On what basis do people select others as friends and collaborative partners? What causes one to prioritize collaboration with certain potential partners over others? If we could design ideal collaboration partners, what characteristics would we give them and why would those characteristics emerge as more important than others? These questions follow logically from the observation that people are selective in whom they associate with and do not equally accept all others as partners in collaborative ventures like friendships, coalitions, or alliances (collectively known as “partnerships”). Given that particular groups and relationships involve different tasks and require different behaviours from individuals, the personality traits associated with successful and mutually beneficial outcomes in a given task should be especially important when selecting partners for that task. In this study, which is part of the existing PACO dataset, previously-unacquainted participants were given a description of the cooperative task that they would have to perform in a series of dyads with other participants, and were asked to select partner(s) with whom they would like to perform this task. Half of participants performed a task that involved sharing monetary rewards and thus required traits such as trustworthiness, fairness, and sincerity in order to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome (trust-based task), while the remaining half performed a task that involved solving an intelligence test problem and thus required traits such as intelligence, competence, and skillfulness (competence-based task). Every participant then rated the perceived personality of each one of their interaction partners in a round-robin manner. We examined which personality traits are linked with partner selection in the two types of cooperative decision tasks, using effects derived from the Social Relations Model (SRM).

Vasiliki Kentrou is a PhD Candidate in the Work and Organizational Psychology Department at the VU Amsterdam.

In addition to the better known Replication Crisis, the behavioral sciences are suffering a Validity Crisis, in which many even replicable findings are accompanied by false conclusions. The Validity Crisis is easy to spot: the scientific literature is full of claims that directly contradict other claims. Adversarial collaborations, which call on disputants to codevelop tests of competing hypotheses, are an efficient method of improving our science’s capacity for self-correction and of promoting intellectual competition that exposes false claims. I’ll explain the benefits of adversarial collaborations for both science and scientists and advise on how to do them successfully.

Cory Clark is a Visiting Faculty Scholar in the Wharton School and the Executive Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at University of Pennsylvania, where she helps enemy scientists work together to resolve their ongoing empirical disputes. She received her PhD from University of California, Irvine in Social and Personality Psychology and Quantitative Methods in 2014. These days, she is interested in the politicization of science and other institutions, the cultural effects of the rise of women in institutions and leadership positions, and how human psychology can both facilitate and impede scientific progress.

The topic of gender differences in leadership behavior has received much attention from both researchers and practitioners. Despite this proliferation of studies and empirical progress, our understanding of gender differences for power sharing of leaders remains limited. Some studies suggest that female leaders are more likely to adopt participative leadership styles (i.e., share their power) while others show that women feel guilty about delegating, and therefore share their power less than male leaders do. The present research aims to shed light on the gendered dynamics of power-sharing behaviors by distinguishing between the dimensions delegation and consultation, and their alignment with agentic and communal traits. In doing so, we aim to explain the contradictory findings on gender differences in power sharing observed in previous literature.

Selection interviews are not only one of the most common selection tools but also one of the most valid ones – at least as long as they are properly designed and administered. However, there are concerns that applicants can improve their chances in an interview by means of faking and that this might also impair interview validity. In my presentation, I will provide an overview of a series of studies that we conducted during the last years and of answers from these studies to questions such as: Can applicants really present themselves more positively in an interview then they really are? How much can applicants fake if they really try hard? Are warnings a suitable means to reduce interview faking? How do warnings affect applicant reactions? Can better interview questions help to reduce faking? Do all applicants fake in interviews? When are applicants more likely to fake – and when are they more likely to use honest forms of impression management? And finally: Does faking really impair the criterion-related validity of selection interviews?

Klaus G. Melchers is professor and head of the Work and Organizational Psychology Group at Ulm University (Germany). His main research interests are in personnel selection and assessment and include assessment centers, selection interviews, different forms of self-presentation in selection settings, and game-based assessment. Further interests concerning topics such as personality assessment in the work context, rater training, response behavior in surveys, and effective poster design. His research has appeared in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Human Performance, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Psychological Review, and Applied Psychology: An International Review.

