Research across disciplines suggests that bad is stronger than good and that individuals punish deception more than they reward honesty. However, methodological issues in previous research limit the latter conclusion. Three experiments resolved these issues and consistently found the opposite pattern: Individuals rewarded honesty more frequently and intensely than they punished deception.
When bad decisions force business leaders to leave their jobs, organizations often rush to replace them with insiders, who are familiar with the original problem and the former leader. In times of turmoil, the choice seems natural and even obvious: Because insiders know the past, they should be less likely to repeat it. General Motors pointedly replaced Rick Wagoner as its chief executive officer with his protégé Fritz Henderson, a career GM employee.
Power is often considered the central animating force of human interaction. Who has power, who is affected by power, and how that power is exercised provide the foundation for understanding human relations (Russell 1960). Although it is difficult to give both a parsimonious and a complete definition of power (Fiske and Berdahl 2007; Lukes 1974), power is often defined as the ability to control resources, own and others, a definition rooted in theories of dependency and interdependency (Thibaut and Kelly 1959).
Previous research suggests that narrow identification with one's own racial group impedes coalition building among minorities. Consistent with this research, the 2008 Democratic primary was marked by racial differences in voting preferences: Black voters overwhelmingly preferred Barack Obama, a Black candidate, and Latinos and Asians largely favored Hillary Clinton, a White candidate. We investigated one approach to overcoming this divide: highlighting one's negational identity.
Drawing on the motivated cognition literature, we examine how self-affirmation processes influence self-justification needs and escalation decisions. Study 1 found that individuals with a larger pool of affirmational resources (high self-esteem) reduced their escalation compared to those with fewer affirmational resources (low self-esteem). Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that individuals also de-escalated their commitments when they were provided an opportunity to affirm on an important value.
Three experiments examine how power affects consumers' spending propensities. By integrating literatures suggesting that (a) powerlessness is aversive, (b) status is one basis of power, and (c) products can signal status, the authors argue that low power fosters a desire to acquire products associated with status to compensate for lacking power. Supporting this compensatory hypothesis, results show that low power increased consumers' willingness to pay for auction items and consumers' reservation prices in negotiations but only when products were status related.
Individuals define themselves, at times, as who they are (e.g., a psychologist) and, at other times, as who they are not (e.g., not an economist). Drawing on social identity, optimal distinctiveness, and balance theories, four studies examined the nature of negational identity relative to affirmational identity. One study explored the conditions that increase negational identification and found that activating the need for distinctiveness increased the accessibility of negational identities.
Three experiments examine the relationship between past performance and strategies and risk attitudes in integrative negotiations. We hypothesized that past performance would affect negotiators' willingness to embrace two types of risk: strategic (i.e., information sharing in the present) versus contractual (i.e., uncertainty about the future). Consistent with the hypothesis that past success promotes strategic risk taking, dyads with a history of success were more integrative than dyads with a history of failure in Experiment 1.
Many practices aimed at cultivating multicultural competence in educational and organizational settings (e.g., exchange programs, diversity education in college, diversity management at work) assume that multicultural experience fosters creativity. In line with this assumption, the research reported in this article is the first to empirically demonstrate that exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity.