Is there an "I" in "team"? The role of the self in group-serving judgments

Why do people make judgments that favor their groups, attributing outcomes to internal factors to a greater extent when their group succeeds than when their group fails? The present research demonstrates that group-serving judgments serve a self-protective function. In Study 1, participants in team sports competitions made more internal team attributions after experiencing victory than defeat; this group-serving bias was eliminated among those who completed an affirmation of personal values. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and found that affirmed people were less likely to use their self-judgments as an anchor for judgments about the group. Study 2 also found that self-affirmation secured feelings of being a worthy group member, and this was associated with the reduction of group-serving judgments. The present research examines the motivational factors that promote, reduce, link, and separate self-serving and group-serving judgments.     

Respect for group members: intragroup determinants of collective identification and group-serving behavior

This experiment examined how (disrespectful vs. respectful) treatment and (negative vs. positive) performance evaluation, both received from the same fellow group members, affects collective identification and willingness to engage in group-serving behavior. It was predicted and found that respectful as opposed to disrespectful intragroup treatment increased collective identification and willingness to engage in group-serving behavior in the immediate group situation, irrespective of whether intragroup evaluation was positive or negative. There was also evidence of a mediating role of collective identification. Regression analyses based on the measurement of perceived intragroup treatment and perceived intragroup evaluation as continuous variables corroborated these findings but also pointed to limits of the positive effects of respectful intragroup treatment. Finally, the interrelation of treatment and evaluation by fellow group members as two possible components of intragroup respect are discussed as well as the political dimension of research on intragroup respect.     

Mind-set and close relationships: when bias leads to (In)accurate predictions

The authors investigated whether mind-set influences the accuracy of relationship predictions. Because people are more biased in their information processing when thinking about implementing an important goal, relationship predictions made in an implemental mind-set were expected to be less accurate than those made in a more impartial deliberative mind-set. In Study 1, open-ended thoughts of students about to leave for university were coded for mind-set. In Study 2, mind-set about a major life goal was assessed using a self-report measure. In Study 3, mind-set was experimentally manipulated. Overall, mind-set interacted with forecasts to predict relationship survival. Forecasts were more accurate in a deliberative mind-set than in an implemental mind-set. This effect was more pronounced for long-term than for short-term relationship survival. Finally, deliberatives were not pessimistic; implementals were unduly optimistic.     

Why do people care about procedural fairness? The importance of belongingness in responding and attending to procedures

The present research tests an important motivational explanation for people's concern with procedural fairness by considering the influence of people's belongingness needs. We predicted that those individuals with a strong need to belong would care more about procedural fairness information and thus they would process that information more carefully, as compared to individuals with a weak need to belong. In Study 1, the need to belong moderated the relationship between the opportunity for voice and self‐evaluations. In Study 2, the need to belong moderated the relationship between the opportunity for voice and organizational identification among employees of a multinational healthcare company. Study 3 extends this finding by demonstrating that people with a strong need to belong engage in more careful and systematic processing of procedural fairness information. Together, these findings provide important insight into understanding the motivations that underlie reactions to procedural fairness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The group as a resource: reducing biased attributions for group success and failure via group affirmation

Self-affirmation theory proposes that people can respond to threats to the self by affirming alternative sources of self-integrity, resulting in greater openness to self-threatening information. The present research examines this at a group level by investigating whether a group affirmation (affirming an important group value) increases acceptance of threatening group information among sports teams and fans. In Study 1, athletes exhibited a group-serving attributional bias, which was eliminated by the group affirmation. In Study 2, the most highly identified fans exhibited the most bias in terms of their attributions, and this bias was eliminated by the group affirmation. These studies suggest that groups can serve as resources from which people can draw in response to threatening group events.     