Traditionally, the leadership domain has heavily utilized survey methodologies in measurement, predicated on the assumption that follower evaluations effectively capture leader behaviors. However, this approach has been increasingly criticized due to concerns over its reliability and the potential for bias introduced by the reliance on Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs), which may reflect perceptions based on raters’ preconceived notions rather than actual leader behaviors. By integrating cognitive science perspectives, particularly the differentiation between episodic and semantic memory, this research aims to enhance the precision of leadership measurement. It explores the impact of source monitoring training, retention interval, and response latency on the utilization of episodic memory in leadership evaluations. Employing multiple 2x2 between-subjects factorial experimental designs, the study represents a pioneering effort to examine how these factors interact to produce more accurate and unbiased leadership evaluation using episodic memory. By addressing a significant gap in existing literature, the study aims to offer substantial implications for leadership measurement techniques, thereby contributing to the advancement of leadership theory and practice.

Mert Unur is a professional with a diverse background in academia and human resources management, with a research focus on organizational behavior, particularly in leadership dynamics, job security, and work engagement. His previous professional journey spans significant roles, including Human Resources Generalist and IT Recruitment Consultant, handling performance management, talent acquisition, and leadership dynamics. Currently, he is serving as a PhD Research Fellow at the University of Stavanger, Norway. In his research project, he is delving into the field of responsible leadership, seeking to disentangle its complex nature and explore methods for producing more accurate and unbiased leadership measurements.

Imagine hiring a senior manager, admitting students to a study program, making medical diagnoses, or deciding to release a prisoner on parole. In these situations, decision makers use multiple pieces of information (e.g., behavioral observations, test scores) to reach a decision. Most often, decision makers integrate information using their judgment. Yet, decades of research have produced the robust finding that more accurate decisions are made when information is integrated using simple algorithms. Unfortunately, decision makers rarely use algorithms in practice. Many people still strongly believe in the value of expert judgment. How can we increase algorithm use in practice and hence improve decision accuracy without losing the acceptance of key stakeholders? Do experts make more accurate decisions than novices? In this talk, I will discuss how decision making can be improved in practice and introduce the lens model as an overarching framework for studying (interventions to improve) decision making. Furthermore, I will present some preliminary data from an ongoing project and discuss future research ideas.

Marvin Neumann is an assistant professor in the Organizational Psychology section at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on improving test use and decision making in selection, algorithm aversion, and the scientist-practitioner gap.

Charismatic leaders move masses, inspire millions, and do not shy away from guiding and leading in times of crisis and change. Research on charismatic leaders mainly centers around their effectiveness in organizational settings. Indeed, substantial evidence on the economic value of charismatic leadership has been accumulated during the last decade. What has remained largely unexplored are the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of charismatic leaders. During my PhD project, we explored this question using various methods (e.g., eye-tracking, cognitive tasks, EEG). Our findings illustrate how charismatic leaders are capable of altering people’s attentional processes. In a postdoc research project, we build on this work and explore whether charismatic leaders narrow workers’ attention to specific information. The proposed mechanism could explain why charismatic leaders are so effective in increasing performance at group and individual levels. During the talk, I briefly summarize the findings from my PhD project and lay out the research plans for the postdoc project.

Lara Engelbert

Job interviews are one of the most valid and best accepted instruments of personnel selection. Almost every organization uses job interviews – often as the only selection tool at all. Not least due to the Covid-19 pandemic, technology-mediated job interviews have experienced an enormous upswing. Where telephone interviews, videoconference interviews or asynchronous video interviews were previously often only used to pre-select applicants or if a journey would otherwise have been too far, interviews via videoconference were suddenly the only way to introduce yourself "in person". The main advantages of technology-mediated interviews are flexibility and cost savings for the selection process. Asynchronous video interviews also offer the advantage of independence from time zones, which also opens up a larger pool of applicants. An additional point that should not be overlooked is that asynchronous video interviews are highly standardized and structured in their execution. However, these advantages are also offset by a number of disadvantages, such as the necessary availability of hardware and software. There are also many unanswered questions regarding technology-mediated interviews:

- How widespread are these interviews actually, and how are they used?

- Are technology-mediated interviews equally accepted as face-to-face interviews?

- How can their acceptance be improved?

- Are there differences in interview performance ratings between different kinds of interviews? Is this due to the applicants or the interviewers?

- By which design features is performance in asynchronous interviews influenced?

- Are there any differences in the criterion related validity between different kinds of interviews?

The aim of this talk is to provide an in-depth insight into the current state of research on technology-mediated interviews and to answer the above questions.

