Two experiments tested the role of global and relationship-specific attachment orientations in leader transference, a social-cognitive process in which mental representations of past leaders are associated with the evaluations of new, similar leaders. Individuals scoring higher on anxious attachment were more likely to hold high just treatment expectations of new leaders who were similar to their previous leaders. Conversely, avoidant individuals evaluated new similar leaders low on just treatment expectations and perceived them as less effective. Relationship-specific attachment orientations predicted transfer of behavioral judgments of just treatment, while global attachment orientations predicted transfer of perceived leader effectiveness. These effects were moderated by culture. In two collectivistic cultures (Greece and India), avoidant individuals demonstrated low just treatment expectations of their new similar leader. In an individualistic culture (United States), avoidant participants showed high behavioral expectations of their new, similar, leader. The results inform emerging views on relational social-cognitive processes in leader–follower interactions.
AgishteinP.BrumbaughC. (2013). Cultural variation in adult attachment: The impact of ethnicity, collectivism, and country of origin. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 7, 384-405.
2.
AndersenS. M.BaumA. (1994). Transference in interpersonal relations: Inferences and affect based on significant-other representations. Journal of Personality, 62, 459-497.
3.
AndersenS. M.ChenS. (2002). The relational self: An interpersonal social-cognitive theory. Psychological Review, 109, 619-645.
4.
AndersenS. M.GlassmanN. S. (1996). Responding to significant others when they are not there: Effects on interpersonal inference, motivation, and affect. In SorrentinoR.HigginsE. T. (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (Vol. 3, pp. 272-331). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
5.
AndersonN. H. (1968). Likableness ratings of 555 personality-trait words. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 272-279.
6.
BaldwinM. W.KeelanJ. P. R.FehrB.EnnsV.Koh-RangarajooE. (1996). Social-cognitive conceptualization of attachment working models: Availability and accessibility effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 94-109.
7.
BaldwinM. W.MeunierJ. (1999). The cued activation of attachment relational schemas. Social Cognition, 17, 209-227.
8.
BowlbyJ. (1969). Attachment and loss, volume I: Attachment. London, England: Random House.
9.
BrennanK. A.ClarkC. L.ShaverP. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In SimpsonJ. A.RholesW. S. (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46-76). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
10.
BrewerM. B.GardnerW. (1996). Who is this” we”? Levels of collective identity and self representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 83-93.
11.
BrislinR. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1, 185-216.
12.
BrumbaughC. C.FraleyC. (2006). Transference and attachment: How do attachment patterns get carried forward from one relationship to the next?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 552-560.
13.
BrumbaughC. C.FraleyC. (2007). Transference of attachment patterns: How important relationships influence feelings toward novel people. Personal Relationships, 14, 513-530.
14.
ChenS.AndersenS.HinkleyK. (1999). Triggering transference: Examining the role of applicability in the activation and use of significant-other representations in social perception. Social Cognition, 17, 332-365.
15.
ChengS. T.KwanK. W. (2008). Attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth: The moderating role of culture. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 509-514.
16.
CollinsN.ReadS. (1994). Representations of attachment: The structure and function of working models. In BartholomewK.PerlmanD. (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships: Attachment process in adulthood (Vol. 5, pp. 5390). London, England: Jessica Kingsley.
17.
ColquittJ. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 386-400.
18.
ColquittJ. A.RodellJ. B. (2011). Justice, trust, and trustworthiness: A longitudinal analysis integrating three theoretical perspectives. Academy of Management Journal, 54, 1183-1206.
19.
DavidovitzR.MikulincerM.ShaverP. R.IzsakR.PopperM. (2007). Leaders as attachment figures: Leaders’ attachment orientations predict leadership-related mental representations and followers’ performance and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 632-650.
20.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA.-G.BuchnerA. (2007). G* Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175-191.
21.
FitzsimonsG. M.BarghJ. A. (2003). Thinking of you: Nonconscious pursuit of interpersonal goals associated with relationship partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 148-164.
22.
FraleyC.BrumbaughC. C. (2004). A dynamical systems approach to conceptualizing and studying stability and change in attachment security. In W. S. Rholes & J.A. Simpson (Eds.), Adult attachment: Theory, research, and clinical implications (pp. 86-132). New York, NY, US: Guilford Publications.
23.
FraleyC.HeffernanM. E.VicaryA. M.BrumbaughC. C. (2011). The experiences in close relationships—Relationship Structures Questionnaire: A method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships. Psychological Assessment, 23, 615-625.
24.
FraleyR. C.HudsonN. W.HeffernanM. E.SegalN. (2015). Are adult attachment styles categorical or dimensional? A taxometric analysis of general and relationship-specific attachment orientations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 354-368.
25.
FriedmanM.RholesW. S.SimpsonJ.BondM.Diaz-LovingR.ChanC. (2010). Attachment avoidance and the cultural fit hypothesis: A cross-cultural investigation. Personal Relationships, 17, 107-126.
26.
