Browsing by Author "Abraham, Elsheba K."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Competing Conversations: An Examination of Competition as Intrateam Interactions
    Abraham, Elsheba K.; McCusker, Maureen E.; Foti, Roseanne J. (Frontiers, 2019-05-03)
    Intrateam competition is an inherently social and interactional process, yet it is not often studied as such. Research on competition is mostly limited to studying it as an individual state and assumes that the resulting team outcomes are equivalent across different competition types. Often overlooked in competition research are the means through which competition can lead to constructive outcomes for the team. Constructive competition occurs when the primary motivation is not to win at the expense of others, but rather to make social comparisons and gain knowledge of relative competence. This study furthers insight into constructive competition by studying its interpersonal characteristics as it develops within a team, and its impact on task conflict, perceived performance, and team satisfaction. The conversations of 24 student project teams were recorded over 4 weeks and analyzed, operationalizing competition as an attempt to exert control and influence on the team. Each individual then provided sociometric ratings of perceived performance of each team member, and rated the level of task conflict and satisfaction of the team. The effects of competition on perceived performance and team satisfaction, both directly and indirectly through task conflict, were examined. Findings demonstrated a negative direct effect of competition on the range of perceived performance ratings, and a positive indirect effect of competition on team satisfaction as mediated through task conflict. The study broadens understanding on the construct of competition and underscores the positive implications competition can bring to the teams.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Not All Leaders Are Perceived Equal: The Interaction between Leader Gender, Perceiver Gender, and Emotion Suppression on Leader Ratings
    Abraham, Elsheba K. (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-15)
    Females continue to be underrepresented in leadership despite research demonstrating that leadership effectiveness does not vary by leader gender (Paustian-Underdahl et al., 2014). The current study examines the gender bias in leadership through the lens of leadership perceptions and evaluations; in particular, how perceivers' ratings of a leader would change as a function of the leader's gender. Leadership judgments are based on the leader prototype activated in the perceiver and how consistent/inconsistent the leader is perceived to be with the activated prototype (Lord et al., 2001). Due to the mismatch between the communal-oriented female gender stereotype and agentic-oriented expectations of a successful leader (Eagly and Karau, 2002), it was expected that the female leader would be rated more negatively than the male leader. Furthermore, the perceiver's gender and prior engagement in emotion suppression are investigated as two additional factors that could bias information processing when evaluating leaders. Male perceivers, who tend to hold a stronger masculine understanding of leadership (Koenig et al., 2011), were expected to evaluate the female leader more harshly than the male leader. Additionally, those depleted of their finite self-regulatory resources due to prior emotion suppression (i.e. being in a state of ego depletion; Baumeister et al., 1998) were predicted to rely more heavily on their stereotypes when making subsequent judgments; hence, ego-depleted individuals would demonstrate more bias in their ratings of the female leader relative to the male leader. In the current study, participants were randomly assigned to an emotion suppression or no suppression condition as they watched funny clips from the comedy series "The Office''. Then, they watched four business videos featuring a leader and three business managers. Participants were also randomly assigned to one of the two versions of the business videos portraying either a male or female leader. Leadership perception and leader effectiveness ratings were collected after each of the four business videos, and leader competence and leader warmth ratings were measured once after all four videos. Additionally, behavior recognition accuracy of agentic and communal leadership behaviors that were displayed in the four business videos was assessed. Contrary to expectations, the study findings demonstrate a dominant female leader effect; the female leader was evaluated more favorably than the male leader on all four leader judgments. This was observed both within the repeated measures and overall leadership ratings. An ego depletion effect was also observed; ego-depleted individuals showed lower accuracy in behavior recognition ratings and more leniency in leader warmth ratings. Furthermore, ego-depleted individuals showed less discernment by giving higher leader effectiveness ratings over time compared to non-ego-depleted individuals. Perceiver gender did not meaningfully affect leadership judgments. The unexpected pattern of bias in favor of the female leader instead of against her suggests that the nature of gender and leader stereotypes may be changing; the incongruence between the female stereotype and leader expectations may be decreasing, leading to more favorable evaluations of the female leader by both male and female perceivers. Moreover, the ability to provide fair and accurate judgments of leader effectiveness is reduced when depleted. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Not If, But When Do We Show Bigotry? A Study of the Interaction of Emotional Resource Depletion and Egalitarianism with Expressions of Bigotry
    Abraham, Elsheba K. (Virginia Tech, 2018)
    Stereotypes are cognitive heuristics used by all individuals. Researchers studying bigotry have demonstrated that individuals often expose underlying stereotypical racial biases when using less effortful processing (e.g. Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Miarmi & DeBono, 2007). It is well-established in the resource depletion literature that acting beyond natural impulses requires self-regulation. However, the capacity for self-regulation is limited; prior acts of self-regulation deplete regulatory resources, hence temporarily decreasing the ability to self-regulate. The objective of this study was to examine if resource depletion leads to greater expressions of bigotry. More specifically, self-regulation failure was studied from the emotion resource depletion perspective. Even if resources are depleted however, some individuals may be more motivated than others to suppress their biases. Egalitarianism, a value system that emphasizes equal treatment for all, may be an individual difference that influences this motivation. Thus, egalitarianism was examined as a potential moderator of the resource depletion effect. In the current study, 100 participants were randomly assigned to an emotion suppression or a control condition as they watched a race-relevant social injustice video. Then, participants were given the opportunity to express bigotry through responses to a survey assessing reactions to racial microaggressions. Research findings provide evidence for an emotion resource depletion effect in that individuals suppressing their emotions while watching the video expressed greater bigotry on the survey. Additionally, the results also demonstrated a negative relationship between egalitarianism and expressions of bigotry. Although the interaction effect was not found on the full sample, exploratory gender subgroup analyses suggest that gender is a potential moderator of the interaction between emotion suppression and egalitarianism on expressions of bigotry. Within the male sample, relative to participants scoring low on egalitarianism, high egalitarian participants in the emotional suppression condition showed a greater rate of emotional resource depletion due to the video and in turn showed greater levels of bigotry. In contrast, the evidence was only consistent with an egalitarianism main effect for female participants. Thus, findings from the study demonstrate that aside from cognitive-based depleting tasks, emotion resource depletion can also lead to self-regulation failure in terms of expressions of bigotry. Although the resource depletion effect was robust, there are several limitations in this study that need to be addressed in future research. This includes collecting a more genderbalanced sample so gender can be analyzed as part of a three-way interaction to determine the impact gender had on the model. Furthermore, there was a persisting model misspecification issue; in an ongoing replication study, a measure on agreeableness has been included to assess if this was part of the missing variable problem. Finally, the two self-regulation tasks in the current study were domain-specific in the sense that they were both racially-relevant. Next steps include testing the domain-general argument of the resource depletion effect; that is, if selfregulation failure from emotion suppression would still be observed if the two self-regulation tasks were not related through the context of race.