Prof. Dr. Johannes Basch is an IO-psychologist with a focus on digital instruments in personnel selection processes. He teaches and researches at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm (Germany). Furthermore, he works as trainer for communication and public speaking and as a consultant in management diagnostics.

Addressing environmental challenges requires effective leadership to mobilize individuals, and coordinate collective efforts. However, what qualities do individuals seek in an environmental leader? Based on the evolutionary psychology of leadership and followership, we posit that certain characteristics of contemporary environmental issues bear similarities to recurring challenges encountered by early hominids, thus triggering the same fundamental follower needs. Specifically, we argue that dominant and authoritarian leaders might be appealing to followers particularly when they seek active protection in an immediate crisis. We tested this idea in an experiment that presented participants (n = 500) with three scenarios describing an event happening in the city where they live; a financial crisis, an environmental crisis, and a control condition. Participants were asked to imagine they were a member of the state council which was tasked to select the company that would be hired to handle the aftermath of the event. After this, participants were presented with 10 pairs of photos (randomly ordered and matched in attractiveness and age) depicting ostensible CEOs of the companies that applied for the job. Each pair depicted one male and one female CEOs. For each pair, participants were asked to indicate which company they would vote for; the male-led company or the female-led company (implicit leader preferences), and rate which leadership-related traits they would like to see in that leader (explicit leader preferences). Overall, linear mixed models controlling for the specific pairings between male and female CEOs, showed that male CEOs (over female ones) were preferred when participants were presented with an event involving a crisis (vs. the control condition) and this was particularly true for the financial crisis condition. Further, the crisis conditions also led participants to rate prototypically masculine traits as more desirable than prototypically feminine ones. Importantly, simple effects showed that this effect derived from participants in both crisis conditions rating prototypically feminine traits (vs. prototypically masculine traits) less favorably than in the control condition. We discuss these results in relation to the literature on evolutionary-derived leadership preferences, as well as in terms of what they might mean for environmental leadership.

Dr. Gonzalo Palomo-Vélez is an Assistant Professor of Social and Evolutionary Psychology at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICSO) at O'Higgins University in Chile. His research in environmental and applied social psychology focuses on studying the functional and social motives that underlie people's environmental actions. Before his current position, Dr. Palomo-Vélez worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, where he explored the dynamics of individual and institutional factors influencing the public acceptability of energy production. In 2020, he earned his Ph.D. in evolutionary and social psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mark van Vugt and Prof. Dr. Joshua Tybur.

In this colloquium I would like to exchange ideas about leadership and leadership development in practice. The past 20 years I have been working with leadership in organizations in many different roles. First in diagnosing and selecting leaders and now in leadership development, training, and coaching. In this work I see recurring patterns of high expectations and ambitious goals, where the emphasis is often on achieving strategic objectives (demands) and less on shaping a future perspective (desire). More than once, this leads to disappointment for the organization that initiated it and the consultants who have done their best to of good service. In this talk I would like to share the way in which we shape leadership development and the experiences and dilemmas we encounter in the process. In addition, I would like to exchange ideas with the attendees about where we see starting points for strengthening future leadership and how scientific research and findings can play a role in this.

Jozef Zondag is a registered psychologist NIP/Work and Organization. Hij works as a Senior Managing Consultant at Berenschot and is the chairman of the NFMD (Dutch Foundation for Management Development). He is specialized in leadership development, coaching and the realization of complex organizational change processes. As a consultant, trainer and coach, he loves to work with the (often unconscious) dynamics of work the place. He has a strong desire to encourage people to authorize themselves to be the leader of their own development and to live their work live to its full potential.

Who do we like and dislike? Research by Dunlop et al. (2023) suggests that we like those who are agreeable, honest, conscientious, and similar to us. I will be presenting research conducted by Patrick Dunlop, Reinout de Vries, and myself, which delves deeper into this question by exploring the differences between the colleagues and acquaintances who we like and those we dislike.

Felix Kerscher is a Pre-PhD student at the Work and Organizational Psychology Department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He assists in research projects using the HEXACO personality model and algorithmic decision-making.

Prof. dr. Annet de Lange (1977; cum laude PHD 2005) works as Professor Sustainable employability on the labour market at the Open University, Faculty of Psychology, Heerlen, the Netherlands, and as Research Consultant at Berenschot in Utrecht. Furthermore, she is Visiting Professor at the faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Stavanger in Norway, and the NTNU, faculty of psychology, Trondheim, Norway and faculty of psychology University of Coruna, Spain. More information about her scientific work and books can be found through this website.