Witnessing racial discrimination shapes collective action for racial justice: Enhancing awareness of privilege among advantaged groups

Three studies tested whether witnessing incidents of racial discrimination targeting Black people may motivate White people to engage in collective action for racial justice. In studies of White Americans (Study 1) and self-identified White activist “allies” (Study 2), witnessing incidents of racial discrimination predicted greater willingness to participate in collective action for racial justice, through the pathway of enhanced awareness of racial privilege. Studies 1 and 2 showed that awareness of racial privilege uniquely predicted the link between witnessing incidents of racial discrimination and willingness to participate in collective action for racial justice; these effects were consistent both with and without controlling for Whites’ sense of identification with their own racial group. Study 3 tested experimentally how witnessing incidents of racial discrimination may compel White people to become more motivated to engage in collective action for racial justice. Compared to those in a control condition, White participants who were randomly assigned to watch a brief video depicting recent discriminatory incidents targeting Black people (e.g., Starbucks incident in Philadelphia, housing incident at Yale University) tended to show greater motivation to engage in collective action for racial justice, an effect accounted for largely by enhanced awareness of racial privilege. How witnessing incidents of racial discrimination can transform views of privilege and willingness to stand up for racial justice among members of advantaged racial groups is discussed.     

When does procedural justice influence perceived legitimacy? The role of standing uncertainty and group identification

Many empirical studies have shown that procedural justice is the key determinant of whether an individual perceives an authority figure as legitimate. However, based on relational models of procedural justice and the uncertainty management model, there is reason to believe that the association between procedural justice and perceived legitimacy may be stronger for individuals who are uncertain about their standing as group members (moderation); this interaction might predict group identification and, in turn, perceived legitimacy (mediation). We tested this mediated moderation model in two experiments (Studies 1a and 1b) and a field study (Study 2) using different operationalizations of standing uncertainty across studies. The results of Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated that the association between procedural justice and perceived legitimacy was stronger for participants with high (vs. low) standing uncertainty. Study 2 showed that group identification mediated the association between this interaction effect and perceived legitimacy. Together, the results of the mediated moderation analysis showed that procedural justice was positively associated with perceived legitimacy through high group identification when standing uncertainty was high. The theoretical contributions and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Social reconnection revisited: The effects of social exclusion risk on reciprocity,trust, and general risk-taking

We hypothesize that people at risk of exclusion from groups will engage in actions that can socially reconnect them with others and test the hypothesis in four studies. We show that participants at risk of exclusion reciprocated the behavior of an unknown person (Study 1a) and a potential excluder (Study 1b) more compared to two control groups (people who received a non-social negative feedback and people who were actually excluded). Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1a with trust as the dependent variable. Study 3 showed that people who were at risk of exclusion took less general risk compared with both control groups. These results demonstrate socially adaptive responses of people who are at risk of social exclusion.     

Intuitions about situational correction in self and others

People's attributional phenomenology is likely to be characterized by effortful situational correction. Drawing on this phenomenology and on people's desire to view themselves more favorably than others, the authors hypothesized that people expect others to engage in less situational correction than themselves and to make more extreme dispositional attributions for constrained actors' behavior. In 2 studies, people expected their peers to make more extreme dispositional inferences than they did themselves for a situationally constrained actor's behavior. People's expectation that they engage in more situational correction than their peers was diminished among Japanese participants, who have less desire to view themselves as superior to their peers (Study 3), and among participants who were led to view dispositional attributions more favorably than situational attributions (Study 4).     

‘We're all individuals’: group norms of individualism and collectivism,levels of identification and identity threat

Three studies were conducted to investigate the power of group norms of individualism and collectivism to guide self‐definition and group behavior for people with low and high levels of group identification. Study 1 demonstrates that in an individualist culture (North America), those who identify highly with their national identity are more individualist than low identifiers. In contrast, in a collectivist culture (Indonesia) high identifiers are less individualist than low identifiers. Study 2 manipulates group norms of individualism and collectivism, and shows a similar pattern on a self‐stereotyping measure: High identifiers are more likely to incorporate salient group norms prescribing individualism or collectivism into their self‐concept than low identifiers. Study 3 replicates this effect and shows that high identifiers conform more strongly to group norms, and self‐stereotype themselves in line with the salient norm than low identifiers when their group is threatened. Hence, the findings suggest that when there is a group norm of individualism, high identifiers may show individualist behavior as a result of conformity to salient group norms. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Vicarious moral licensing: the influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior

This article investigates the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced behavior on an individual's subsequent behavior. Five studies supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes when their group members' past behavior has established nonprejudiced credentials. Study 1a showed that participants who were told that their group was more moral than similar other groups were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for African Americans. In Study 1b, when given information on group members' prior nondiscriminatory behavior (selecting a Hispanic applicant in a prior task), participants subsequently gave more discriminatory ratings to the Hispanic applicant for a position stereotypically suited for majority members (Whites). In Study 2, moral self-concept mediated the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced actions on a participant's subsequent prejudiced behavior such that others' past nonprejudiced actions enhanced the participant's moral self-concept, and this inflated moral self-concept subsequently drove the participant's prejudiced ratings of a Hispanic applicant. In Study 3, the moderating role of identification with the credentialing group was tested. Results showed that participants expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward a Hispanic applicant when they highly identified with the group members behaving in nonprejudiced manner. In Study 4, the credentialing task was dissociated from the participants' own judgmental task, and, in addition, identification with the credentialing group was manipulated rather than measured. Consistent with prior studies, the results showed that participants who first had the opportunity to view an in-group member's nonprejudiced hiring decision were more likely to reject an African American man for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. These studies suggest a vicarious moral licensing effect.     

Explaining the procedural justice–perceived legitimacy relationship: Relying on relational concern or instrumental concern?

People can extract relational information (i.e., relational concern) as well as instrumental information (i.e., instrumental concern) from decision‐making procedures. Thus, both instrumental and relational concerns are assumed to influence the procedural justice–perceived legitimacy relationship. Drawing from social exchange theory, the different kinds of concerns may lead to form different exchange relationships (social exchange relationship vs. economic relationship), which can be indicated by two forms of trust (affect‐based trust vs. cognition‐based trust). We built a model of trust mediation in which procedural justice predicted affect‐based and cognition‐based trust. Further, we also tested the hypothesis that high (compared with low) group identification individuals are more likely to rely on relational concern to construct procedural justice and judge legitimacy of authority, because they use procedural fairness information to infer the quality of their relationships with the authority. The results of an experiment (Study 1) demonstrated that both affect‐based trust and cognition‐based trust mediated the procedural justice–perceived legitimacy relationship. Moreover, a field study (Study 2) showed that affect‐based trust mediated the relationship between procedural justice and perceived legitimacy primarily among individuals with high group identification whereas cognition‐based trust mediated this relationship primarily among those with low group identification.     

The influence of social groups on goal contagion

Goal contagion is the automatic adoption of a goal upon perceiving another’s goal-directed behavior (Aarts, H., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Hassin, R. R. (2004). Goal contagion: Perceiving is for pursuing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 23-37). This paper tests the hypothesis that goal contagion is more likely between people who belong to the same groups. Because past work on goal contagion has required participants to read about the behavior of others, we also test whether goals are caught when one sees rather than reads about another’s motivated behavior. Across three studies, this ecologically valid methodology reliably produced goal contagion, and this effect was more likely to emerge when participants shared a group membership with those they observed. In Study 1, participants were more likely to take on the goal of individuals who belonged to their same university. Study 2 demonstrated that this effect occurred even when participants were not explicitly focused on the group membership of others. A final study verified that our effects were motivational by demonstrating that failing at a goal relevant task increased negative affect, but only for those who viewed the motivated behavior of someone from their own group.     

Witnesses’ memories for lineup fillers postdicts their identification accuracy

Witnesses who have quick, automatic recognition experiences when viewing a lineup tend to make more accurate decisions than witnesses who engage in slower, more deliberative processes. A novel postdictor of identification accuracy is predicted from these findings: memories for lineup fillers should be stronger among inaccurate, rather than accurate, witnesses. Undergraduate students (N = 320) viewed a mock crime, made a lineup identification decision, and were given a surprise test for their memory for the lineup fillers. Consistent with predictions, better memories for lineup fillers postdicted mistaken identifications and the suspect's innocence. Information gain analyses showed that under some conditions, memory for lineup fillers provided as much information about the suspect's guilt as a lineup identification. Findings are consistent with the idea that postdictors of eyewitness accuracy are valuable to the extent that they measure the automaticity or deliberativeness of the witness's experience when viewing the lineup.     

Procedural justice and intragroup status: Knowing where we stand in a group enhances reactions to procedures

The current research investigates the role of relative intragroup status as a moderator of people’s reactions to procedural justice. Based on a review of the procedural justice literature, the authors argue that information about intragroup status influences people’s reactions to variations in procedural justice. In correspondence with predictions, two experiments show that reactions of people who have been informed about their intragroup status position (either low, average, or high) are influenced more strongly by voice as opposed to no-voice procedures than people who are not informed about their intragroup status. It is concluded that knowing where we stand in a group enhances reactions to procedural justice.     

