Identifying leader social cognitions: integrating the causal reasoning perspective into social cognitive theory.

In this paper we propose a leadership model that combines Bandura's (1997) social cognitive theory with the causal reasoning perspective (Martinko, 2002). The model suggests that leader causal reasoning processes affect leader perceptions of goals, self-efficacy, and leadership task schema that, in turn, affect the leader's selection of strategies and enactment of behaviors. Each leader social cognition is conceptually defined and developed. Particular emphasis is given to describing how the understanding of attributional explanations, dimensions, and biases can aid in the description of the causal reasoning processes that precede self-and member-regulation.

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Social cognitions are the "cognitive processes and structures (e.g., self-conceptions, standards, goals) through which individuals assign personal meaning to events, plan courses of action, and regulate their motivation, emotions, and interpersonal behavior" (Cervone, 1991, p.372). Social cognition research has focused on how people perceive themselves and others in social situations. It has also examined how people make attributions for the outcomes of their own or others' behavior, and the perceptual biases that influence the process. However, leader social cognitions have received only limited attention in mainstream leadership research (see Chemers, 2002; McCormick, 2001; Murphy, 2002 for a review). As Phillips (1995) noted in her review of the leadership literature, so far the cognitive approach to the study of leadership "focuses on the schema, social perceptions, and attributions of followers" (p.63), and not the leader (see Lord and Maher, 1993). The purpose of this paper is to address this deficiency by developing a social cognitive model of the leadership process that identifies key leader social cognitions and their relationships. The model (shown in Figure 1) integrates the causal reasoning perspective (Martinko, 2002) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997) to infer leader social cognitive factors and how they are related. Propositions are offered to guide and stimulate both practice and research.

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Social Cognitive Theory and Leader Social Cognitions

Since it was first introduced some twenty-five years ago, social cognitive theory (SCT) has inspired a large and diverse body of research in social psychology. It has been used as a conceptual framework for explaining a variety of human phenomenon including academic performance, achievement behavior, alcohol and drug abstinence, career choice, decision making, gender differences in performance, goal setting and motivation, healthy life-style choices, job performances, sport and motor performance, and different forms of political participation (see Bandura, 1997, for a review). The SCT framework depicts any human phenomenon as being the result of a dynamic process consisting of reciprocal relationships among three categories of factors: the individual's social cognitions, the individual's behavior, and the social context. Empirical support for the model is impressive (Locke, 1997). Viewing leadership through the lens of SCT suggests that to fully understand the interactive and social nature of the leadership process, three categories of leadership variables must be considered. They are (1) leader behaviors, (2) the characteristics of the leadership situation, and (3) the leader's social cognitions. The actions of leaders, their personality traits, and the factors in the environment have already been thoroughly studied by leadership researchers (House & Aditya, 1998; Phillips, 1995). Leader social cognitions have not. Social cognitive theory provides a framework for understanding the nature of leaders' cognitions and the process by which these cognitions interact to produce leader behaviors.

Central to SCT is the idea that people are capable of self-regulating their thoughts, emotions, motivation, and actions. Self-regulation refers to the process in which people control and direct their actions. It conceives of the individual as being goal directed and actively involved in developing functional patterns of thinking and behaving in response to environmental conditions in order to attain personal goals. Effective self-regulation is a cyclical process in which performers actively monitor the performance environment, develop functional task strategies, skillfully implements those plans, and monitor the results. The basic self-regulation model has been tested in both laboratory and field settings, and has been found to predict and explain performance for both simple and complex tasks (Locke & Latham, 1990).

The social cognitions involved in the self-regulation model include (1) the perceptual mechanisms that guide attentional and attributional processes (the causal reasoning process), (2) task schemata comprised of task-relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities, (3) personal goals, (4) task strategies or action plans, and (5) self-efficacy beliefs. The most influential of these cognitive structures, according to Bandura (1997), is self-efficacy, which is one's perceived capability to, "mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action necessary to exercise control over events in one's life" (Wood & Bandura, 1989, p. 364). Self-efficacy is critical to the selfregulation process because it directly impacts the other four cognitive variables. Empirical findings based on SCT have validated the causal linkages among the five social cognitions comprising the self-regulation framework (see Bandura, 1997 for a review). A logical extension of the SCT framework to the leadership domain results in the model depicted in Figure 1. Each of the proposed leader social cognitive factors will be discussed beginning with the leader causal reasoning process.

Leader Causal Reasoning Process

Causal reasoning theory (CR) is a label for the set of theories that explain how people think about their successes and failures, that is, their attributions. The evolution of the concept of causal reasoning can be traced back to Fritz Heider's (1958) work on attribution theory. Heider's major thesis was that people are "naive psychologists" in that they try to understand and explain the outcomes of their own behavior and the behavior of others. Essentially, Heider viewed accurate casual explanation as a fundamental necessity for efficacious behavior. One has to understand cause and effect in order to make the cognitive adjustments needed to engage in successful behavior. Over the years, with the work of Kelley (1971; 1972; 1973) and Weiner (1971; 1986; 1995), attribution theory has emerged as a major explanation for achievement-oriented behavior. The notion that intrapersonal attributions influence expectancies, emotions, and behaviors is well supported in the literature.

One of the most important findings of the attribution research is that people demonstrate consistent patterns (i.e., styles) of thinking about success and failure (Martinko, 1995). Attribution styles (cross-situational consistencies in the way people explain their outcomes) explain why individuals differ from each other in the attributions they make for apparently identical outcomes and situations. The best recognized taxonomy of these styles is Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale's (1978) optimistic versus pessimistic attributional styles dichotomy. Someone with an optimistic attribution style tends to make internal and stable attributions for success (e.g. high ability) and to make external or unstable attributions for failure (e.g., luck or lack of effort). On the other hand, a person with a pessimistic attribution style tends to attribute failure to internal and stable characteristics (e.g. low ability) and attribute success to external factors and unstable factors (e.g., an easy test).

While the organizational literature has examined intrapersonal attributions in the workplace, the role of causal attribution mechanisms in the leadership process has been under-investigated. The few studies exploring leader attributions have focused on how leaders make attributions for the behavior of their members (Ashkanasy, 1989; Dobbins & Russell, 1986; Fedor & Rowland, 1989; Green & Mitchell, 1978; Green & Linden, 1980; Moss & Martinko, 1998). For instance, leaders are more likely to punish members when they attribute their behavior to internal and unstable causes such as a lack of effort as opposed to internal and stable causes such as a lack of ability (Moss & Martinko, 1998; Wood & Mitchell, 1981). Thus, clear associations have been established between leaders' causal attributions and leader behaviors. However, the variables and processes by which leader attributions are formed and affect leader behaviors are unidentified. We propose that leaders' attributional processes are key cognitive factors that are affected by and affect leader self-efficacy beliefs, leader goals, leader task schema, leader strategies, group performance conditions, and ultimately the performance of the work group (See Figure 1). We further propose adopting the attributional framework developed by Abramson, et al. (1978) to provide a predictive infrastructure for the leader casual reasoning process. Thus, it is possible to predict how the causal reasoning process of leaders affect self-efficacy estimates, goals, and task schema, and leader behavior.