To increase the influence of women in the top of their organizations, many countries, including the Netherlands, have introduced gender quota. However, the impact of shifting gender ratios (the number of women versus men) on women's relative influence in decision-making bodies remains unclear. In my PhD project, I tackle this question from a new perspective, examining how individuals dynamically amass influence through the reciprocal acts of claiming and granting leadership. During my talk I will discuss claiming-granting interactions in the workplace, their variations based on team gender ratios, and their potential impact on leadership, influence, and advancement within organizations.

Sterre van Niekerken is a PhD student at the organizational section. Her research focuses on leadership, group/team interactions, behavioral coding and gender ratios.

An important element in the Horizon Europe ADVANCE research project, where we investigate mental health interventions for various groups in Europe that seem to be specifically vulnerable to mental health problems, is co-creation. This can be described as a collaborative approach involving all actors in mental health working together on an equal basis to develop and implement policies, services, and communication that foster positive mental health according to a psychosocial model and human rights-based approach. In this talk by VU PhD candidate Amber Brizar, this process will be introduced, and its application in the ADVANCE project will be illustrated and discussed.

Amber Brizar is a PhD Candidate in Organizational Psychology with an interdisciplinary background in Business Administration (MSc) and Communication and Information Studies (MA). She currently works on the Horizon Europe ADVANCE research project, where she specifically focuses on the mental well-being of employees in small and medium-sized enterprises and examines if, and how, the WHO's Manager Training for Mental Health can enhance this.

Leadership interventions tend to target—and try to change—women. But what about the context in which women are perceived, namely, teams? Similarly, gender discrimination research tends to target the targets. But what about those in the employment context who often see—and can also intervene more effectively—namely, bystanders? We'll explore these ideas recently published in Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Management, as well as Gloor's new #MeToo/humor research in Journal of Applied Psychology, closing with some fresh insights into some of her current work at the nexus of sports as a non-traditional pathway for women leaders.

Jamie Gloor is an Assistant Professor of Diversity and Leadership Science at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, where she and her team are funded by a 1.2million CHF Swiss National Science Foundation grant. With 2 decades of international experience across 4 continents, this award-winning speaker, scholar, and educator has been featured in top scientific (e.g., Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Nature Human Behaviour) and media outlets (e.g., Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The New York Times, and TEDx). Gloor and her team craft sought-after articles, courses, workshops, and keynotes spanning business and psychology on Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI), leadership, humor, (social) sustainability--as well as combinations of these topics.

The swift advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has significantly decreased the cost and technical barriers to developing AI systems for automatic personality and interview performance evaluations thanks to their good zero-shot performance on language tasks. However, our understanding remains limited regarding whether the LLMs-based evaluation adheres to the psychometric standards that typify the assessment methodologies employed by human evaluators. In this presentation, I will present a comprehensive assessment of the validity, reliability, fairness, and rating patterns GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 (the backend models for ChatGPT) for automatic personality and interview performance evaluation. Our study is conducted to answer both the research question of Performance (whether LLMs can provide valid, reliable, and fair predictions?) and the research question of Interpretability (whether the LLMs follow similar rating patterns as human annotators?) The exploration of these two research questions can help us to understand the potential response motivation and thinking mode of LLMs, thereby facilitating the development of more trustworthy and human-friendly LLMs for human-related applications.

Tianyi Zhang is currently working as a postdoc reseacher at organizational psychology section in Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He got his PhD degree in the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science (EEMCS) in Delft University of Technology. He was also associated with the Distributed & Interactive Systems (DIS) group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands. His research interests lie in machine learning and deep learning based human-computer interaction, affective computing, and personality recognition.

Emotions are integral to our everyday life. Because of the consistent and constant presence of emotions, dealing with our own and others’ emotions is an essential element of workplace performance and wellbeing. Research to date has established that leaders and employees can improve work and wellbeing outcomes by successfully regulating their own emotions (referred to as intrinsic emotion regulation: using strategies to influence the intensity, timing, type, and duration of our emotions), yet much less is known about how we regulate others’ emotions at work – a phenomenon referred to as extrinsic emotion regulation. In this seminar, we will explore: 1) the influence of personality traits on individuals’ decision to regulate others’ emotions, 2) the influence of goals and the use of specific strategies on relationship conflict and team-member exchange amongst co-workers, and 3) the influence of leaders’ use of extrinsic regulation strategies on follower workplace affective states and job satisfaction. We will close with some implications for leadership.

