

We report findings which suggest perception of 'higher order' attributes such as gender and social dominance are perceived from a schematic face. To investigate a large population, the first two experiments were carried out in both the traditional manner and on the Internet. Results obtained from both were not significantly different so the data sets were combined. Lowered eyebrow position was a strong indicator of both social dominance and the male gender. A schematic face with a sad mouth resulted in the face's being viewed as less dominant and less male. Eyegaze direction also was investigated and discussed in terms of dyadic influence. Evidence supported the assumption that both social dominance and the male gender are perceived through similar facial configurations on a schematic face. Limitations include the use of schematic face pairs, and the presentation of single faces in research is discussed.

The effects of ingroup-outgroup membership on minority influence when group membership is determined by a trivial categorisation

Two experiments are reported which investigate the influence of ingroup and outgroup minority influence where group membership was determined according to a trivial dimension. The results of the first experiment replicate an earlier study and show that an ingroup minority has significantly more influence than an outgroup minority. In the second study the connotations associated with membership of the ingroup and outgroup (positive/negative) were experimentally manipulated. When ingroup/outgroup membership was associated with a positive/negative image respectively, the ingroup minority had the most influence. However, when ingroup/outgroup membership was associated with a negative/positive image, as predicted, an outgroup minority had more influence than an ingroup minority. These results are interpreted as supporting an intergroup analysis of minority influence processes.

Do social capital building strategies influence the financing behavior of Chinese private small and medium-sized enterprises?

Using data from 65,485 Chinese private small and medium-sized enterprises over the period 2000-2006, we examine the extent to which firms can improve access to debt by adopting strategies aimed at building social capital, namely entertaining and gift giving to others in their social network, and obtaining political affiliation. We find that although entertainment and gift-giving expenditure leads to higher levels of total and short-term debt, it does not enable firms to obtain greater long-term debt. In contrast, we demonstrate that obtaining political affiliation allows firms greater access to long-term debt.

Trust as a mediator of the relationship between organizational justice and work outcomes:test of a social exchange model

Data obtained from full-time employees of a public sector organization in India were used to test a social exchange model of employee work attitudes and behaviors. LISREL results revealed that whereas the three organizational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural and interactional) were related to trust in organization only interactional justice was related to trust in supervisor. The results further revealed that relative to the hypothesized fully mediated model a partially mediated model better fitted the data. Trust in organization partially mediated the relationship between distributive and procedural justice and the work attitudes of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment but fully mediated the relationship between interactional justice and these work attitudes. In contrast, trust in supervisor fully mediated the relationship between interactional justice and the work behaviors of task performance and the individually- and organizationally-oriented dimensions of citizenship behavior.

Organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment in Nepal

The present study examines the structure of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and its relation to organizational commitment in Nepal. Four-hundred and fifty employees of five Nepalese organizations filled out standardized questionnaires. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed two factors of OCB, altruism and compliance, replicating Western models of extra-role behavior. Structural equation analysis showed a positive relation between affective and normative commitment on the one hand and both citizenship factors on the other. Continuance commitment was negatively related to compliance and unrelated to altruism. The findings thus confirmed the structure and usefulness of the concepts in an under-researched geographical area. Findings of the research are discussed within the Nepalese sociocultural context. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2005.

Majority versus minority influence and prediction of behavioral intentions and behavior

Two experiments examined the effects of majority and minority influence on attitude-consistent behavioral intentions. In the first experiment, when attitudes were changed via minority influence there was a greater likelihood to engage in an attitude-consistent behavioral intention than when attitudes were changed via majority influence. This suggests that minority influence leads to stronger attitudes (based on systematic processing) that are more predictive of behavioral intentions, while attitude change via majority influence is due to compliance through non-systematic processing. Further support for this interpretation comes from the finding that the amount of message-congruent elaboration mediated behavioral intention. When there was no attitude change, there was no impact on behavioral intention to engage in an attitude-consistent behavior. Experiment 2 explored the role of personal relevance of the topic and also included a real behavioral measure. When the topic was of low personal relevance, the same pattern was found as Experiment 1. When the topic was of high personal relevance, thus increasing the motivation to engage in systematic processing, attitudes changed by both a majority and minority source increased behavioral intention and actual behavior. The results are consistent with the view that both majorities and minorities can lead to different processes and consequences under different situations. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in cognitive style and their effects on task and social orientations of self-managed work teams

When assembling self-managing work teams, the personalities of team members are often overlooked. One personality variable known to be critical for effective decision making in teams is cognitive style. This study sought to examine how differences and similarities in analytic/intuitive cognitive styles affected the behavior of team members on the task/emotionally expressive dimension identified by Bales. As hypothesized, intuitive individuals and homogeneous intuitive teams were found to initiate more social-emotional acts. Contrary to expectations, intuitive rather than analytic individuals and homogeneous intuitive rather than analytic teams engaged in more task-oriented behaviors. Teams also tended to select intuitive individuals as leaders. The possibility that different combinations of styles may be important for overall team effectiveness was subsequently discussed, and it was suggested that this may depend on whether the nature of the work environment is relatively well structured and mechanistic or relatively unstructured and organic.

The influence of social e-atmospherics in practice:a website content analysis perspectives from Turkey as an illustration of emerging market and France as a mature market

E-atmospherics have been often analyzed in terms of functional features, leaving its characteristics' link to social capital co-creation as a fertile research area. Prior research have demonstrated the capacity of e-atmospherics' at modifying shopping habits towards deeper engagement. Little is known on how processes and cues emerging from the social aspects of lifestyle influence purchasing behavior. The anatomy of social dimension and ICT is the focus of this research, where attention is devoted to unpack the meanings and type of online mundane social capital creation. Taking a cross-product/services approach to better investigate social construction impact, our approach also involves both an emerging and a mature market where exploratory content analysis of landing page are done on Turkish and French web sites, respectively. We contend that by comprehending social capital, daily micro practices, habits and routine, a better and deeper understanding on e-atmospherics incumbent and potential effects on its multi-national e-customer will be acquired.

Household waste recycling behavior: a market segmentation model

The potential of social marketing has been recognized in the United Kingdom by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as a useful tool for behavioral change for environmental problems. The techniques of social marketing have been used successfully by health organizations to tackle current public health issues. This article describes a research project which explored the current barriers to recycling household waste and the development of a segmentation model which could be used at the local level by authorities charged with waste collection and disposal. The research makes a unique contribution to social marketing through the introduction of a competencies framework and market segmentation for recycling behaviors.

Antecedents and consequences of the social categorization of expatriates in India

Multinational organizations have dramatically increased their operations in Asian countries in recent years. The success of expatriate assignments has therefore become increasingly important for multinationals. Social and cultural psychologists have proposed that host country nationals' (HCN) attitudes toward expatriates are key antecedents of interpersonally supportive behavior related to assignment success. We developed and tested a model of HCN social categorization and helping of expatriates based on the social–psychological theory. Results indicated that perceived values similarity and collectivism are negatively related to social categorization of expatriates, and that social categorization is negatively related to the provision of role information and social support by HCNs. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and for organizations sending expatriates to culturally dissimilar host countries.

Are web designers resisting the inclusion of social cues when creating website user interface?

Using the resistance literature as an underpinning theoretical framework, this chapter analyzes how Web designers through their daily practices, (i) adopt recursive, adaptive, and resisting behavior regarding the inclusion of social cues online and (ii) shape the socio-technical power relationship between designers and other stakeholders. Five vignettes in the form of case studies with expert individual Web designers are used. Findings point out at three types of emerging resistance namely: market driven resistance, ideological resistance, and functional resistance. In addition, a series of propositions are provided linking the various themes. Furthermore, the authors suggest that stratification in Web designers’ type is occurring and that resistance offers a novel lens to analyze the debate.

Disentangle contextual and permanent individual motivations:an application to shopping behavior

