The spatial representation of leadership depends on ecological threat: A replication and extension of Menon et al. (2010).

Abstract

Since humanity's first steps, individuals have used nonverbal cues to communicate and infer leadership, such as walking ahead of others. Menon et al., (2010) showed that the use of spatial ordering as cue to leadership differs across cultures: Singaporeans were more likely than Americans to represent leaders behind rather than in front of groups. Furthermore, they showed that threat priming increases the representation of leaders at the back. We replicate and extend these findings. We draw on cultural tightness theory to explain variability in mental representations of leadership, advance the spatial precedence hypothesis that leaders are generally represented in the front, use a large cross-cultural sample to compare different cultural dimensions, and employ alternative operationalizations of threat. We show that leaders are generally represented in frontal spatial positions across 25 countries and in different types of teams. We also find that cultural tightness and ecological threat (pandemic, warfare, and predation) lead people to represent leaders at the back (Studies 1-5). Mediational models show that ecological threat triggers greater desire for tightness and norm-enforcing leaders, which in turn leads people to represent leaders at the back (Study 4). Likewise, in tightly regulated work-teams, leaders are thought of as being seated at the office's back desk (Study 5). Thus, we converge with Menon et al. that different cultures have different mental representations of leaders and individuals who face threats show greater preference for leaders at the back. Additionally, we demonstrate that cultural tightness is the key cultural predictor of mental representations of leadership.

I don’t care why you do it, just don’t! Reactions to negative and positive organizational deviance partly depend on the desire for tightness of prevention-focused employees

“…Empirical evidence for this perspective derives from recent studies. For example, perceived threat activates both the shared perceived (group level) ( Jackson et al, 2019 ), and the supported and desired (individual level) tightness ( Jackson et al, 2019 ; Mula et al, 2021 , 2022 ; Baldner et al, 2022 ; Stamkou et al, 2022 ). T-L was also found to be associated with prejudices and negative attitudes toward marginalized groups at both group level ( Jackson et al, 2019 ) and individual level ( Jackson et al, 2019 ; Mula et al, 2022 ), and with self-control and impulses controlled at both the group ( Gelfand et al, 2011 ; Harrington and Gelfand, 2014 ; Mu et al, 2015 ) and individual level ( Mula et al, 2021 ).…”

When rule breaking in art falls flat: Cultural tightness deflates deviant artists’ impact.

“…However, the inclusion of different operationalizations of tightness, including country of origin, perception of tight norms, and personality traits, strengthens the likelihood that the effects we observed are due to tightness rather than alternative variables. Future research could explore the causal effects of cultural tightness on artist perceptions by priming ecological threat-the distal antecedent of cultural tightness (Stamkou et al, 2022).…”

Three essays on national and organizational cultures

“…Specifically, Singaporeans would represent leaders behind the group (i.e., back leaders who are grouporiented and watch over members) and evaluate them more favorably, while Americans would represent leaders standing in front of the group (i.e., powerful figure who initiates behaviors but pays less attention to what group members think) (Menon et al, 2010). In particular, people are more likely to represent leaders at the back when they are from culturally tight societies or experience ecological threats such as pandemic, as leaders who can enforce norms and rules are more preferred under such conditions (Stamkou et al, 2022). Taking culturally endorsed implicit 20 theories of leadership into account, these studies highlighted that managers should not simply transpose Western-style leadership when working in tight societies but they need to shift their attention to monitoring group members from a "backseat" instead of leading and guiding them.…”