Hannah Kunst is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She conducted her interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Sydney Business School and the University of Sydney School of Psychology, and received her Research Masters of Science in Psychopathology at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. Hannah’s research focuses on emotions, wellbeing, interpersonal relations, and emotion regulation of others at work. She is passionate about translational research and bridging the gap between research and practice. Hannah is a casual academic at the University of Sydney Business School, an associate fellow of Advance HE, a member of the Body, Heart and Mind in Business Research Group, and a member of the Australian Compassion Council.

In this talk, I will discuss how computational leadership science (CLS) – a multidisciplinary field that integrates advanced computing techniques, artificial intelligence, and data-driven approaches to enhance decision-making, problem-solving, and strategic leadership in complex and dynamic environments – can be used to address mounting global challenges. From labor and economic losses due to global warming to cybersecurity threats and nuclear risks, urgency underscores the need for intervention. This presentation explores how the POP-DOC Loop – a crisis leadership framework developed at Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative – combines with CLS in harnessing AI's real-time capabilities, bolstering situational awareness and expediting decision-making. I will provide emerging examples of how crisis copilots, training bots, and network science are being used to prepare for, lead through, and learn from crises. I will also touch on how Microsoft addresses crises, explore the value of collective and hybrid intelligence, and hint at what it takes to nurture computational leaders. The key takeaway is that a holistic response to interconnected crises is necessary. By combining a proven crisis leadership framework with the latest in CLS, decision-makers will take organizational resilience and preparedness to the next level.

Brian R. Spisak, PhD, is a Research Associate at Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also an independent consultant, a faculty member at the American College of Healthcare Executives, and a best-selling author. His new book, Computational Leadership: Connecting Behavioral Science and Technology to Optimize Decision-Making and Increase Profits, is an essential read for leaders striving to navigate an evolving digital landscape.

Entrepreneurs require a distinctive set of leadership characteristics in order to explore new vistas, develop truly novel ideas, and adapt to continuously changing environments. Skills and behaviors such as imagination, creative problem solving, and playful exploration are fundamental to successful innovation and are increasingly important in startups and other high-innovation organizations (McDonald and Eisenhardt, 2020; Mukerjee and Metiu, 2022). More than fifty years ago in his seminal paper Technologies of Foolishness, James March (1971; 2006) called attention to playfulness as an essential instrument of decision-making intelligence. More recently, research in cognitive development and organization studies demonstrate that playfulness fosters imagination, deep learning, and effective teamwork and is therefore recognized as a powerful stimulus for innovation and the exploration of uncharted territories (Gopnik, 1996; Mainemelis and Ronson, 2006). Playfulness is associated with a feel-good quality due to the role of positive affect and intrinsic enjoyment, which, along with other cognitive processes, drive uncertainty-seeking behaviors (Andersen et al., 2022). It is therefore an intrinsically motivating force that leaders can harness to stimulate team cohesion and employee engagement with work tasks (Sutton-Smith, 1979; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). In this seminar, we will explore how playfulness, as an often overlooked form of leadership intelligence, facilitates flexibility, creativity, enjoyment and work engagement in the context of high-innovation entrepreneurship.

Katelyn Sharratt is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Strategy and Innovation at Copenhagen Business School. Her research interests lie at the intersection of entrepreneurship and organization theory. Using qualitative and experimental methods, she seeks to understand the emergence of novel ideas by developing a theory of creativity within the empirical context of high-innovation entrepreneurship. Specifically, she adopts the lens of play and playfulness to examine the attitudes, skills, and environmental conditions that stimulate entrepreneurial pathways to novel ideas in entrepreneurial teams. Katelyn holds a B.A. degree in Anthropology and M.A. degree in International Business from the University of Melbourne as well as M.S. degree in Marketing Management from Bocconi University.  Before joining CBS, Katelyn was Managing Director at Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship in Melbourne, Australia where she was responsible for the development and implementation of the organization’s strategic direction.

How does the presence of a robot impact the guest and employee experience?

How are personality traits activated in daily-life situations?

