Ingratiation and Gratuity: The Effect of Complimenting Customers on Tipping Behavior in Restaurants

The present study examined the role of ingratiation on tipping behavior in restaurants. In the study, 2 female food servers waited on 94 couples eating dinner, and either complimented or did not compliment the couples on their dinner selections. Results indicated that food servers received significantly higher tips when complimenting their customers than when not complimenting them. These results and their implications are discussed.     

The Effect of Compliments on Tipping Behavior in Hairstyling Salons1

This study examined the role of compliments on tipping behavior in hairstyling salons. Two female hair stylists cut and styled 115 customers' hair and either complimented or did not compliment the customers while interacting. Results indicated that hair stylists received significantly higher tips when complimenting their customers than when not complimenting them. These results and their implications are discussed.     

The Effect of Patriotic Messages on Restaurant Tipping1

This study compared the effectiveness of 2 types of patriotic messages with a warmth/ ingratiation message and a control condition on restaurant tipping. Two female food servers waited on 100 parties eating dinner. When diners were finished with their meals, servers left them 1 of 4 messages on their checks: “Have a Nice Day,”“God Bless America,”“United We Stand,” or no message. Results indicated that parties who received the “United We Stand” message left significantly higher tips than did those receiving no message or the “Have a Nice Day” message. No other significant differences were found. These results and their implications are discussed.     

Beauty and the attributions of the beholder

Four studies used an attributional approach to examine interpersonal attraction. Underlying causal dimensions were predicted to influence differentially two components of attraction, dating and complimenting. In the first study, 24 subjects indicated whether they would date physically attractive stimulus persons. Complimenting was examined in the second and third studies, with 24 subjects rating the likelihood of complimenting attractive opposite-sex stimulus persons and 32 subjects rating the likelihood of complimenting same-sex stimulus persons. For these studies the reason for the stimulus person's attractiveness varied in controllability (volitional versus nonvolitional) and stability (temporary versus permanent). Consistent with predictions, controllability influenced likelihood of complimenting but not dating. In addition, compliments were more likely when the reason for attractiveness was unstable than when stable. Conversely, dating was more likely when attactiveness was stable than when unstable. However, stability had less influence on men responding to women than on either men responding to men or women responding to both sexes. Similar results were obtained in a fourth study in which 56 subjects recalled incidents where they complimented or dated others for their physical attractiveness.     

Social identification among political party voters and members: an empirical test of optimal distinctiveness theory

According to optimal distinctiveness theory, minority political parties and parties of intermediate size provide more central and important bases of social identity. The authors tested that prediction in a sample of voters and a sample of political party members. In both samples, adherents of minority and intermediate parties did not perceive their parties to be more representative of them. The authors found no significant differences between political parties on the collective self-esteem questionnaire administered to the sample of political party members.     

Values-based Political Messages and Persuasion: Relationships among Speaker, Recipient, and Evoked Values

The persuasive power of values-based political messages may depend on recipients having (1) shared values with the speaker (a type of personal identity match ); (2) shared political party identifications with the speaker (a type of social identity match ); and/or (3) expectations about values traditionally associated with different political parties (an expectancy violation/confirmation ). The independent and joint effects of these factors on the success of a persuasive message were examined, using the theoretical framework of dual-process models of persuasion. Participants (N = 301), classified according to their party identifications and primary value orientations, read a political speech that varied by argument quality, speaker party, and values evoked. Results indicated that value matching promotes close attention to the message, while party mismatching increases message rejection. These effects depend to some extent, however, on expectancies about values traditionally associated with different parties. Participants especially rejected messages from rival party members when the speaker evoked unexpected values. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the efficacy of values-based political communication.     

Does a customer by any other name tip the same?: The effect of forms of address and customers' age on gratuities given to food servers in the United States

This study examined whether different forms of address used by food servers were related to customers' tipping behavior. Food servers addressed diners who paid with credit cards by their first names, titles plus last names, sir/ma'am, or no address. Results indicated that when food servers personalized their service by addressing their customers by name, they earned significantly higher tips than when they used less immediate forms of address, although customers' estimated age mediated these results.     

Sweetening the Till: The Use of Candy to Increase Restaurant Tipping1

A common practice among servers in restaurants is to give their dining parties an unexpected gift in the form of candy when delivering the check. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of this gesture on the tip percentages received by servers. Experiment 1 found that customers who received a small piece of chocolate along with the check tipped more than did customers who received no candy. Experiment 2 found that tips varied with the amount of the candy given to the customers as well as with the manner in which it was offered. It is argued that reciprocity is a stronger explanation for these findings than either impression management or the good mood effect.     

