Beware the angry leader: Trait anger and trait anxiety as predictors of petty tyranny
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Drawing on the general aggression model and theories of victimization and temperamental goodness-of-fit, we investigated trait anger and trait anxiety as antecedents of petty tyranny: employing a multilevel design with data from 84 sea captains and 177 crew members.Leader trait anger predicted subordinate-reported petty tyranny.Subordinate trait anxiety was associated with subordinate-reported petty tyranny.The association between leader trait anger and subordinate-reported petty tyranny was strongest among low trait anger subordinates supporting the theory of temperamental goodness-of-fit-or rather misfit-in dyads.Hence, leader anger-generated petty tyranny seems to constitute itself both as an average leadership style and as behavior targeting specific subordinates, in this case low trait anger subordinates.In addition, anxious subordinates report more exposure to such abusive leadership behaviors irrespective of levels of trait anger in the captain.The practical implications are above all the needs for organizational and individual management of leader trait anger.Keywords:
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Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the categories of leader traits, their generation and their relationships in leaders’ socialization. Design/methodology/approach The authors take the case study method, which is the most suitable method to answer research questions on why and how to fulfill the study purpose on the basis of the case of Ruimin Zhang. Findings Leader traits are classified into four categories with respect to socialization, namely, root trait, driving trait, thinking trait and affair trait. The root trait and the driving trait form from the leader’s insight with the impact of key events, mutually promote and consolidate each other, and together derive the thinking trait and the affair trait on the basis of critical events, culture, family, education, etc. The thinking trait is the premise of the affair trait to be expressed in leadership behavior. The root trait and the driving trait together determine a leader’s growth direction and efficiency and can distinguish leaders from non-leaders. The thinking trait and the affair trait together determine the pattern and effectiveness of leadership behavior and can distinguish effective leadership from ineffective leadership. Research limitations/implications This study transcends prior integral leader trait research by categorizing leader traits from the socialization perspective, makes a clear delineation on the interrelationships among categories of leader traits, analyzes their holistic functions on the leaders, reveals the formation and relationship mechanism of leader traits and identifies the types of leader traits that can work as the standards for distinguishing effective leaders from ineffective leaders or non-leaders. Originality/value This study promotes the development of the leader trait theory in the classification, formations, relationships and overall effect of leader traits.
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Abstract Personality traits are familiar to laypersons as enduring characteristics of individuals that distinguish them from others. Jane may be exuberant, energetic, and overbearing, whereas Jack is sober, steady, and reserved. Such distinctions are routinely made in everyday life and in literature, and they are facilitated by an enormous vocabulary of trait terms in English and other languages. Trait psychology consists of the scientific study of these characteristics, and trait theories of personality attempt to explain the development and functioning of the person primarily in terms of traits. Personality research is currently dominated by trait approaches, and much has been learned about traits in the past 30 years.
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Despite the considerable influence of situational factors and the resulting variability in behavior, individuals maintain stable average ways of acting. The purpose of the current research was to investigate one possible explanation for this stability. It was hypothesized that behaviors that are at levels different from the actor’s average trait levels ( contra-trait behaviors) demand more effort, or self-control, than do trait-typical behaviors. In Study 1, extraverted participants who acted at contra-trait levels reported their behaviors as more effortful, and this effect grew stronger over time. In addition, in a subsequent activity, observers rated extraverts who had acted contra-trait as behaving more extraverted, suggesting that fatigue from sustaining contra-trait behaviors may result in subsequent behaviors returning to trait-typical levels. In Study 2, participants reported on contextualized behaviors for 7 days and rated contra-trait behaviors as more effortful than trait-typical behaviors. This effect only held among nonhabitual behaviors, implicating self-control processes.
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Situational ethics
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You have to follow through: Attaining behavioral change goals predicts volitional personality change
Prior research has found that people’s desires to change their personality traits predict corresponding subsequent trait growth over time. However, few studies have examined the processes via which people can volitionally change their personality traits. Thus, it remains unclear whether merely desiring change predicts trait growth or whether actively pursuing change is necessary. The present study was a 15-week intensive longitudinal design that tested whether engaging in trait-typical behaviors predicted trait change. Participants provided self-report ratings of their personality traits and were able to freely accept and complete weekly “challenges”—prewritten behavioral goals that would pull their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in line with their desired traits. Results indicated that merely accepting behavioral challenges did not predict trait changes. Rather, only actually completing challenges (i.e., performing trait-typical behaviors) predicted trait change over time. Thus, merely wanting to change does not appear to be sufficient to evoke trait growth; successfully changing one’s personality traits may require actively and successfully implementing behaviors to change oneself.
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Anger and aggression are among the most clinically pervasive symptoms of people with complex trauma histories, however, there is little agreement about how anger and aggression are defined, triggers to anger and aggression, and how anger and aggression are regulated. Plus, limited research exists from youths’ perspectives. Using a developmental trauma framework as a guide, a phenomenological qualitative study was conducted to understand youths’ experiences of anger and aggression with a sample of youth with low and higher levels of risk exposure. Resulting themes points to youths’ perceptions of triggers, regulation, purposes, and usefulness of anger and aggression. While there were similarities across groups, there were notable differences in how youth described triggers and the regulation of anger and aggression. Findings point to the importance of considering the adaptive functioning of anger and aggression in the context of youth’ lives.
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McCrae's proposal to designate a field of personality traits and culture, coupled with challenges to the trait concept by cultural psychologists, makes relevant a review of trait psychology in a collectivistic culture, the Philippines. Philippine evidence in support of the trait concept includes the following: (a) Filipinos have a rich lexicon of trait terms and use these terms to describe and understand others and their behavior, (b) traits may be an important part of Filipinos' self-concepts, (c) the structure of Filipino traits can be approximated by universal Big Five-like dimensions, (d) trait scores show criterion validity, and (e) some interjudge agreement in trait judgments can be demonstrated. There is some suggestion, however, that criterion validities and interjudge agreement values may be lower in the Philippines than in the United States, providing some support for the view that traits will be less predictive of behavior in collectivistic cultures.
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Cultural Psychology
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Trait theory is one of the major approaches to the study of human personality. In the framework of this approach, personality traits are defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion that are manifest in a wide range of situations. The most important features of traits are relative stability over time, different degrees of expression in different individuals, and influence on behavior.
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Expression (computer science)
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Thus far, we have outlined the general case for approaching the study of personality via the trait concept. Before developing this argument, we must look briefly at the relationship between trait theories and other approaches to personality, such as psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology. There are two main reasons for so doing. First, trait theory has not developed in isolation from alternative theories. Allport (1937), for example, explicitly stated that his trait theory was an attempt to unify the diverse personality theories of this day. It is important to identify, first, those features of trait theories which are distinctive from other approaches, and, second, areas of common ground between trait theories and the alternatives. An issue of particular importance is consistency of behaviour. As we shall see, the idea of temporal stability in behaviour and mental life is not exclusive to trait psychology. Second, our thesis in this book is that trait psychology is becoming the dominant paradigm for personality research. This chapter offers some reasons why the trait approach may be more successful than competing ones, such as its use of the scientific method, and its ability to accommodate empirical data on behavioural consistency and stability.
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Argument (complex analysis)
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