A framework for antecedents of social entrepreneurial intention: Empirical evidence and research agenda.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) increasingly contributes to diversity in entrepreneurship. The different approaches to SE suggest a variety of antecedents which drive individuals' intention to become social entrepreneurs. While this variety of antecedents is insightful, it also creates a need for systemisation and prioritization. We address this need by introducing an integrative, multi-level framework for person-based antecedents of SE-intention. Based on this multi-level framework the antecedents are grouped on three theoretical levels which refer to an individual's (1) personality, (2) cognition, and (3) entrepreneurial exposition. When testing our framework with 499 South African University students we find support for the multi-level framework and its notion that antecedents from the diverse levels complement each other. Therefore, this study provides a structure for person-based antecedents of SE-intention and additionally points to future research which may extend the proposed framework.

Being Smart Is Not Enough: Personality Traits and Vocational Interests Incrementally Predict Intention, Status and Success of Leaders and Entrepreneurs Beyond Cognitive Ability.

Three separate studies demonstrate that socio-emotional skills add incremental validity beyond cognitive ability when predicting leadership and entrepreneurship intention, emergence as well as success. Study 1 uses a longitudinal approach and tests the cognitive ability and vocational interests of 231 students to predict their leadership and entrepreneurship intention. It demonstrates that cognitive ability predicts their intention to become a business leader or entrepreneur 2 years in the future. Importantly, the vocational interests "enterprising" and "social" increase this ability-driven prediction of leadership and entrepreneurship intention (ΔR 2 Lead.Intent. = 15%, ΔR 2 Entre.Intent. = 9%). Study 2 investigates 123 business leaders and shows that those with higher cognitive ability more likely emerge as top-level leaders, receive more income and get slightly better supervisor-ratings on their performance. The leaders' Big Five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability) added validity beyond cognitive ability when predicting these criteria (ΔR 2 Income = 9%, ΔR 2 Lead.Level = 8%, ΔR 2 Perform. = 15%). Finally, Study 3 includes 155 participants and demonstrates that cognitive ability predicts a person's entrepreneurial status but not performance. Additionally, considering the Big Five traits improves the prediction of who becomes an entrepreneur and successfully performs as such (ΔR 2 Status = 7%, ΔR 2 Perform. = 18%). Importantly, selected Big Five traits and vocational interests boost the importance of cognitive ability in the field of leadership and entrepreneurship. Concluding, this series of studies suggests that it is the combination of personality traits or interests with cognitive ability which is most powerful when predicting leadership and entrepreneurship intention, emergence and success.

Neural efficiency as a function of task demands.

The neural efficiency hypothesis describes the phenomenon that brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks. The present study investigated whether the brain activation-intelligence relationship still applies when more versus less intelligent individuals perform tasks with a comparable person-specific task difficulty. In an fMRI-study, 58 persons with lower (n = 28) or respectively higher (n = 30) intelligence worked on simple and difficult inductive reasoning tasks having the same person-specific task difficulty. Consequently, less bright individuals received sample-based easy and medium tasks, whereas bright subjects received sample-based medium and difficult tasks. This design also allowed a comparison of lower versus higher intelligent individuals when working on the same tasks (i.e. sample-based medium task difficulty). In line with expectations, differences in task performance and in brain activation were only found for the subset of tasks with the same sample-based task difficulty, but not when comparing tasks with the same person-specific task difficulty. These results suggest that neural efficiency reflects an (ability-dependent) adaption of brain activation to the respective task demands.

Sex differences in neural efficiency: Are they due to the stereotype threat effect?