Does Partisan Bias Modulate Neural Processing of Political Information? An Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Corruption and Positive Messages

Daily worldwide newspapers print articles exposing government corruption. Yet these messages do not lead to a loss of votes for the corrupt parties. Sympathizers’ partisan bias, which respectively minimizes and maximizes corruption and positive messages of their own parties respectively, is widely considered the main cause of the loss of effectiveness of political communications. Despite the well-established existence of such bias when processing political information, little is known as to its psychological origin. Through the use of neuroscience (fMRI), this study explores the underlying brain mechanisms of negative (corruption) and positive political messages related to a conservative and a socialist Spanish political party, as well as the differences between their sympathizers. The findings reveal that negative (vs. positive) political messages exert the greatest neuroimaging impact on the electorate, as shown in aversive, risk, and disappointment-related brain regions. Interestingly, we show that there exists a main partisan bias against opposite parties (and not a positive bias toward one’s own party) that stems from a higher risk, ambiguity, and disbelief provoked by both positive and negative information about rival parties. Furthermore, this bias was more pronounced among conservative supporters. The current findings provide valuable insights for political parties to improve their communication campaigns.     

Exploring the Attitudinal Structure of Partisanship

This study examined the structure of attitudes toward the political party an individual primarily identifies with and attitudes toward the other party with an emphasis on differentiating between the cognitive and affective components. Participants responded to a telephone survey that included measures of party identification, partisan attitudes, political information involvement activities, and voting behavior. Results indicated attitudes toward the parties were a function of both cognitive and affective components, although strong partisans had an attitudinal structure characterized as having a stronger cognitive component. Strong partisans were more polarized in their attitudes across parties. In addition, individuals with more cognitive‐affective ambivalence toward their own parties were less likely to vote, and their votes were less likely to be along party lines.     

“Where You Lead,I Will Follow”: Partisan Cueing on High-Salience Issues in a Turbulent Multiparty System

The ability of parties to not only reflect, but actually shape, citizens' preferences on policy issues has been long debated, as it corresponds to a fundamental prediction of classic party identification theory. While most research draws on data from the United States or studies of low-salience issues, we exploit the unique opportunity presented by the 2013 Italian election, with the four major parties of a clear multiparty setting holding distinct positions on crucial issues of the campaign. Based on an experimental design, we test the impact of party cues on citizens' preferences on high-salience issues. The results are surprising: Despite a party system in flux (with relevant new parties) and a weakening of traditional party identities, we find large, significant partisan-cueing effects in all the three experimental issues, and for voters of all the major Italian parties—both old and new, governmental and opposition, ideologically clear or ambiguous.     

Third Party Power: Some Negative Effects of Positive Incentives

The present study simulated an organizational dispute to examine the effects of reward and coercive third party power on negotiator concessions and negotiator perceptions of the third party. The results indicated that the possibility of third party rewards inhibited negotiator concessions, and the possibility of third party punishments facilitated concessions. This effect was enhanced by negotiator limit. When negotiators had high limits, they made the fewest concessions if the third party could compensate; when negotiators had low limits, they made the greatest concessions if the third party could press. Taken together, the results suggest that negotiators sometimes use concession making as a strategy to affect third party behavior. When negotiators want third parties to provide compensation, as when they have high limits, they reduce their concession making as a way of eliciting the compensation; when they want to avoid third party behavior that is punitive, and they have low limits and room to make concessions, they hasten their concessions to reach agreement quickly and thereby stem the third party's involvement.     

Election Outcome and Tax Compliance: The Role of Political Party Affiliation,Affect Balance,and Trust in Government

The present study examines partisan reactions to presidential election outcomes. Our model investigates the interactive role of political party affiliation on the relationship between identification with the winning party and affect balance. We subsequently examine how tax compliance intentions are influenced by this moderation relationship through affect balance and trust in government. We conducted a quasi-experiment one week prior to the first mass 2016 presidential primary, where 12 of the 50 US states voted to decide which candidates would represent the Republican and Democratic parties in the 2016 US presidential election. Our sample consisted of 205 Republicans and Democrats. We manipulated press releases showing various presidential candidates winning the presidency to examine how matches / mismatches between partisans’ political party affiliation and the party winning the election influence citizens’ overall feelings, beliefs, and intentions. We find election outcomes generate significant overall positive or negative feelings (i.e., affect balance) among partisans, which influences beliefs about trust in government, and subsequently their tax compliance intentions. Political party moderates the relationship between election outcomes and affect balance in such a way that Democrats experience greater overall positive affect balance when their party wins the election compared to Republicans.     

Group Distinctiveness,Political Identification,and the Third-Person Effect: Perceptions of a Political Campaign in the 2004 Greek National Election

The present study examined the effects of political identification and group distinctiveness on perceptions of media influence during an election campaign. Participants estimated the effect of political communication on self and on voters of two large, nondistinctive political parties and two small, distinctive political parties. Nondistinctive party members showed an ingroup bias (i.e., greater perceived media influence on the outgroup) irrespective of strength of identification compared to the nondistinctive outgroups, whereas they did not show any bias (high identifiers) or even reverse bias (low identifiers) toward the distinctive outgroups. Distinctive party members showed an ingroup bias (irrespective of strength of identification) against the nondistinctive outgroups and an ingroup bias (high identifiers) or no bias (low identifiers) toward the distinctive outgroups. Ingroup assimilation (i.e., lack of difference in perceived influence between self and ingroup) was evident for distinctive party members, but not for nondistinctive party members. Results highlight the importance of group distinctiveness and identification in third-person perceptions.     

