More Or Less Good
Powerlessness Also Corrupts: Lower Power Increases Self-Promotional Lying
Huisi (Jessica) Li, Ya-Ru Chen & John Angus Hildreth
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The popular maxim holds that power corrupts, and research to date supports the view that power increases self-interested unethical behavior. However, we predict the opposite effect when unethical behavior, specifically lying, helps an individual self-promote: lower rather than higher power increases self-promotional lying. Drawing from compensatory consumption theory, we propose that this effect occurs because lower power people feel less esteemed in their organizations than do higher power people. To compensate for this need to view themselves as esteemed members of their organizations, lower power individuals are more likely to inflate their accomplishments. Evidence from four studies supports our predictions: compared with those with higher power, executives with lower power in their organizations were more likely to lie about their work achievements (Study 1, n = 230); graduate students with lower power in their Ph.D. studies were more likely to lie about their publication records (Study 2, n = 164); and employees with lower power were more likely to lie about having signed a business contract (Studies 3 and 4). Mediation analyses suggest that lower power increased lying because lower power individuals feel lower esteem in their organizations (Study 3, n = 562). Further supporting this mechanism, a self-affirmation intervention reduced the effect of lower power on self-promotional lying (Study 4, n = 536). These converging findings show that, when lies are self-promotional, lower power can be more corruptive than higher power.
Market Participation and Moral Decision-Making: Experimental Evidence from Greenland
Gustav Agneman & Esther Chevrot-Bianco
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
The relationship between market participation and moral values is the object of a long-lasting debate in economics, yet field evidence is mainly based on cross-cultural studies. We conduct rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N=543), where stark contrasts in market participation within villages allow us to examine the relationship between market participation and moral decision-making holding village-level factors constant. First, we document a robust positive association between market participation and moral behaviour towards anonymous others. Second, market-integrated participants display universalism in moral decision-making, whereas non-market participants make more moral decisions towards co-villagers. A battery of robustness tests confirms that the behavioural differences between market and non-market participants are not driven by socioeconomic variables, childhood background, cultural identities, kinship structure, global connectedness, and exposure to religious and political institutions.
Repeated exposure to success harshens reactions to failure
Kristina Wald & Ed O'Brien
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Eight experiments reveal that observing success wields adverse effects on how people judge others' failures. We find that repeated exposure to successful performances leads people to perceive a task as not so difficult or complicated after all — and so they more harshly evaluate those who struggle to do it. Across various tasks — from completing a motor-skills test, to doing a dance move, to sketching a drawing — repeated exposure to success led people to expect others to perform better on their first-time attempts (Experiments 1–2) and criticize others for failing (Experiments 3–4), even when the performer was unequipped to succeed (and when harsh critics themselves were mistakenly overconfident). This effect was not explained by incidentally negative effects of repeated exposure (e.g., annoyance, tiredness: Experiment 5); instead, it indeed depended on people's (mis)perceptions of learning from mere watching, such that it was moderated by the observability of successful execution (Experiment 6) and whether one judged another person's poor attempt (which entails mere watching) vs. one's own poor attempt (which entails watching plus doing: Experiment 7). Accordingly, harsh critics became kinder to others after attempting the task themselves (Experiment 8). These findings reveal when and why observing success risks callousing people toward failure. This blinding effect is especially consequential in today's information age, which offers unprecedented access to success and skilled performances (e.g., via social media): Such access may not only be inflating people's confidence for recreating what they see, but also deflating people's empathy and understanding of those who try (and fail).
Interpersonal consequences of conveying goal ambition
Sara Wingrove & Gráinne Fitzsimons
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, September 2022
Abstract:
Setting ambitious goals is a proven strategy for improving performance, but we suggest it may have interpersonal costs. We predict that relative to those with moderately ambitious goals, those with highly ambitious goals (and those with unambitious goals) will receive more negative interpersonal evaluations, being seen as less warm and as offering less relationship potential. Thirteen studies including nine preregistered experiments, three preregistered replications, and one archival analysis of graduate school applications (total N = 6,620) test these hypotheses. Across career, diet, fitness, savings, and academic goals, we found a robust effect of ambition on judgments, such that moderately ambitious goals led to the most consistently positive interpersonal expectations. To understand this phenomenon, we consider how ambition influences judgments of investment in one’s own goals as opposed to supportiveness for other people’s goals and explore expectations about goal supportiveness as one mechanism through which ambition may influence interpersonal judgments.
Monogamy as protection against COVID-19?: Non-monogamy stigma and risk (Mis)perception
Terri Conley et al.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
COVID-19 public health messages largely communicated that Americans were “safer at home.” Implicit in this advice are messages about protections ostensibly also offered by monogamy–that having more relationships is always more dangerous than having fewer relationships and that closer relationships are always safer–from a disease transmission perspective–than unfamiliar relationships. These heuristics may have led people to discount other COVID-19 dangers (such as spending more time with others of unknown infection status) and to ignore COVID-specific safety measures (such as mask-wearing, and ventilation). We conducted three studies in which we used experimental vignettes to assess people's perceptions of COVID-risky targets in monogamous relationships with a close, committed partner versus targets who were described as non-monogamous with casual partners but relatively COVID-safe. Participants perceived monogamous-but-COVID-riskier targets as more responsible and safer from COVID-19. Non-monogamy stigma seems to extend analogously to COVID-19 risk. Public health messages that fail to attend to the specifics and nuances of close relationships risk contributing to this stigma and ultimately undermining the goals of reducing the spread of infectious disease.
Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person’s Pain
Helena Hartmann et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Painkiller administration lowers pain empathy, but whether this also reduces prosocial behavior is unknown. In this preregistered study, we investigated whether inducing analgesia through a placebo painkiller reduced effortful helping. When given the opportunity to reduce the pain of another person, individuals experiencing placebo analgesia (n = 45 adults from Austria; 21 male, 24 female) made fewer prosocial choices at the lowest helping level and exerted less physical effort when helping, compared with controls whose pain sensitivity was unaltered (n = 45; 21 male, 24 female). Self-reported empathic unpleasantness positively correlated with prosocial choices across the whole sample. While not replicating group differences in empathy, a mediation analysis revealed that the level of unpleasantness to other people’s pain fully mediated the effect of placebo analgesia on prosocial choices. Given the importance of prosociality for social cohesion, these findings have broad potential implications both for individuals under the influence of painkillers and for society at large.
Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped: Underestimating Prosociality Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Asking for Help
Xuan Zhao & Nicholas Epley
Psychological Science, October 2022, Pages 1708-1731
Abstract:
Performing acts of kindness increases well-being, yet people can be reluctant to ask for help that would enable others’ kindness. We suggest that people may be overly reluctant because of miscalibrated expectations about others’ prosocial motivation, underestimating how positively others will feel when asked for help. A pretest identified that interest in asking for help was correlated with expectations of how helpers would think and feel, but a series of scenarios, recalled experiences, and live interactions among adult participants in the United States (total N = 2,118) indicated that those needing help consistently underestimated others’ willingness to help, underestimated how positively helpers would feel, and overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel. These miscalibrated expectations stemmed from underestimating helpers’ prosocial motivation while overestimating compliance motivation. This research highlights a limitation of construing help-seeking through a lens of compliance by scholars and laypeople alike. Undervaluing prosociality could create a misplaced barrier to asking for help when needed.
Le Petit Machiavellian Prince: Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values
Robin Kopecky et al.
Evolutionary Psychology, July 2022
Abstract:
Humans infected by Toxoplasma gondii express no specific symptoms but manifest higher incidence of many diseases, disorders and differences in personality and behavior. The aim of this study was to compare the political beliefs and values of Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants. We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online survey (477 Toxoplasma-infected) using the Political Beliefs and Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism. We found sex differences in political beliefs associated with Toxoplasma infection. Infected women scored higher in tribalism and lower in cultural liberalism, compared with the Toxoplasma-free control group, while infected men scored higher in economic equity. These results fit with sexual differences in behavior and attitude observed after toxoplasmosis infection. Controlling for the effect of worse physical health and mental health had little impact, suggesting that impaired health did not cause these changes. Rather than adaptation to prevalence of parasites, as suggested by parasite-stress theory, the differences might be side-effects of long-term mild inflammatory reaction. However, to get clear picture of the mild inflammation effects, more research focused on different infectious diseases is needed.
Resource asymmetry reduces generosity and paying forward generosity, among the resource-advantaged and disadvantaged
Ashley Harrell & Anna Greenleaf
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decisions to benefit others often entail generalized reciprocity: helping someone who cannot directly return benefits in the future; instead, the beneficiary may “pay it forward” to someone else. While much past work demonstrates that people pay forward generosity, experimental tests of these processes typically assume that people have equal access to same-valued resources that they can use to benefit others. Yet this is rare in daily life, where people commonly experience asymmetries in the resources that they have to help others and to pay forward help received. In an experiment, we find that acts of generalized reciprocity — including initiating generosity and, upon being treated generously, paying it forward — are reduced when there is resource asymmetry between potential benefactors. Results show that the detriments of resource asymmetry occur among both the resource-advantaged and the disadvantaged. Asymmetry in available resources, and inequality more broadly, is thus critical for understanding patterns of generosity.
No one is an island: Awe encourages global citizenship identification
Minjae Seo, Shiyu Yang & Sean Laurent
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent theorizing has suggested that awe is a collective emotion, as research has demonstrated a clear link between experiencing awe and behaving prosocially. The present research extends past work by investigating the scope and sources of awe-inspired prosociality, focusing on whether awe’s effects extend beyond local/national interests to include global or humanitarian goals. Specifically, we examine how by increasing feelings of smallness, awe encourages a sense of global citizenship, promoting cosmopolitan (vs. parochial) prosociality. Four experiments found that varied awe elicitors (recall, pictures, videos) and cues (universe, peaceful/fearful nature scenes) boost global citizenship identification by first increasing perception of the self as small. Downstream effects included greater valuing of interconnectedness (Experiment 2) and higher appreciation of diversity (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, awe — through small self- and global citizenship — further translated into larger donation allocations to global (vs. local) charities. Given global problems such as pandemics and climate change, our findings have implications for how emotions can promote a sense of shared responsibility when commitment across borders is essential.