Team effort
The Sound of Power: Conveying and Detecting Hierarchical Rank Through Voice
Sei Jin Ko, Melody Sadler & Adam Galinsky
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research examined the relationship between hierarchy and vocal acoustic cues. Using Brunswik’s lens model as a framework, we explored how hierarchical rank influences the acoustic properties of a speaker’s voice and how these hierarchy-based acoustic cues affect perceivers’ inferences of a speaker’s rank. By using objective measurements of speakers’ acoustic cues and controlling for baseline cue levels, we were able to precisely capture the relationship between acoustic cues and hierarchical rank, as well as the covariation among the cues. In Experiment 1, analyses controlling for speakers’ baseline cue levels found that the voices of individuals in the high-rank condition were higher in pitch and loudness variability but lower in pitch variability, compared with the voices of individuals in the low-rank condition. In Experiment 2, perceivers used higher pitch, greater loudness, and greater loudness variability to make accurate inferences of speakers’ hierarchical rank. These experiments demonstrate that acoustic cues are systematically used to reflect and detect hierarchy.
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Shared Identity Is Key to Effective Communication
Katharine Greenaway et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The ability to communicate with others is one of the most important human social functions, yet communication is not always investigated from a social perspective. This research examined the role that shared social identity plays in communication effectiveness using a minimal group paradigm. In two experiments, participants constructed a model using instructions that were said to be created by an ingroup or an outgroup member. Participants made models of objectively better quality when working from communications ostensibly created by an ingroup member (Experiments 1 and 2). However, this effect was attenuated when participants were made aware of a shared superordinate identity that included both the ingroup and the outgroup (Experiment 2). These findings point to the importance of shared social identity for effective communication and provide novel insights into the social psychology of communication.
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James Laurence
Social Science Research, March 2015, Pages 46–59
Abstract:
Increasing rates of job displacement (i.e. involuntary job loss from redundancy, downsizing, restructuring) have been suggested to be a key driver of declining macro-levels of generalised trust. This article undertakes the first test of how job displacement affects individuals’ tendencies to (dis)trust over the adult lifecourse, using two-waves of the Great Britain National Child Development Study cohort data, on a sample of n=6,840 individuals. Applying lagged dependent variable logistic regression models, experiencing job displacement between the ages of 33 and 50 appears to significantly scar individuals’ generalised trust, with depressed trust observable at least nine years after the event occurred. However, this effect appears dependent on the value an individual places on work: the greater the attachment to employment the stronger the negative effect of displacement. A range of mediators, such as physical health, mental well-being, and personal efficacy, do not appear to account for the effect.
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Michael Schaerer, Roderick Swaab & Adam Galinsky
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research shows that having no power can be better than having a little power. Negotiators prefer having some power (weak negotiation alternatives) to having no power (no alternatives). We challenge this belief that having any alternative is beneficial by demonstrating that weak alternatives create low anchors that reduce the value of first offers. In contrast, having no alternatives is liberating because there is no anchor to weigh down first offers. In our experiments, negotiators with no alternatives felt less powerful but made higher first offers and secured superior outcomes compared with negotiators who had weak alternatives. We established the role of anchoring through mediation by first offers and through moderation by showing that weak alternatives no longer led to worse outcomes when negotiators focused on a countervailing anchor or when negotiators faced an opponent with a strong alternative. These results demonstrate that anchors can have larger effects than feelings of power. Absolute powerlessness can be psychologically liberating.
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Unlocking integrative potential: Expressed emotional ambivalence and negotiation outcomes
Naomi Rothman & Gregory Northcraft
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2015, Pages 65–76
Abstract:
This paper examines how one negotiator’s expressed emotional ambivalence can foster integrative outcomes. Study 1 demonstrated that observing a negotiation partner’s emotional ambivalence leads negotiators to come up with more integrative agreements. Study 2 examined a proposed mechanism: Expressed ambivalence leads to an increased perceived ability to influence the ambivalent negotiator because it suggests submissiveness. Study 3 demonstrated that perceived submissiveness mediates the effects of observed emotional ambivalence on integrative agreements. Implications of these findings for negotiation and emotions research, and directions for future research, are discussed.
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The Leader Ship is Sinking: A Temporal Investigation of Narcissistic Leadership
Chin Wei Ong et al.
Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Objectives: Individuals higher in narcissism have leader emergent tendencies. The characteristics of their personality suggest, however, that their leadership qualities will decrease over time as a function of group acquaintance. We present data from two studies that provide the first empirical support for this theoretical position within a transformational leadership framework.