I will present on advancing research into person-situation interactions from the situational affordance perspective (e.g., De Vries et al., 2016). Understanding the mechanism underlying person-situation interactionism is crucial, as it can be conducive to our understanding of ourselves together with our relationships with others (e.g., why somebody acts in certain ways in certain situations), improving person-organization fit (e.g., by understanding how work-related behaviors arise from situation-trait interactions). I will specifically present the preliminary results of our (pilot) study on how personality trait activation in daily-life situations using the diary study design.

Identity leadership in the remote workplace: Reflections on the ongoing survey and intervention designs 

Abstract: While leadership is a group process, effective leadership is a group process of social identity management. As a follower-centric perspective of leadership theory, identity leadership has recently emerged as the new force for “ideal” leadership (Haslam et al., 2019; van Knippenberg, 2023) and has been identified as a crucial extension of the implicit model of leadership within and outside organizations (Haslam et al., 2019; Haslam et al., 2022). In this context, we argue that identity leadership offers a possible “panacea” for the future of work—we have lived through a massive shift from working from the office completely to working more and more from home. In this sense, using two vignette studies and a field survey, I first investigate the role of identity leadership in the currently “normal” remote workplace by examining if employees value identity leadership in a remote versus an onsite workplace and how it mitigates the potential burdens of remote work. Moreover, I am currently working on identifying how to apply identity leadership behaviour for managerial practices in an intervention study, which aims to enhance employees’ performance and well-being in remote settings. In this presentation, I will present these two ongoing projects and my reflections on identity leadership research in organizations.

Leader-biased teaching drives the evolution of egalitarian cooperation

Despite the voluminous body of work dedicated to understanding the evolution of cooperation, the role of teaching and the importance of leadership in the transmission of opaque cultural norms -- the foundations on which cooperative behaviors rely -- have not been thoroughly explored. Similarly, there is a sizable literature on the role of teaching in the evolution of instrumental culture (e.g., subsistence technology and behaviors, manufacture) but there has been relatively little attention dedicated to the important role of teachers in transmitting more opaque culture, such as social values, norms and institutions, cultural history, and proper behavior. The transmission of opaque culture is more likely to require teaching, as these cultural features are complex and not easily observable. We suggest socially influential individuals, i.e., leaders, are best positioned to transmit such cultural information. Given an egalitarian socio-ecology, leaders will be motivated to teach cooperative behaviors and prosocial norm-adherence among influenceable followers, given the benefits of living among cooperative group members that would accrue to themselves, their kin, their social partners, and their groups. We leverage comparative ethnographic data and introduce an empirically driven theory suggesting leader-biased teaching is a key cultural evolutionary process facilitating cooperation within more egalitarian social and cultural contexts. We draw on the *hunter-gatherer social learning data*, a cross-cultural ethnographic database based on 23 relatively egalitarian foraging societies, to identify relationships between teaching, leadership, and cooperative norms. We find that evidence for teaching is more often associated with the transmission of cultural values and kinship knowledge and less often associated with subsistence skill or manufacturing knowledge and is more closely linked to features of opaque culture and leadership. Based on our comparative analysis, we develop a formal model testing associated evolutionary dynamics and exploring the costliness of teaching by informed leaders and learning by naive followers in facilitating the evolution of cooperative norms. We suggest that leader-biased teaching is a critical mechanism in the evolution of cooperation, particularly in more egalitarian sociocultural contexts. Our leader-biased teaching theory for the evolution of cooperation suggests new avenues for research on social learning, social influence, and cooperative behaviors.

The proliferation of conspiracy theories: Understanding the motivations and reputational consequences

To gain popularity, some leaders are known to spread conspiracy theories. What are the reputational benefits and costs of doing so? The Adaptive-Conspiracism hypothesis proposes that it pays to be vigilant against possible conspiracies, especially in case of intergroup threat. Those who spread conspiracy theories may therefore be seen as particularly valuable group members. Few studies have focused on the reputational impact of spreading a conspiracy theory. We conducted four vignette studies (N = 1642) where participants rated a conspiracy spreader (versus a neutral person) on a range of personality traits in different intergroup contexts. The results indicated that conspiracy spreaders were consistently perceived as more dominant and less warm than people making non-conspiratorial claims about certain events. Moreover, intergroup conflict attenuated the negative effects of spreading conspiracy theories on competence and warmth. These findings support the notion that besides drawbacks, spreading conspiracy theories can have benefits for the spreader's reputation, particularly during an intergroup conflict.