Past studies resulted in conflicting definitions of consumer motivation. On the one hand, motivations are seen as the consumer’s characteristics that shape her general behavior (motivational trait). On the other hand, they are seen as contextual variables representing the reason why the individual is behaving specific to today’s context (motivational state). The objective of this research is to stress the difference between these two concepts and to understand the impact of each on consumer behavior. We applied our empirical study to shopping motivations; our results show a strong interaction between motivational trait and motivational state. Problem and Hypothesis On the one hand, Westbrook and Black (1985) consider shopping motivations as individual permanent characteristics. This concept is shared by other researchers (Rohm and Swaminathan 2004), which show that some shoppers are functional (they shop for convenience, information seeking, and time saving) while some others are hedonic (they shop for social interaction, bargain hunting and browsing). On the other hand, Kaltcheva and Weitz (2006) define motivations as a contextual orientation changing over time, depending on the situation, and show that contextual shopping motivations have a strong impact on shopping behavior. From our knowledge, no research specifically examined the respective impact of both these shopping motivation types. To deal with this issue, we used the notions of “traits” and “states” that have been largely used in marketing research to designate respectively a permanent characteristic of the individual and a temporary orientation of the consumer (Mowen 2000). The reversal theory (Apter 2001) suggests that two opposite states exist: the telic and the paratelic states. In the telic state, individuals set goals for themselves, must be disciplined to reach these goals, and do not behave in accordance with their personal trait. In the paratelic state, individuals are seeking arousal and enjoyment, do not set rules, and one could postulate that they act in accordance with their natural tendencies. Based on these considerations, we hypothesize the following process: in situations involving paratelic states, hedonic as well as functional individuals should behave according to their natural traits, whereas in situations involving telic states, hedonic people should inhibit their natural propensity to enjoy shopping and behave similarly to functional people. Hence, we postulate the following: Hypothesis: Compared to shoppers with functional motivational trait, shoppers with hedonic motivational trait will a) significantly display more hedonic shopping behavior intentions in a condition of paratelic motivational state, and b) not display more hedonic shopping behavior intentions in a condition a telic motivational state Empirical Research First, 108 participants were asked to fill a multi-items scale about their shopping habits, which actually measured their shopping motivational traits. This questionnaire allowed us to highlight four different dimensions in shopping motivational traits: social interaction, novelty/utility seeking, bargain hunting, and browsing. According to their scores on different items, participants were classified as functional or as hedonic on each of these four dimensions (a single individual may be hedonic on some dimensions and functional on others). Then, participants were then induced to adopt either a telic or a paratelic shopping motivational state while reading an appropriate scenario. Finally, participants were asked for their shopping behavior intentions in response to the shopping context. Four items were developed, corresponding to the four shopping motivational trait dimensions we found with our factor analysis. Results As we found four dimensions in shopping motivational trait, we set up four quasi-experimental designs to capture the entire phenomenon: for each dimension, a 2 (motivational trait) x 2 (motivational state) design was built, where the dependant variable was the shopping behavior element corresponding to the studied dimension. Four 2 x 2 Anovas were performed to assess the interaction between motivational trait and motivational state. Concerning the three dimensions - browsing, novelty/utility seeking, and bargain hunting- , in the paratelic state scenario participants with hedonic motivational trait displayed significantly more hedonic shopping behavior intentions than participants with a functional motivational trait (resp. F = 9.701, p = .003; F = 4.979, p = .03; F = 5.757, p = .02); and in the telic state scenario, there was no significant difference in behavior intentions between participants with hedonic or functional motivation trait. Each time, the interaction effect between motivational state and motivational trait was significant (resp. F = 4.859, p = .03; F = 3.314, p = .07; F = 2.98, p = .08). Concerning the fourth dimension, social interaction, shopping behavior intentions of participants with hedonic and with functional motivational traits were significantly different in the paratelic state scenario (F = 29.898, p <.000) as well as in the telic state scenario (F = 9.559, p = .003). However, the interaction effect showed that this behavioral difference was significantly stronger in the paratelic scenario. All these results support our research hypothesis. Discussion and Implications Our study provides consistent support for our hypotheses saying that there is an interaction effect between shopping motivational states and shopping motivational traits. The generalization of the results is strengthened by the study of four different shopping traits: social interaction, novelty/utility seeking, bargain hunting and browsing. As we proposed, when shopping in a goal-oriented state (telic state), behaviors of hedonic and functional shoppers do not differ significantly. Conversely, when shopping for a recreational reason (paratelic state), hedonic and functional shoppers behave significantly different. These results could explain why some previous studies concluded that shopping motivational traits had no impact on shopping behavior: they did not take into consideration the interaction between motivational trait and motivational state. Moreover, our study shows that marketing surveys performed by store managers to draw the personal profile of their customers must be crossed with contextual motivations in order to accurately forecast shopper behavior. Future Developments Our results can be explained by the self-control process, which pushes hedonic-trait shoppers to behave in a rather functional way in utilitarian situations. However, to be certain that this is the very process that occurs, we plan to add self-control perception scales to our existing measures. This is obviously the next step of this research.

Social cognition in leader–follower relationship:applying insights from relationship science to understanding relationship-based approaches to leadership

Relationship-based approaches to leadership (e.g., Leader–Member Exchange theory) currently represent one of the most popular approaches to understanding workplace leadership. Although the concept of “relationship” is central to these approaches, generally this has not been well articulated and is often conceptualized simply in terms of relationship quality between the leader and the follower. In contrast, research in the wider relationship science domain provides a more detailed exposition of relationships and how they form and develop. We propose that research and methodology developed in relationship science (i.e., close relationships) can enhance understanding of the leader–follower relationship and therefore advance theory in this area. To address this issue, we organize our review in two areas. First, we examine how a social cognitive approach to close relationships can benefit an understanding of the leader–follower relationship (in terms of structure, content, and processes). Second, we show how the research designs and methodologies that have been developed in relationship science can be applied to understand better the leader–follower relationship. The cross-fertilization of research from the close relationships literature to understanding the leader–follower relationship provides new insights into leadership processes and potential avenues for further research. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Properties of intention:component structure and consequences for behavior, information processing and resistance

Three studies tested the impact of properties of behavioral intention on intention-behavior consistency, information processing, and resistance. Principal components analysis showed that properties of intention formed distinct factors. Study 1 demonstrated that temporal stability, but not the other intention attributes, moderated intention-behavior consistency. Study 2 found that greater stability of intention was associated with improved memory performance. In Study 3, participants were confronted with a rating scale manipulation designed to alter their intention scores. Findings showed that stable intentions were able to withstand attack. Overall, the present research findings suggest that different properties of intention are not simply manifestations of a single underlying construct ("intention strength"), and that temporal stability exhibits superior resistance and impact compared to other intention attributes. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.