Me Myself and I
Revisiting the self-interest vs. values debate: The role of temporal perspective
Corrie Hunt, Anita Kim, Eugene Borgida & Shelly Chaiken
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars of public opinion have struggled to explain why people often vote against their economic self-interest in favor of a value-based rationale. Based on Construal Level Theory (Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007), we argue that both values and material self-interest affect social and political attitudes, but in different temporal contexts. Specifically, because material self-interest is more concrete and applicable to everyday concerns, we predict that it should carry more weight with regard to judgments made in the context of the near future. In contrast, values, which are more abstract by nature, should carry greater weight for judgments made in the distant future. In an experimental test of this hypothesis, we presented participants with a fictitious policy that affected their pocketbooks in an otherwise value-laden domain. We found that people's financial self-interest more strongly predicted attitudes toward a proposal to increase tuition in the near condition, whereas anti-egalitarian values more strongly predicted attitudes in the far condition. These findings offer new insights into the symbolic politics debate.
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“The ball don't lie”: How inequity aversion can undermine performance
Graeme Haynes & Thomas Gilovich
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has found that people are often averse to inequity, even when it works to their own advantage. The present research extends previous demonstrations of inequity aversion by examining how it plays out in a real-world context in which self-interest motivations and competitive pressures are substantial. National Basketball Association games were examined and instances of obviously incorrect foul calls were identified. Players were found to make a substantially lower percentage of the foul shots they were awarded as a result of incorrect calls, indicating that they were troubled by the inequity. This drop-off in performance was only observed when the shooter's team was ahead, highlighting the trade-off between the two conflicting motives of self-interest (the desire to win) and inequity aversion.
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Leader power and leader self-serving behavior: The role of effective leadership beliefs and performance information
Diana Rus, Daan van Knippenberg & Barbara Wisse
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this research we investigated the role played by leader power in determining leader self-serving behavior. Based on an integration of insights from research on the determinants of leader behavior and the power-approach theory, we hypothesized that with higher leader power leader self-serving behavior is determined more by internal states like effective leadership beliefs and less by external cues like performance information. We found support for this prediction across two experiments and one organizational survey assessing leader behavior along a self-serving – group-serving continuum. Overall, these results suggest that whether leaders benefit the collective or act self-servingly is not a function of their power per se but rather that leader power determines the extent to which internal belief states or external cues influence leader self versus group-serving behavior.
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The Good, the Bad, and the Talented: Entrepreneurial Talent and Selfish Behavior
Utz Weitzel, Diemo Urbig, Sameeksha Desai, Mark Sanders & Zoltan Acs
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Talent allocation models assume that entrepreneurially talented people are selfish and thus allocate into unproductive or even destructive activities if these offer the highest private returns. This paper experimentally analyzes selfish preferences of the entrepreneurially talented. We find that making a distinction between creative talent and business talent explains systematic differences in selfish behavior. Generally, both the less business talented and the more creative are more willing to forego private payoffs to avoid losses to others. A moderator analysis reveals that less creative individuals with business talent are significantly more selfish than all others, including the creative with business talent. This finding applies to both certain and risky payoffs with and without negative externalities. The paper makes a contribution to entrepreneurship research by qualifying the implications of talent allocation models and highlighting the importance of distinguishing between the two types of entrepreneurial talent. We also add to the field of experimental economics by advancing research on altruism under risk and with negative externalities.
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Does monetary punishment crowd out pro-social motivation? A natural experiment on hospital length of stay
Tor Helge Holmås, Egil Kjerstad, Hilde Lurås & Odd Rune Straume
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, August 2010, Pages 261-267
Abstract:
We study whether the use of monetary incentives might be counter-productive. In particular, we analyse the effect of fining owners of long-term care institutions who prolong length of stay at hospitals. Exploiting a unique natural experiment involving changes in the catchment areas of two large Norwegian hospitals, we find that hospital length of stay are longer in the hospital using fines to reduce length of stay compared with the hospital not using monetary punishment. We interpret these results as examples of monetary incentives crowding-out agents’ intrinsic motivation, leading to a reduction in effort.