Understanding the role of contextualization in behavioral personality measurement through self-observation and observer reports

A typical finding in multiple studies that explore the relation between personality traits and behavior is that verbal and nonverbal behavior is more strongly related to observer, rather than self-, reports of personality. One explanation is that self- and observer reports capture conceptually different aspects of personality. Self-reports capture one’s ‘Identity’ and observer reports capture one’s ‘Reputation’. Each perspective is assumed to have different insights into one’s verbal and nonverbal behavior. However, a simpler explanation is that personality measures of self- and observer reports are collected in different ways. Self-reports typically include context-free items, whereas observer reports are context-specific, since observers provide their ratings after having watched the ‘self’ performing a specific task. One way to disentangle whether the discrepancy in explained behavioral variance (the relation between personality traits and behaviors) is due to the conceptual differences between Identity and Reputation, or simply the effect of contextualization in personality measurement, is to collect self-observations (along with self- and observer reports). That is, participants watch their own behavior and assess their own personality based on their behavior. In the present, participants took an asynchronous video interview. Then, we collected personality self-reports, self-observations, and observer reports. Finally, we calculated the proportion of personality variance in self-reports, self-observations, and observer reports explained by the verbal, audio, and visual features of the videos. In this way, it is possible to test the possible effect of contextualization in personality measurement.

Illuminating dark personality traits

The Dark Triad/Tetrad is a construct that has rapidly become popular in the last 20 years and is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers and the general public. This constellation of socially aversive traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) has found application in explaining a wide range of antisocial behaviors in different contexts. Yet, there are still conceptual dilemmas regarding the dark traits which represent the backbone of my research. Among them, the key dilemmas are what constitutes the core of dark personality traits (the so-called Dark Core) and whether dark traits can be reduced to a single, central characteristic or to a basic personality trait such as honesty-humility. In support of the discussion on the similarities and differences of dark traits, I will present a part of the studies by my research team in which we examined specific relationships between dark traits and socially aversive outcomes, such as antisocial punishment and non-compliance with COVID-19 protective measures. At the end, I will consider the second generation of dark traits research and possible directions for the development of this research field in the context of organizational psychology.

Prof. dr. Bojana Dinić is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. Her research field includes examining conceptual issues related to antagonistic and dark personality traits (e.g., narcissism, aggressiveness) and their outcomes, such as aggression and violence. In addition, her work includes psychometric evaluation of various measures of antagonistic traits and behaviors, as well as other phenomena So far, she has adapted over 50 instruments into Serbian and created 6, among them the AVDH Aggressiveness Questionnaire and the General Information Test (TOI-SE). In 2013, she was awarded the Best Young Researcher Award at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad; in 2018, the Early Career Award by the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID); and in 2023 the Nenad Havelka Lecture of Honor: Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Early Phase of a Scientific Career by the program board of the scientific meeting Empirical Research in Psychology. She has been a member of the STAR Center of Excellence for Behavioral Research in Psychology since its inception within which she participates in the first twin study in Serbia and examines genetic, environmental, and epigenetic influences on aggression. She is also a long-time member of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad.  

http://bojanadinic.com

Digitally (mis)matched: Ancestral psychologies in a remote workplace

This talk introduces and outlines the case for an evolutionary mismatch between the modern, digitalized workplace and the way human ancestors engaged in activities characterized as work. Psychological adaptations for producing things that our human ancestors needed to survive and (ultimately) reproduce -- such as psychological mechanisms for obtaining and processing food, learning valuable work skills, and finding cooperation partners -- evolved in the context of small and tight networks of hunter-gatherers. These adaptations are central to understanding the significance of work in human evolution. Evolutionary mismatches operate when modern environments cue ancestral adaptations in a manner that no longer provides adaptive benefits. I will argue that the digitalization of the workplace, although highly efficient and mostly productive, is misaligned with some basic human work-related motivations, thereby illuminating a potential dark side of digital work. At the same time, digitalization also offers great opportunities for matching the work environment to our evolved work psychology. I conclude with an empirical agenda for advancing research on digitalization from an evolutionary mismatch perspective and suggest interventions to align the digitalized workplace to human nature.