A Sales Force–Specific Theory-of-Mind Scale: Tests of Its Validity by Classical Methods and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The goal of this article is to develop a new theory-driven scale for measuring salespeople's interpersonal-mentalizing skills—that is, a salesperson's ability to “read the minds” of customers in the sense of first recognizing customer intentionality and processing subtle interpersonal cues and then adjusting volitions accordingly. Drawing from research on autism and neuroscience, the authors develop a model of brain functioning that differentiates better-skilled from less-skilled interpersonal mentalizers. They establish the convergent, discriminant, concurrent, predictive, and nomological validities of measures of the scale using four methods in four separate studies: confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation models, multitrait–multimethod matrix procedures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. The study is one of the first to test the validity of measures of a scale not only in traditional ways but also by adopting procedures from neuroscience.

[1]  R. Passingham,et al.  Brain Mechanisms for Inferring Deceit in the Actions of Others , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[2]  C. Frith,et al.  Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition , 2006, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[3]  M. Bergen,et al.  Agency Relationships in Marketing: A Review of the Implications and Applications of Agency and Related Theories , 1992 .

[4]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Organizing for Mindfulness , 2006 .

[5]  Gary F. Soldow,et al.  Relational Communication: Form versus Content in the Sales Interaction , 1984 .

[6]  U. Frith,et al.  The physiological basis of theory of mind: Functional neuroimaging studies. , 2000 .

[7]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  A general approach to representing multifaceted personality constructs: Application to state self‐esteem , 1994 .

[8]  David I. Laibson,et al.  Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics , 2005 .

[9]  Christopher D. Frith,et al.  Imaging the Intentional Stance in a Competitive Game , 2002, NeuroImage.

[10]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Other minds in the brain: a functional imaging study of “theory of mind” in story comprehension , 1995, Cognition.

[11]  Kathleen M. Sutcliffe,et al.  Mindfulness and the Quality of Organizational Attention , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[12]  George R. Franke,et al.  Salesperson Adaptive Selling Behavior and Customer Orientation: A Meta-Analysis , 2006 .

[13]  H. Simon,et al.  A comparison of game theory and learning theory , 1956 .

[14]  J. Bettman,et al.  Decision Neuroscience , 2005 .

[15]  U. Frrrh Autism: explaining the enigma , 1989 .

[16]  E. Fehr,et al.  NEUROSCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC DECISION-MAKING † The Neuroeconomics of Mind Reading and Empathy , 2005 .

[17]  Yul-Wan Sung,et al.  Functional magnetic resonance imaging , 2004, Scholarpedia.

[18]  Stuart McNaughton,et al.  Meeting of Minds , 2002 .

[19]  R. E Passingham,et al.  Inferring false beliefs from the actions of oneself and others: an fMRI study , 2004, NeuroImage.

[20]  Barton A. Weitz,et al.  Learning Orientation, Working Smart, and Effective Selling , 1994 .

[21]  C. Frith,et al.  Autism, Asperger syndrome and brain mechanisms for the attribution of mental states to animated shapes. , 2002, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[22]  Douglas N. Behrman,et al.  Measuring the performance of industrial salespersons , 1982 .

[23]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  A General Approach for Representing Constructs in Organizational Research , 1998 .

[24]  Siobhan Chapman Logic and Conversation , 2005 .

[25]  Mark H. Davis Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. , 1983 .

[26]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[27]  Jon Kabat-Zinn,et al.  Meditation Is about Paying Attention , 2002 .

[28]  R. Friend,et al.  Measurement of social-evaluative anxiety. , 1969, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[29]  Willem Verbeke,et al.  Sales Call Anxiety: Exploring What it Means When Fear Rules a Sales Encounter , 2000 .

[30]  J. Bettman,et al.  Knowledge Structure Differences between More Effective and Less Effective Salespeople , 1988 .

[31]  C. Frith,et al.  Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. , 2003, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[32]  A. Hariri,et al.  Genetics of emotion regulation , 2007 .

[33]  Catherine C. Eckel,et al.  The Human Face of Game Theory: Trust and Reciprocity in Sequential Games , 2003 .

[34]  Barton A. Weitz,et al.  Adaptive Selling: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Nomological Validity , 1990 .

[35]  Don Y. Lee,et al.  Information Control and Influence in Emergent Buying Centers , 1998 .

[36]  A. Richardsen,et al.  Leader Style, Leader Consistency, and Participant Personality Effects on Learning in Small Groups , 1986 .

[37]  Uta Frith,et al.  The Biological Basis of Social Interaction , 2001 .

[38]  G. Hartman The biological basis. , 1922 .

[39]  V. Ramachandran A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers , 2004 .

[40]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Broken mirrors: a theory of autism. , 2006, Scientific American.

[41]  Sandy Lovie How the mind works , 1980, Nature.

[42]  G. Zaltman Rethinking Market Research: Putting People Back In , 1997 .

[43]  R. Saxe,et al.  Making sense of another mind: The role of the right temporo-parietal junction , 2005, Neuropsychologia.

[44]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation , 1996, Human brain mapping.

[45]  Ernst Fehr,et al.  The Neuroeconomics of Mind Reading and Empathy , 2005, The American economic review.

[46]  David M. Szymanski Determinants of selling effectiveness: The importance of declarative knowledge to the personal selling concept. , 1988 .

[47]  A. Gutchess,et al.  A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Neural Dissociations between Brand and Person Judgments , 2006 .

[48]  T. Autti,et al.  Changes in cerebral blood flow in Asperger syndrome during theory of mind tasks presented by the auditory route , 2003, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

[49]  S. Baron-Cohen Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind , 1997 .

[50]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Broken mirrors: a theory of autism. , 2006 .