Trust and reciprocity decisions: The differing perspectives of trustors and trusted parties

This paper examines trusting actions and reciprocity responses in the two-person Trust Game. Two experiments test a model that suggests that individuals in social and economic interactions are likely to view the situation from their own unique perspective. The results demonstrate that trustors focus primarily on the risk associated with trusting, while trusted parties—those who are in a position to reciprocate—base their decisions on the level of benefits they have received. Specifically, trusting is more likely when risk is low, but the likelihood of trust does not depend on the level of benefit that trust provides to trusted parties. Meanwhile, reciprocity is more likely when the benefit provided is high, but does not depend on the level of risk the trustor faced. Neither party is particularly sensitive to the factors that affect their counterpart's decision. Furthermore, trustors underestimate the extent to which the level of benefits they provide might affect the trusted party' decision to reciprocate. Responses to a post-experimental questionnaire provide additional support for the proposition that the parties view the interaction from markedly different perspectives. Implications of this are discussed.     

Effect on Restaurant Tipping of a Helpful Message Written on the Back of Customers' Checks

Research has shown that servers can increase their tip percentages by writing "Thank you" or by drawing a happy face on the backs of customers' checks. In the current study, a third approach of this type was tested. An experiment was conducted in which a female server either did or did not write a helpful message about an upcoming dinner special on the backs of checks before delivering them to customers. It was predicted that adding the helpful message would increase tip percentages because of reciprocity, in which customers would tend to respond to the server's "tip" with an increased tip of their own. Results were consistent with this prediction: Mean tip percentages increased from about 17% to 20%.     

Effects of Touch on Gratuities Received in Same‐Gender and Cross‐Gender Dyads1

This study examined whether or not a nonreciprocal brief shoulder touch would increase gratuities received by servers. Data from 400 patrons were collected by 4 servers who enacted the touch manipulation while working in 2 separate eating establishments. The findings revealed that servers who touched their patrons did receive larger gratuities than servers who did not touch their patrons. Further, in one setting, servers received larger tips from patrons who were of the opposite gender than from patrons who were of the same gender. These results support the ubiquitous influence of a fleeting touch on gratuities, and the possibility that, in certain situations, touch may be more advantageous when done by members of the opposite gender.     

The Person Positivity and Principal Actor Hypotheses1

Data from election studies in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the U.S. were analyzed to test the external validity of Sears' person positivity hypothesis. Although people in Sweden and the Netherlands did not rate their preferred party less favorably than that party's leader, overall the results in those two countries tended to support the person positivity hypothesis. However, the U.S. data indicated, contrary to the person positivity hypothesis, that people rated political parties more favorably than the nominees, or the people competing for the nominations, of those parties. An alternative, the principal actor hypothesis, was offered which is compatible with the data from all three countries. This hypothesis is that positivity or leniency will be extended in judgments that do not involve the principal actors in a political system. This accords with our findings that in the strong party systems of Sweden and the Netherlands, parties are judged less favorably than party leaders, while in the weak party system of the U.S., parties are judged more favorably than the individuals nominated by the parties.     

Changing Parties,Changing Partisans: The Personalization of Partisan Attachments in Western Europe

This article investigates the effects of the deep transformations in the relationship between West European class‐mass parties and their electorates. Particular attention is paid to the changing nature of individuals' partisan attachments, which are hypothesized to be less rooted in social and ideological identities and more in individual attitudes towards increasingly visible partisan objects. The main objective of this article is to examine the influence of voters' attitudes towards one of these “objects”—the party leaders—in determining psychological attachments with the parties. The analysis concentrates on the two main cleavage‐based parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The empirical findings highlight the declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters' attitudes towards party leaders. The concluding section points to the crucial role that political psychology can play in our understanding of democratic elections' outcomes.     

Be Fair,Your Employees Are Watching: A Relational Response Model of External Third‐Party Justice

There is growing theoretical recognition in the organizational justice literature that an organization's treatment of external parties (such as patients, community members, customers, and the general public) shapes its own employees’ attitudes and behavior toward it. However, the emerging third‐party justice literature has an inward focus, emphasizing perceptions of the treatment of other insiders (e.g., coworkers or team members). This inward focus overlooks meaningful “outward” employee concerns relating to how organizations treat external parties. We propose a relational response model to advance the third‐party justice literature asserting that the organization's fair treatment of external parties sends important relational signals to employees that shape their social exchange perceptions toward their employer. Supporting this proposition, in two multisource studies in separate healthcare organizations we found that patient‐directed justice had indirect effects on supervisory cooperative behavior ratings through organizational trust and organizational identification.