Experiences with Leadership
Creators: name: Mercadante, Eric
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: 1. What’s the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? How does self-esteem affect people’s judgments of effective leadership? What is the mechanism underlying the effects of self-esteem on judgments of effective leadership? Confirmatory predictions: • We predict we will see the following effects in our mismatched conditions (High Dominance, Low prestige and Low Dominance, High Prestige) o Self-esteem will negatively predict leadership ratings of the hypothetical leader in the High Dominance, Low Prestige condition. o Self-esteem will positively predict leadership ratings of the hypothetical leader in the Low Dominance, High Prestige condition. • In all four conditions, self-esteem will positively predict leadership ratings for leaders who are high in prestige and will negatively predict leadership ratings for leaders who are low in prestige. o Because both high dominance and low dominance (as described in our vignettes) are problematic leadership styles, we may not observe differences in the effect of self-esteem on leadership judgments between high and low dominance leaders who have the same level of prestige. This would suggest that low self-esteem individuals are more permissive of problematic leadership behaviors including (but not limited to) high dominance. • Self-esteem will negatively predict distrust for highly prestigious leaders and there will be a significant indirect effect such that distrust for highly prestigious leaders mediates the relationship between self-esteem and leadership ratings. We do not expect either the direct or indirect effect for leaders described as low in prestige. Exploratory predictions: • Self-esteem will negatively predict social fit (Aday &amp; Schmader, in prep.) for high dominance leaders (controlling for their level of prestige) and there will be a significant indirect effect such that social fit mediates the relationship between self-esteem and leadership ratings for high dominance leaders. • Self-esteem will positively predict social fit for high prestige leaders (controlling for their level of dominance) and there will be an indirect effect such that social fit for highly prestigious leaders mediates the relationship between self-esteem and leadership ratings. We do not expect either of these effects for leaders described as low in prestige. • We will also measure self-concept fit and goal fit (Aday &amp; Schmader, in prep.). We predict the same pattern of results described for social fit for these two subscales and we will also examine effects of the total measure of all three kinds of fit. 2. Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Participants will read a vignette about a leader (vignette’s described in detail below). After reading the vignette, participants will rate the leader’s leadership abilities by indicating on a 7-point Likert scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” how much they agree with each of the following items for the given leader. Reverse-scored items are indicated by (R) after the item. Leadership Ratings: We will calculate leadership ratings by taking the mean of the ratings of all items (after reverse scoring reverse-scored items). 1. [The leader] does the right thing. 2. [The leader] looks out for the best interests of [the organization] 3. It is for the best that [The leader] is in his position. 4. Things would be worse for [the organization] if [The leader] was not in his position. 5. [The leader] demonstrates strong leadership abilities. 6. [The leader] does the things that any good leader would do 7. [The leader] behavior is counterproductive (R) 8. [the organization] would be better off if [The leader] wasn't in his position. (R) 9. [The leader] is a poor leader. (R) 10. [The leader] does not think about what is best for [the organization] (R) 11. [The leader] only thinks about himself. (R) 12. A good leader would act differently from [The leader] (R) Dominance and Prestige: Participants will complete 4-item versions of dominance &amp; prestige scales (Cheng, Tracy, &amp; Henrich, 2010) about the leader that have been validated in previous research (Witkower et al., 2019). An example item for the dominance scale is “[the leader] enjoys having control over the employees” An example item for the prestige scale is “[the leader] is held in high esteem by the employees”. Leader’s Warmth and Competence: We will measure warmth and competence with the following items taken from Fiske et al., 2002. Participants will rate the extent to which the leader they watched has the following qualities on a five-point scale from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Extremely) • Warmth: Friendly, Well-intentioned, Trustworthy, Warm, Good-Natured, Sincere • Competence: Competent, Confident, Capable, Efficient, Intelligent, Skillful Distrust of leader: We will use an adapted version of the Cynical Distrust Scale (Wong et al., 2013) that has been adapted to apply to the specific target in the vignette rather than to people in general. An example of an adapted item we will use is “[The leader] is honest chiefly through fear of getting caught”. Authenticity: We will measure three facets of authenticity, self-concept fit, goal fit, and social fit (Aday &amp; Schmader, in prep; Schmader &amp; Sedikides, 2017). Participants will be asked to imagine they work for the leader in the vignette they read. The adapted items for each facet are as follows: • Self-Concept Fit o Even when I’m alone and doing nothing, simply being [the leader]’s employee would make me feel like myself. o Just being [the leader]’s employee would suit the way I see myself. o Working for [the leader] would feel right for who I am. o Working for [the leader] would bring out who I am. o I would feel ‘at home’ if I worked for [the leader]. • Goal Fit o Being an employee of [the leader] is a role where I would feel intrinsically motivated by my own