FulmerC. A.GelfandM. J.KruglanskiA. W.Kim-PrietoC.DienerE.PierroA.HigginsE. T. (2010). On “feeling right” in cultural contexts: How person-culture match affects self-esteem and subjective well-being. Psychological Science, 21, 1563-1569.
27.
GillathO.GiesbrechtB.ShaverP. R. (2009). Attachment, attention, and cognitive control: Attachment style and performance on general attention tasks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 647-654.
28.
GoldbergL. R.JohnsonJ. A.EberH. W.HoganR.AshtonM. C.CloningerC. R.GoughH. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84-96.
29.
HinkleyK.AndersenS. M. (1996). The working self-concept in transference: Significant-other activation and self change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1279-1295.
30.
HofstedeG. H. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
31.
JarymowiczM. (1992). Self, we, and other(s): Schemata, distinctiveness, and altruism. In OlinerP. M.OlinerS. P.BaronL.BlumL. A.KrebsD. L.SmolenskaM. Z. (Eds.), Embracing the other: Philosophical, psychological, and historical perspectives on altruism (pp. 194-212). New York: New York University Press.
32.
KafetsiosK.AthanasiadouM.DimouN. (2014). Leaders’ and subordinates’ attachment orientation, emotion regulation and affect at work: A multilevel analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 25, 512-527.
33.
KlohnenE. C.WellerJ. A.LuoS.ChoeM. (2005). Organization and predictive power of general and relationship-specific attachment models: One for all, and all for one?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1665-1682.
34.
LordR. G.BrownD. J. (2003). Leadership processes and follower self-identity. Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press.
35.
LordR. G.DiefendorffJ. M.SchmidtA. M.HallR. J. (2010). Self-regulation at work. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 543-568.
36.
LordR. G.FotiR. J.De VaderC. L. (1984). A test of leadership categorization theory: Internal structure, information processing, and leadership perceptions. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 34, 343-378.
37.
MasonW.SuriS. (2012). Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 1-23.
38.
MayselessO.PopperM. (2018). Attachment and leadership: Review and new insights. Current Opinion in Psychology, 25, 157-161.
39.
MikulincerM. (1998). Adult attachment style and individual differences in functional versus dysfunctional experiences of anger. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 513-524.
40.
MikulincerM.HoreshN. (1999). Adult attachment style and the perception of others: The role of projective mechanisms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 1022-1034.
41.
MikulincerM.NachshonO. (1991). Attachment styles and patterns of self-disclosure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 321-331.
42.
MikulincerM.OrbachI.IavnieliD. (1998). Adult attachment style and affect regulation: Strategic variations in subjective self–other similarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 436-448.
43.
MikulincerM.ShaverP. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
44.
OverallN. C.FletcherG. J.FriesenM. D. (2003). Mapping the intimate relationship mind: Comparisons between three models of attachment representations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1479-1493.
45.
PaolacciG.ChandlerJ. (2014). Inside the Turk understanding mechanical Turk as a participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 184-188.
46.
PierceT.LydonJ. E. (2001). Global and specific relational models in the experience of social interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 613-631.
47.
PierroA.KruglanskiA. W. (2008). “Seizing and freezing” on a significant-person schema: Need for closure and the transference effect in social judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1492-1503.
48.
PietromonacoP. R.BarrettL. F. (2000). The internal working models concept: What do we really know about the self in relation to others?Review of General Psychology, 4, 155-175.
49.
PopperM. (2004). Leadership as a relationship. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 34, 107-125.
50.
PopperM.AmitK. (2009). Attachment and leader’s development via experiences. The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 749-763.
51.
RichardsD. A.SchatA. C. (2011). Attachment at (not to) work: Applying attachment theory to explain individual behavior in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 169-182.
52.
RitterB. A.LordR. G. (2007). The impact of previous leaders on the evaluation of new leaders: An alternative to prototype matching. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1683-1695.
53.
SchmittD. P.AlcalayL.AllensworthM.AllikJ.AultL.AustersI.. . . CunenM. A. B. (2004). Patterns and universals of adult romantic attachment across 62 cultural regions are models of self and of other pancultural constructs?Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 367-402.
54.
SmithE. R.SeminG. R. (2007). Situated social cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 132-135.
55.
SpielbergerC. D. (1983). State-trait anxiety inventory for adults. Palo Alto, CA: Mind Garden.
56.
StataCorp. (2011). Stata Statistical Software: Release 12. College Station, TX: Author.
57.
ThomasG.MartinR.EpitropakiO.GuillaumeY.LeeA. (2013). Social cognition in leader–follower relationships: Applying insights from relationship science to understanding relationship-based approaches to leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(Suppl. 1), S63-S81.
58.
TuranB. (2016). Processing information about support exchanges in close relationships: The role of a knowledge structure. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 259.
59.
van IjzendoornM. H.Sagi-SchwartzA. (1999). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In CassidyJ.ShaverP. R. (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 713-734). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
60.
WatsonD.ClarkL. A. (1991). Self-versus peer ratings of specific emotional traits: Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 927-940.
61.
ZhaoX., et al. (2018). Eighty years after Lewin: The role of collectivism and attachment style in friendship networks across 21 nations. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