Methods: In Study 1 (n = 112) we tested narcissistic leadership qualities in groups of unacquainted individuals over a 12-week period. In Study 2 (n = 152) we adopted the same protocol with groups of acquainted individuals.
Results: In Study 1, narcissism was positively associated with peer-rated leadership during initial group formation but not later. In Study 2, narcissism was not significantly associated with peer-rated leadership during initial group formation and was negatively associated with peer-rated leadership later. In Study 1, transformational leadership mediated the relationship between narcissism and leadership initially but not later on. In Study 2, transformational leadership failed to mediate the relationship between narcissism and leadership throughout the study.
Conclusions: Despite enjoying a honeymoon period of leadership, the appeal and attractiveness of the narcissistic leader rapidly wanes. This decline is explained in part by their changing transformational leadership qualities.
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Divide and conquer: When and why leaders undermine the cohesive fabric of their group
Charleen Case & Jon Maner
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2014, Pages 1033-1050
Abstract:
Cohesion, cooperation, and the formation of positive bonds among group members are key processes that facilitate effective group functioning. Consequently, group leaders usually work to enhance the positive social bonds among group members to facilitate cooperation and group cohesion. The present research suggests, however, that leaders sometimes are motivated to generate divisions — not cooperation — among their subordinates. Although such divisions may undermine group functioning, they can also serve as a means of protecting the leader’s own power. Four experiments supported the hypothesis that, when they perceive their power to be threatened, leaders create divisions among their subordinates in order to protect their power and reduce threats posed by potential alliances among those subordinates. Leaders restricted the amount of communication among subordinates (Experiment 1), physically sequestered subordinates (Experiment 2), and prevented subordinates from bonding with one another interpersonally (Experiments 3 and 4). Those behaviors were observed only among dominance-motivated leaders (not prestige-motivated leaders), and were directed only toward highly skilled (and thus highly threatening) subordinates. Consistent with the hypothesis that leaders’ behavior was driven by a desire to protect their power, the tendency to prevent in-group bonding was eliminated when leaders were assured that their power could not be lost (Experiment 4). These results shed light on factors that may undermine positive social processes within groups.
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Lay Personality Theories in Interactive Decisions: Strongly Held, Weakly Supported
Dylan Cooper, Terry Connolly & Tamar Kugler
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
In interactive decisions, cues to what others will do are important in forming a strategy. Information about others' personalities appears to be potentially valuable for this purpose. We report a series of four studies examining how information about another actor's personality influences people's own choices in interactive decisions. The studies found widespread beliefs that others' personality characteristics are strongly predictive both of broad classes of decision behavior (competition/cooperation, risk-seeking/risk-aversion) (Study 1) and of specific choices (Study 2) in single-agent settings. These beliefs extended to predicting others' choices in interactive decisions (Study 3) and to shaping the predictor's own decisions in interactive play in Chicken and Assurance games (Study 4). Overall, we found extensive evidence that laypeople believe that the personality traits we selected (angry-hostility, anxiety, assertiveness, excitement-seeking, and warmth) have substantial effects on behavior in interactive decisions and they act on those beliefs when making their own decisions. The empirical evidence supporting the predictive validity of these traits was, however, quite weak.
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From body motion to cheers: Speakers’ body movements as predictors of applause
Markus Koppensteiner, Pia Stephan & Johannes Paul Michael Jäschke
Personality and Individual Differences, February 2015, Pages 182–185
Abstract:
Appearance cues and brief displays of behavior are related to people’s personality, to their performance at work and to the outcomes of elections. Thus, people present themselves to others on different communication channels, while their interaction partners form first impressions on the basis of the displayed cues. In the current study we examined whether people are able to read information from politicians’ body motion. For a rating experiment we translated short video clips of politicians giving a speech into animated stick-figures and had these animations rated on trustworthiness, dominance, competence and the Big Five personality dimensions. Afterwards we correlated the ratings with the applause and the hecklings that the speakers received throughout their entire speech. This revealed that speakers whose body movements were perceived as high on dominance, as high on extraversion and as low on agreeableness received more applause. Although the results obtained need support from additional studies they indicate that body motion is an informative cue in real life settings.