The neural efficiency hypothesis postulates a more efficient use of brain resources in more intelligent people as compared to less intelligent ones. However, this relationship was found to be moderated by sex and task content. While the phenomenon of neural efficiency was previously supported for men when performing visuo-spatial tasks it occurred for women only when performing verbal tasks. One possible explanation for this finding could be provided by the well-studied phenomenon called stereotype threat. Stereotype threat arises when a negative stereotype of one's own group is made salient and can result in behavior that confirms the stereotype. Overall, 32 boys and 31 girls of varying intellectual ability were tested with a mental rotation task, either under a stereotype exposure or a no-stereotype exposure condition while measuring their EEG. The behavioral results show that an activated negative stereotype not necessarily hampers the performance of girls. Physiologically, a confirmation of the neural efficiency phenomenon was only obtained for boys working under a no-stereotype exposure condition. This result pattern replicates previous findings without threat and thus suggests that sex differences in neural efficiency during visuo-spatial tasks may not be due to the stereotype threat effect.

Investigating neural efficiency in the visuo-spatial domain: an FMRI study.

The neural efficiency hypothesis postulates an inverse relationship between intelligence and brain activation. Previous research suggests that gender and task modality represent two important moderators of the neural efficiency phenomenon. Since most of the existing studies on neural efficiency have used ERD in the EEG as a measure of brain activation, the central aim of this study was a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon by means of functional MRI. A sample of 20 males and 20 females, who had been screened for their visuo-spatial intelligence, was confronted with a mental rotation task employing an event-related approach. Results suggest that less intelligent individuals show a stronger deactivation of parts of the default mode network, as compared to more intelligent people. Furthermore, we found evidence of an interaction between task difficulty, intelligence and gender, indicating that more intelligent females show an increase in brain activation with an increase in task difficulty. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of the neural efficiency hypothesis, and possibly also of gender differences in the visuo-spatial domain.

EEG alpha synchronization is related to top-down processing in convergent and divergent thinking.

Synchronization of EEG alpha activity has been referred to as being indicative of cortical idling, but according to more recent evidence it has also been associated with active internal processing and creative thinking. The main objective of this study was to investigate to what extent EEG alpha synchronization is related to internal processing demands and to specific cognitive process involved in creative thinking. To this end, EEG was measured during a convergent and a divergent thinking task (i.e., creativity-related task) which once were processed involving low and once involving high internal processing demands. High internal processing demands were established by masking the stimulus (after encoding) and thus preventing further bottom-up processing. Frontal alpha synchronization was observed during convergent and divergent thinking only under exclusive top-down control (high internal processing demands), but not when bottom-up processing was allowed (low internal processing demands). We conclude that frontal alpha synchronization is related to top-down control rather than to specific creativity-related cognitive processes. Frontal alpha synchronization, which has been observed in a variety of different creativity tasks, thus may not reflect a brain state that is specific for creative cognition but can probably be attributed to high internal processing demands which are typically involved in creative thinking.

Two- vs. three-dimensional presentation of mental rotation tasks: Sex differences and effects of training on performance and brain activation.

The well-documented sex difference in mental rotation favoring males has been shown to emerge only for 2-dimensional presentations of 3-dimensional objects, but not with actual 3-dimensional objects or with virtual reality presentations of 3-dimensional objects. Training studies using computer games with mental rotation-related content have demonstrated training effects on mental rotation performance. Here, we studied the combined effect of a two-week mental rotation (MR) training on 2-dimensional vs. 3-dimensional presentations of a classic Shepard-Metzler task (presented in a pretest-training-posttest design) and their accompanying cortical activation patterns assessed via EEG in a sample of 38 male and 39 female adolescents of about 15 years of age. Analysis of one performance parameter (reaction times) displayed only main effects of dimensionality (with shorter RTs on the 3D vs. 2D version of the MR task) and of training (significant shortening of RTs), but no significant sex difference. Analysis of the other performance parameter (scores) in the MR task revealed a sex difference favoring males that first, appeared only in the 2D version, but not in the 3D version of the MR task and, secondly, diminished after training. Neurophysiologically we observed a complex sex × dimensionality × training × hemisphere interaction showing that the hypothesized decrease of brain activation (increase in neural efficiency) with training emerged for males in both 2D and 3D conditions, whereas for females this decrease was found only in the 3D but not with the 2D version of the MR task.