Open this publication in new window or tab >>2024 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
Leading and following are daily activities for most individuals, as these behaviors are crucial for social interactions. When these interactions fail, they can negatively affect the individuals and the activity. The driving force behind this thesis was to understand more about the neural underpinnings of leading and following. The accomplishment of this aim required a fundamental examination of leadership and followership. A thorough and rigorous process was followed to develop a minimal model for study I to investigate neural reactivity during leading and following. This model aims to analyze leader and follower behavior in a standardized manner. The model used finger tapping of rhythms representing the core of the interactions during leading and following. Participants were invited to assume the roles of both leaders and followers, with no requirement for prior expertise. The model did not incorporate a status difference between leaders and followers.
Data collection occurred in Japan, but most analyses were conducted in Sweden. Study II translated the Swedish Universities Scales of Personality from Swedish to Japanese. Its three dimensions represent personality facets for emotional stability, extraversion, and agreeableness. Study II resulted in SSPJ-11 with 11 reliable personality scales of these three facets that are most probably relevant for leading and following. In study III and IV, participants were paired to engage in the minimal model for leading and following while their brain activity was recorded using hyperscanning EEG. For study III, a graph-based algorithm was introduced to analyze directed causal connections in time series data. It was combined with hyperscanning EEG prefrontal cortex activation of single and two interacting brains. The PCMCI algorithm effectively detected directed causal connections within and between participants. In study IV, PCMCI assessed whole brain-directed causal networks of leading and following within and between brains. The results of Study I and IV indicate a significant overlap in neural reactivation between the roles of leading and following, albeit with certain role-specific differences. Leadership activations indicate focus on decision-making, task performance, social cognition, and effective processing and followership activation stipulate social adaptivity and task focus. These results could be a first step towards elucidating the pivotal components of neural reactivations in the context of leading and following. Ultimately, these discoveries could provide a foundation for the creation of novel, sustainable, and effective cross-cultural training techniques designed to enhance both performance and well-being in leadership and followership, thereby presenting a promising vision for the future.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2024. p. 65
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine, ISSN 1651-6206 ; 2077
Keywords
leading, following, fMRI, EEG, hyperscanning EEG, finger tapping, Swedish Uni-versities Scales of Personality, SSP, SSPJ-11, reliability, cross-cultural translation, PCMCI, directed causality network, leadership, followership
National Category
Neurosciences
Research subject
Neuroscience
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-538396 (URN)978-91-513-2232-2 (ISBN)
Public defence
2024-11-05, Gunnesalen, Akademiska sjukhuset, ing. 10, Uppsala, 09:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
2024-10-112024-09-142024-10-11