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Brian Spisak et al.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, November 2014
Abstract:
Previous research indicates that followers tend to contingently match particular leader qualities to evolutionarily consistent situations requiring collective action (i.e., context-specific cognitive leadership prototypes) and information processing undergoes categorization which ranks certain qualities as first-order context-general and others as second-order context-specific. To further investigate this contingent categorization phenomenon we examined the “attractiveness halo” — a first-order facial cue which significantly biases leadership preferences. While controlling for facial attractiveness, we independently manipulated the underlying facial cues of health and intelligence and then primed participants with four distinct organizational dynamics requiring leadership (i.e., competition vs. cooperation between groups and exploratory change vs. stable exploitation). It was expected that the differing requirements of the four dynamics would contingently select for relatively healthier- or intelligent-looking leaders. We found perceived facial intelligence to be a second-order context-specific trait — for instance, in times requiring a leader to address between-group cooperation — whereas perceived health is significantly preferred across all contexts (i.e., a first-order trait). The results also indicate that facial health positively affects perceived masculinity while facial intelligence negatively affects perceived masculinity, which may partially explain leader choice in some of the environmental contexts. The limitations and a number of implications regarding leadership biases are discussed.
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Insult versus accident: A study of the effect of cultural construals on learning to coordinate
Benjamin Brooks, Karla Hoff & Priyanka Pandey
Princeton Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
High-caste and low-caste men in India repeatedly played a coordination game. Compared to low-caste men, high-caste men coordinated far less efficently. They were also 29 percentage points less likely to keep trying for efficient coordination after getting the "loser's payoff" -- the payoff to a player who attempts efficient coordination when his partner does not. We explain both findings in a model of learning where high-caste, but not low-caste men, see the loser's payoff as an insult rather than an accident. These findings provide evidence that cultural construals can impede coordination and society's ability to adapt to change.
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Prosocial lies: When deception breeds trust
Emma Levine & Maurice Schweitzer
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2015, Pages 88–106
Abstract:
Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that altruistic lies increase trust when deception is directly experienced and when it is merely observed. In Study 2, we demonstrate that mutually beneficial lies also increase trust. In Study 3, we disentangle the effects of intentions and deception; intentions are far more important than deception for building benevolence-based trust. In Study 4, we examine how prosocial lies influence integrity-based trust. We introduce a new economic game, the Rely-or-Verify game, to measure integrity-based trust. Prosocial lies increase benevolence-based trust, but harm integrity-based trust. Our findings expand our understanding of deception and deepen our insight into the mechanics of trust.
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Finance education and social preferences: Experimental evidence
Bryan McCannon
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, December 2014, Pages 57–62
Abstract:
What impact does a finance education have on the social preferences and the resulting behaviors of individuals? Experiments of a free riding game are conducted where a wealth-creating investment decision is made. The contribution benefits the group, but the incentives are such that an individual, lacking social preferences, would rather make no contribution and free ride off others. It is shown that as one’s education in finance increases, less free riding occurs and more wealth is generated. Thus, education provided in finance promotes pro-social choices that generate wealth even when external incentives are absent.
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The joint emergence of group competition and within-group cooperation
Mikael Puurtinen, Stephen Heap & Tapio Mappes
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Between-group conflict and within-group cooperation can be seen as two sides of the same coin, coevolving in a group-structured population. There is strong support for between-group competition facilitating the evolution of human cooperative tendencies, yet our understanding of how competition arises is less clear. We show that groups of randomly assembled individuals spontaneously engage in costly group competition, and that decisions promoting between-group conflict are associated with high levels of within-group cooperation. Remarkably, when groups were given the possibility to compete against other groups, net earnings for individuals were higher than when groups were not allowed to interact. The joint emergence of conflict and cooperation along even weakly defined group boundaries, and the apparent benefits of this strategy, suggest the existence of behavioral biases influencing human social behavior and organization.
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Ann Peng, Jennifer Dunn & Donald Conlon
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2015, Pages 77–87
Abstract:
Negotiators often bargain on behalf of constituents to whom they feel accountable. We argue that prior evidence for the superior outcomes of promotion-focused (vs. prevention-focused) negotiators may not hold when negotiators perceive high accountability to a third party. In two studies, we found that prevention-focused dyads achieved better joint financial outcomes than promotion-focused dyads in situations where high performance was expected and evaluated by a supervisor (i.e., high accountability condition). In Study 2, we found that prevention-focused individuals perceived a better regulatory fit in the high accountability condition and that the regulatory fit of both parties in a dyad was related to more integrative solutions.
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Trust Me (or Not): Regret and Disappointment in Experimental Economic Games
Luis Martinez & Marcel Zeelenberg
Decision, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotional states exert an influence on trust and the reciprocation of trust. The current research found that regret and disappointment, though both negatively valenced, have distinct effects on trust (and trustworthiness). Three experiments showed that regret decreased trust and trustworthiness, whereas disappointment increased them. Regret elicited both lower initial transfers and returns in a trust game. Conversely, disappointment gave rise to both higher initial transfers and returns in the same game. The implications of our results are discussed. The findings once again demonstrate that emotions play a crucial role on decision-making.