goals. o [The leader]’s standards of success match what I think it means to be successful. o I would often feel that working for [the leader] would allow me to realize my own goals. o My behavior while working for [the leader] would be motivated by things I value. o [The leader]’s leadership style fits how I like to work. • Social Fit o When I’m around [the leader], I would feel like I can act natural. o I wouldn’t feel like I need to be a different person around [the leader]. o [The leader] would NOT judge me for being myself. (reversed) o I would never have to hide my true behavior when I’m with [the leader]. o I feel that [the leader] would understand exactly who I am. 3. How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? Participants will be assigned to one of five conditions in a 2x2 design with one additional exploratory condition: Dominance (high vs. low) and Prestige (high vs. low). Each condition will employ two versions of the vignette which counterbalance the order of statements that communicate dominance and prestige information as well as the content of their behavior that is described as dominant or prestigious. The vignettes are as follows, text in red indicates that it communicates dominance information, text in blue indicates that it communicates prestige information: High Dominance, High Prestige Condition: • Version 1: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for being a strong-willed leader who is willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals and also as someone who has strong managerial skills and thorough knowledge of the industry. Manager A has the expertise to give helpful advice and suggestions about the employees’ work and is always willing to work with them to solve difficult problems. If the employees disagree with what Manager A wants, Manager A demands that they do things a certain way and threatens to demote or even fire them if they don’t listen. The employees listen to Manager A because Manager A is a role model and they want to learn from Manager A and also because they are worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen. • Version 2: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for having strong managerial skills and thorough knowledge of the industry, and also as someone who is a strong-willed leader who is willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals. Manager A likes to have control over all of the employees’ work and demands that they do things in a certain way. However, when the employees make mistakes, Manager A tends to respond with compassion and offers to help the employee(s) fix the problem. The employees listen to Manager A because they are worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen and also because Manager A is a role model and they want to learn from Manager A. High Dominance, Low Prestige Condition: • Version 1: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for being a strong-willed leader who is willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals but also as someone who does not have strong managerial skills nor a thorough knowledge of the industry. Manager A does not have the expertise to give helpful advice and suggestions about the employees’ work and is never willing to work with them to solve difficult problems. If the employees disagree with what Manager A wants, Manager A demands that they do things a certain way and threatens to demote or even fire them if they don’t listen. The employees listen to Manager A even though Manager A is not a role model and they don’t want to learn from Manager A, but rather because they are worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen. • Version 2: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for not having strong managerial skills nor a thorough knowledge of the industry, but also as someone who is a strong-willed leader who is willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals. Manager A likes to have control over all of the employees’ work and demands that they do things in a certain way. When the employees make mistakes, Manager A does not respond with compassion and never offers to help the employee(s) fix the problem. The employees listen to Manager A because they are worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen even though Manager A is not a role model and they don’t want to learn from Manager A. Low Dominance, High Prestige Condition: • Version 1: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for being a weak-willed leader who is not willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals but also as someone who has strong managerial skills and thorough knowledge of the industry. Manager A has the expertise to give helpful advice and suggestions about the employees’ work and is always willing to work with them to solve difficult problems, but if the employees disagree with what Manager A wants, Manager A lets them do whatever they want and never demands that they do something a certain way. The employees listen to Manager A because Manager A is a role model and they want to learn from Manager A even though they are not worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen. • Version 2: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for having strong managerial skills and thorough knowledge of the industry, but also as someone who is a weak-willed leader who is not willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals. Manager A does not like to have control over the employees’ work and tends to let the employees do things however they want. When the employees make mistakes, Manager A tends to respond with compassion and offers to help the employee(s) fix the problem. The employees listen to Manager A even though they are not worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen, but rather because Manager A is a role model and they want to learn from Manager A. Low Dominance, Low Prestige Condition: • Version 1: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for