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Leaders without ethics in global business: Corporate psychopaths
Clive Boddy, Richard Ladyshewsky & Peter Galvin
Journal of Public Affairs, August 2010, Pages 121-138
Abstract:
This paper introduces the concept of Corporate Psychopaths as ruthless employees who can successfully gain entry to organizations and can then get promoted within those organizations to reach senior managerial and leadership positions. What little empirical research currently exists supports the view that Corporate Psychopaths are more commonly found at senior levels of organizations. This paper presents further empirical evidence that supports this view. It discusses how, in a quantitative sample of 346 white-collar workers, in 2008, research using a psychopathy scale identified greater levels of psychopathy at more senior levels of corporations than at more junior levels. The paper goes on to propose that this is a universal issue that can pose various ethical problems for corporations because of the ruthless, selfish and conscience-free approach to life that Corporate Psychopaths have. Other ethical issues are to do with their moral accountability and with the problems associated with the possibility of screening employees for psychopathy. The paper reviews the literature on psychopathy and concludes that while psychopaths appear to be universal in occurrence, they may well be environmentally limited in their possible actions in more collectivist societies. However, the global spread of western, individualistically oriented corporations may pose a threat to any collectivist societies in which they operate.
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Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall: Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem
Amy Gonzales & Jeffrey Hancock
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
Contrasting hypotheses were posed to test the effect of Facebook exposure on self-esteem. Objective Self-Awareness (OSA) from social psychology and the Hyperpersonal Model from computer-mediated communication were used to argue that Facebook would either diminish or enhance self-esteem respectively. The results revealed that, in contrast to previous work on OSA, becoming self-aware by viewing one's own Facebook profile enhances self-esteem rather than diminishes it. Participants that updated their profiles and viewed their own profiles during the experiment also reported greater self-esteem, which lends additional support to the Hyperpersonal Model. These findings suggest that selective self-presentation in digital media, which leads to intensified relationship formation, also influences impressions of the self.
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I just cannot control myself: The Dark Triad and self-control
Peter Jonason & Jeremy Tost
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the recent flurry of research on the Dark Triad, this work has been atheoretical. In two studies, totaling 358 participants, we attempt to situate the Dark Triad within the larger framework of Life History Theory by correlating them with three measures of self-control. Both psychopathy (Study 1 and Study 2) and Machiavellianism (Study 2 only) were correlated with low self-control, a tendency to discount future consequences, and high rates of attention deficit disorder. Narcissism was not correlated with measures of self-control in either study. Results are consistent with Life History Theory in that these two sets of psychological traits are expected to be part of a fast life strategy.
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Facial-Feature Resemblance Elicits the Transference Effect
Michael Kraus & Serena Chen
Psychological Science, April 2010, Pages 518-522
Abstract:
In transference, a perceiver’s representation of a significant other is activated and used to interpret and respond to a new target person who bears some resemblance to the particular significant other. Integrating research on face perception and transference, we hypothesized that transference can occur on the basis of the resemblance of a target’s facial features to those of a perceiver’s significant other. Experimental results supported this hypothesis. Manipulating an upcoming interaction partner’s facial features to resemble those of participants’ significant other led participants to make representation-consistent inferences about and evaluations of the partner. Moreover, participants undergoing transference experienced shifts in their self-concept, so that they described themselves more like the person they are when with the relevant significant other. The results represent the first evidence of transference processes occurring through facial-feature resemblance. Implications for research on impression formation, social cognition, and emotions are discussed.
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Perceiver effects as projective tests: What your perceptions of others say about you
Dustin Wood, Peter Harms & Simine Vazire
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2010, Pages 174-190
Abstract:
In 3 studies, we document various properties of perceiver effects—or how an individual generally tends to describe other people in a population. First, we document that perceiver effects have consistent relationships with dispositional characteristics of the perceiver, ranging from self-reported personality traits and academic performance to well-being and measures of personality disorders, to how liked the person is by peers. Second, we document that the covariation in perceiver effects among trait dimensions can be adequately captured by a single factor consisting of how positively others are seen across a wide range of traits (e.g., how nice, interesting, trustworthy, happy, and stable others are generally seen). Third, we estimate the 1-year stability of perceiver effects and show that individual differences in the typical perception of others have a level of stability comparable to that of personality traits. The results provide compelling evidence that how individuals generally perceive others is a stable individual difference that reveals much about the perceiver's own personality.