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Intergroup emulation: An improvement strategy for lower status groups
Diana Onu, Joanne Smith & Thomas Kessler
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
The social psychological literature on social change has focused on how groups overcome oppression and inequality. In this paper, we investigate an alternative strategy that groups employ for social change — the emulation of successful outgroups. We propose that lower status group members will be likely to employ a learning strategy when they perceive the status relations as legitimate (i.e., fair system) and unstable (i.e., own position is improvable). In Study 1 (Romanian undergraduate students, N = 31), we manipulated status legitimacy, while in Study 2 (British undergraduate participants, N = 94), we manipulated legitimacy and stability orthogonally. Overall, when they perceived status hierarchies as legitimate and unstable, participants exhibited higher admiration for the higher status outgroup, higher support for learning-related help (e.g., transfer of know-how, training) from the outgroup and had the most positive attitudes toward intergroup help. We propose that social change sometimes occurs gradually, through help and learning from successful models, and this paper offers insight into such gradual social change.
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Mark Nielsen, Rohan Kapitány & Rosemary Elkins
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children will comprehensively copy others’ actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectiveness. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that children will overimitate in this way even when the arbitrary actions copied are used as part of a process to achieve an outcome for someone else. We subsequently show in Experiment 2 that children will omit arbitrary actions, but only if the actions are to achieve a clear, functional goal for a naïve adult. These findings highlight how readily children adopt what appear to be conventional behaviors, even when faced with a clear demonstration of their negligible functional value. We show how a child’s strong, early-emerging propensity for overimitation reveals a sensitivity for ritualistic behavior.
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Burak Oc, Michael Bashshur & Celia Moore
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Subordinates are often seen as impotent, able to react to but not affect how powerholders treat them. Instead, we conceptualize subordinate feedback as an important trigger of powerholders’ behavioral self-regulation and explore subordinates’ reciprocal influence on how powerholders allocate resources to them over time. In 2 experiments using a multiparty, multiround dictator game paradigm, we found that when subordinates provided candid feedback about whether they found prior allocations to be fair or unfair, powerholders regulated how self-interested their allocations were over time. However, when subordinates provided compliant feedback about powerholders’ prior allocation decisions (offered consistently positive feedback, regardless of the powerholders’ prior allocation), those powerholders made increasingly self-interested allocations over time. In addition, we showed that guilt partially mediates this relationship: powerholders feel more guilty after receiving negative feedback about an allocation, subsequently leading to a less self-interested allocation, whereas they feel less guilty after receiving positive feedback about an allocation, subsequently taking more for themselves. Our findings integrate the literature on upward feedback with theory about moral self-regulation to support the idea that subordinates are an important source of influence over those who hold power over them.
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Brothers in arms: Libyan revolutionaries bond like family
Harvey Whitehouse et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
What motivates ordinary civilians to sacrifice their lives for revolutionary causes? We surveyed 179 Libyan revolutionaries during the 2011 conflict in Libya. These civilians-turned-fighters rejected Gaddafi’s jamahiriyya (state of the masses) and formed highly cohesive fighting units typical of intense conflicts. Fighters reported high levels of “identity fusion” — visceral, family-like bonds between fighters and their battalions. Fusion of revolutionaries with their local battalions and their own families were extremely high, especially relative to Libyans who favored the revolution but did not join battalions. Additionally, frontline combatants were as strongly bonded to their battalion as they were to their own families, but battalion members who provided logistical support were more fused with their families than battalions. Together, these findings help illuminate the social bonds that seem to motivate combatants to risk their lives for the group during wartime.
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Wendy de Waal-Andrews, Aiden Gregg & Joris Lammers
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
What type of behaviour affords status, agentic, or communal? Research to date has yielded inconsistent answers. In particular, the conflict view holds that agentic behaviour permits the imperious to grab status through overt force, whereas the functional view holds that communal behaviour permits the talented to earn status through popular appeal. Here, we synthesize both views by taking into account the moderating role played by group hierarchy. Group hierarchy can range from being dominance based (where status is grabbed) to prestige based (where status is granted). In a field study (Study 1), and a laboratory experiment (Study 2), we demonstrate that in different groups, status can be achieved in different ways. Specifically, agentic behaviour promotes status regardless of hierarchy type, whereas the effect of communal behaviour on status is moderated by hierarchy type: it augments it in more prestige-based hierarchies but diminishes it in more dominance-based hierarchies.