being a weak-willed leader who is not willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals and also as someone who does not have strong managerial skills or a thorough knowledge of the industry. Manager A doesn’t have the expertise to give helpful advice and suggestions about the employees’ work and never offers to work with them to solve difficult problems. Manager A lets the employees do whatever they want and never demands that the they do something a certain way. The employees listen to Manager A even though Manager A is not a role model and they don’t want to learn from Manager A and even though they are not worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen. • Version 2: Manager A is the boss at Company A. Manager A is known for not having strong managerial skills nor a thorough knowledge of the industry, and also as someone who is a weak-willed leader who is not willing to be aggressive to achieve Company A’s goals. Manager A does not like to have control over the employees’ work and tends to let the employees do things however they want. When the employees make mistakes, Manager A does not respond with compassion and never offers to help the employee(s) fix the problem. The employees listen to Manager A even though they are not worried that Manager A would punish them if they did not listen and despite that Manager A is not a role model and they don’t want to learn from Manager A. Exploratory Condition: The following vignette is designed to describe a bad leader who isn’t obviously high or low in dominance or prestige. We are including this strictly for exploratory purposes and do not have a priori hypotheses about what effects will emerge. Manager A is the boss at Company A. No one's quite sure how Manager A ascended to a leadership role because Manager A doesn't seem to care very much about the company's goals or the employees' well-being. Manager A usually shows up late to work and leaves at random times without explaining why, and when Manager A is "working", that means Manager A is probably surfing the internet or talking to friends on social media. Manager A is known for taking up the employees' time by telling them irrelevant, personal stories and also for telling offensive jokes and making inappropriate comments without any idea that this makes the employees uncomfortable. The employees at Company A find a way to get things done without any help from Manager A, and they say it feels like they don't even have a boss at work. To assess self-esteem, participants will complete the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). 4. Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/ hypothesis. To test our first confirmatory prediction, we will use multiple regression with our DV (leadership ratings) predicted by self-esteem (centered), between-subjects condition, and an interaction term between self-esteem and condition. To test our proposed patterns of mediation, we will run within-condition structural equation models using the lavaan package and calculate indirect effects with path analysis. To compare effects across conditions, we will examine the confidence intervals around the effects and will conclude that the effects are significantly different from each other if the confidence intervals do not overlap. 5. Any secondary analyses? We do not have any planned secondary analyses at this time. 6. How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? Participants will be collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk and must live in the US. We took a somewhat conservative estimate of our effect sized for the difference in the correlation between self-esteem and leadership ratings for dominant and prestigious leaders observed in previous studies (q = .40). We set power to 80%, alpha to .05, and specified a two-tailed test, resulting in a recommended sample size of 400 participants (calculated in GPower). We will collect an additional 100 participants for the exploratory condition, and because we expect that up to 15% of participants could be excluded from the analyses due to failing an attention check, we will collect data from 600 participants in total. 7. Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., data exclusions, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) Within the Leadership Ratings Questionnaire, there will be the following randomly place item-level attention check item: Please select “Neither Agree nor Disagree” for this question. Participants will read the following attention check question after completing the self-esteem and social dominance orientation measures and before the vignette: Research in decision making shows that people, when making decisions and answering questions, prefer not to pay attention and minimize their effort as much as possible. Some studies show that over 50% of people don’t carefully read questions. If you are reading this question and have read all the other questions, please select the box marked ‘other’ and type ‘Decision Making’ in the box below. Do not select “predictions of your own behavior.” Thank you for participating and taking the time to read through the questions carefully! What was this study about? a. Predictions of your own behavior b. Predictions of your friends’ behavior c. Learning and Cognition d. Other (Please specify) [text box here] We will potentially exclude all participants who fail at least one of these attention checks. To determine if we will exclude them, we will examine whether there are significant differences between participants who pass the attention check and those that fail it on the effects described under confirmatory predictions. If we do not observe significant differences between those who passed and failed the attention check items, we will analyze data from the entire sample rather than exclude those who failed the attention check in order to maximize our statistical power. 8. Have any data been collected for this study already? No data has been collected yet for this study.