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Individual differences in ego depletion: The role of sociotropy-autonomy
Toru Sato, Brittany Harman, Whitney Donohoe, Allison Weaver & William Hall
Motivation and Emotion, June 2010, Pages 205-213
Abstract:
In his cognitive theory of depression, Beck (1987) suggested that highly sociotropic individuals have a strong need for social acceptance whereas highly autonomous individuals have an excessive need for achievement. Research by Baumeister (2000) has suggested that a phenomenon known as ego depletion, the weakening of performance on tasks following active self-control, occurs because it depletes a limited inner resource. The present study examined whether individuals who are highly sociotropic or autonomous would respond differently when faced with tasks requiring self-control. Participants completed the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale (Clark et al. 1995) and engaged in two active self-control tasks. The results revealed that sociotropy levels were negatively correlated with persistence on tasks that require self-control whereas autonomy was positively correlated to persistence on the same task. In addition, the results suggested that, following a task requiring self-control, highly sociotropic individuals expend less effort, whereas highly autonomous individuals expend more effort on subsequent tasks requiring self-control.
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Understanding the Different Realities, Experience, and Use of Self-Esteem Between Black and White Adolescent Girls
Portia Adams
Journal of Black Psychology, August 2010, Pages 255-276
Abstract:
African American adolescent females possess higher self-esteem than any other racial or ethnic adolescent female group. This article tests two popular empirically supported explanations for Black high self-esteem: contingency of self-esteem theory and the locus of control model. This article builds on past research to illustrate the specific mechanisms of self-esteem for Black and White adolescent girls. To facilitate an investigation of these theories, self-esteem was explored as a bidimensional construct consisting of self-worth and self-deprecation. The sample consisted of 453 Black and 1,902 White adolescent females. Multivariate regression analyses produced the following outcomes: The contingency of self-esteem theory and the locus of control model were not supported. A significant race by social support interaction found that even in low support situations Black adolescent females reported less self-deprecation than White females.
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Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of time spent grooming on earnings
Steve De Loach
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
To most economists, personal grooming is a non-market activity. The standard view is that time spent in non-market activities is counterproductive as it reduces work effort and job commitment (Becker 1985). But grooming may be different. Grooming provides an important source of communication about workers, their values, social identities and personalities. There is reason to believe that certain productive personality traits may be inferred on the basis of personal grooming. In this paper, we use data from the American Time Use survey's pooled cross-section 2003-2007 to investigate the effect of additional time spent grooming on earnings. The results show that the effect of grooming on earnings differs significantly by gender and race. These results cannot easily be reconciled with any one particular theory, but imply a complex interaction between several possible effects.
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The influence of social class salience on self-assessed intelligence
Laura Kudrna, Adrian Furnham & Viren Swami
Social Behavior and Personality, Summer 2010, Pages 859-864
Abstract:
Previous research on self-assessed intelligence (SAI) has been focused on sex differences to the exclusion of other pertinent factors, including objective and subjective social class differences. In this study, 343 participants completed an online questionnaire in which the salience of social class identity was manipulated and measures of self-assessed overall intelligence, participant sex, and objective and subjective social class status were obtained. Results showed that participants of a high social class had a significantly higher SAI when their social class identity was salient, but there was no significant difference in the SAI of low social class groups with or without their social class identity salient. Results also revealed significant sex differences in SAI, but only among participants of a high social class. Overall, these results suggest that social class salience may be an important factor in shaping SAI.
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Being grateful is beyond good manners: Gratitude and motivation to contribute to society among early adolescents
Jeffrey Froh, Giacomo Bono & Robert Emmons
Motivation and Emotion, June 2010, Pages 144-157
Abstract:
Gratitude, a positive response to receiving a benefit, may contribute more to youth than just momentary happiness. It may ignite in youth a motivation for “upstream generativity” whereby its experience contributes to a desire to give back to their neighborhood, community, and world. We tested this notion by longitudinally examining early adolescents’ gratitude and their social integration, or motivation to use their strengths to help others and feel connected to others at a macro level. Middle school students (N = 700) completed measures of gratitude, prosocial behavior, life satisfaction, and social integration at baseline (T1), 3-months (T2), and 6-months (T3) later. Using bootstrapping to examine multiple mediators, controlling for demographics and social integration at T1, we found that gratitude at T1 predicted social integration at T3 and that prosocial behavior and life satisfaction at T2 mediated the relation. Further mediational analyses showed that gratitude and social integration serially enhanced each other. This prospective evidence aligns well with the interpretation that gratitude may help to initiate upward spirals toward greater emotional and social well-being. Implications are discussed in terms of gratitude’s role in positive youth development.