No abstract

Past work has linked mindfulness to improved emotion regulation, interpersonal skills, and basic cognitive abilities, but is unclear about the relation between mindfulness and creativity. Studies examining effects of mindfulness on factors pertinent to creativity suggest a uniform and positive relation, whereas work on specific mindfulness skills suggests that mindfulness skills may differentially predict creativity. To test whether the relation between mindfulness and creativity is positive and uniform (the uniform hypothesis) or differentially depends on particular components of mindfulness (the differential hypothesis), we conducted four studies in which mindfulness skills were measured, extensively trained, or manipulated with a short, incidental meditation session. Results supported a differential relation between mindfulness and creativity: Only the ability to observe and attend to various stimuli consistently and positively predicted creativity. Results regarding other mindfulness skills were less consistent. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Vitality refers to the experience of having energy available to one’s self. Vital employees are full of positive energy when they work, and feel mentally and physically strong. Such employees often show higher job performance and lower stress than their less vital colleagues. Despite the importance of vitality, few public administration studies have studied vitality. More generally, by focusing on vitality, we aim to bring a “positive psychology” perspective into the domain of public administration. We analyze whether two important job characteristics (leader’s task communication and job autonomy) affect vitality. We use a multi-method design. A large-scale survey (N = 1,502) shows that leader’s task communication and job autonomy are positively related to vitality. A lab experiment (N = 102) replicated these findings, showing cause-and-effect relationships. In conclusion, public organizations can potentially increase employee vitality (a) by increased task communication from leaders and (b) by providing employees with greater job autonomy.

Although narcissists often emerge as leaders, research has thus far shown inconsistent results on the relationship between leader narcissism and effectiveness in the eyes of followers. Here we draw on leader distance theory (Shamir, 1995) and implicit leader theory (Lord & Maher, 1991) to propose that followers' assessment of a narcissistic leader and followers' overall job attitudes depend on the leader's visibility to the followers. The more opportunities followers have to observe narcissistic leaders the more they will experience these leaders' toxic behavior (e.g., exploitativeness) and the less they will perceive the leader as effective. To test our hypotheses we collected multisource, longitudinal data from 175 retail stores and obtained subjective (followers' perceptions of leader effectiveness and their overall job attitudes) as well as objective (leaders' organizational experience at time of hire, employee absenteeism trends) indices of leader functionality. Results showed that narcissistic leaders had less organizational experience at the time they were hired. Moreover, when followers had fewer opportunities to observe their leader, leader narcissism was positively related to perceived leadership effectiveness and job attitudes. However, when followers had more opportunity to observe their leader, the positive relationship disappeared. Finally, leader narcissism was neither positively nor negatively associated with absenteeism, whereas absenteeism declined over time under non-narcissistic leaders. These findings advance our knowledge of how followers respond to narcissistic leaders and how these leaders function in organizational settings where they have legitimate positions of power. (PsycINFO Database Record

Although narcissistic individuals are generally perceived as arrogant and overly dominant, they are particularly skilled at radiating an image of a prototypically effective leader. As a result, they tend to emerge as leaders in group settings. Despite people's positive perceptions of narcissists as leaders, it was previously unknown if and how leaders' narcissism is related to the performance of the people they lead. In this study, we used a hidden-profile paradigm to investigate this question and found evidence for discordance between the positive image of narcissists as leaders and the reality of group performance. We hypothesized and found that although narcissistic leaders are perceived as effective because of their displays of authority, a leader's narcissism actually inhibits information exchange between group members and thereby negatively affects group performance. Our findings thus indicate that perceptions and reality can be at odds and have important practical and theoretical implications.