On the dimensionality of organizational justice: a construct validation of a measure.

This study explores the dimensionality of organizational justice and provides evidence of construct validity for a new justice measure. Items for this measure were generated by strictly following the seminal works in the justice literature. The measure was then validated in 2 separate studies. Study 1 occurred in a university setting, and Study 2 occurred in a field setting using employees in an automobile parts manufacturing company. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a 4-factor structure to the measure, with distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice as distinct dimensions. This solution fit the data significantly better than a 2- or 3-factor solution using larger interactional or procedural dimensions. Structural equation modeling also demonstrated predictive validity for the justice dimensions on important outcomes, including leader evaluation, rule compliance, commitment, and helping behavior.     

The cognitive reflection test is robust to multiple exposures

The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is a widely used measure of the propensity to engage in analytic or deliberative reasoning in lieu of gut feelings or intuitions. CRT problems are unique because they reliably cue intuitive but incorrect responses and, therefore, appear simple among those who do poorly. By virtue of being composed of so-called “trick problems” that, in theory, could be discovered as such, it is commonly held that the predictive validity of the CRT is undermined by prior experience with the task. Indeed, recent studies have shown that people who have had previous experience with the CRT score higher on the test. Naturally, however, it is not obvious that this actually undermines the predictive validity of the test. Across six studies with ~ 2,500 participants and 17 variables of interest (e.g., religious belief, bullshit receptivity, smartphone usage, susceptibility to heuristics and biases, and numeracy), we did not find a single case in which the predictive power of the CRT was significantly undermined by repeated exposure. This occurred despite the fact that we replicated the previously reported increase in accuracy among individuals who reported previous experience with the CRT. We speculate that the CRT remains robust after multiple exposures because less reflective (more intuitive) individuals fail to realize that being presented with apparently easy problems more than once confers information about the task’s actual difficulty.     

Ostracism and prosocial behavior: A social dilemma perspective

Prior research has yielded mixed findings regarding the relation of ostracism to prosocial behavior, with studies indicating ostracism leads people to become less prosocial, more prosocial, or that prosocial behavior is unaffected by workplace ostracism. By conceptualizing prosocial behavior at work as a social dilemma, we hypothesized that whether or not individuals reduce prosocial behaviors following ostracism can be understood by how individuals manage the conflict between the immediate temptation to treat others poorly and the long-term benefits of not giving into such temptations. Across three studies – a scenario (Study 1), experimental (Study 2), and field study on employed adults (Study 3) – we find support for the hypothesis that individuals who are less (versus more) oriented towards future outcomes engage in less prosocial behaviors with others who have ostracized them during prior interactions. We discuss both the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.     

For better or for worse: the congruence of personal and group outcomes on targets' responses to discrimination

This paper reports two studies examining how (in‐) congruence between personal and group outcomes affects emotional well‐being, outcome attributions and procedural justice perceptions of individuals who are exposed to subtle discrimination. In Study 1 (N = 82) participants are either accepted or rejected in a (bogus) job application procedure, and either do or do not receive additional information indicating group‐level disadvantage. In Study 2 (N = 79), participants were either accepted or rejected, and received information indicating either advantage or disadvantage for members of their group. Results of both studies reveal that not only emotional well‐being and outcome attributions, but also procedural justice perceptions are primarily guided by personal outcomes. That is, being informed of group‐level disadvantage does not intensify but can instead alleviate negative affect resulting from personal rejection. Furthermore, group disadvantage is only seen as an indicator of an unjust procedure by individual group members who have personally suffered rejection. Results are discussed in relation to current insights on discrimination, tokenism and social justice. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Heart and the Head: On Choosing Experiences Intuitively and Possessions Deliberatively

An enduring question in the field of judgment and decision making is when people are likely to choose on the basis of intuition and when they are likely to pursue a more deliberative decision strategy. Here, we attempt to shed light on that question by examining whether people tend to weight intuition more heavily when making experiential purchases, and to weight deliberation more heavily when making material purchases. Results from seven studies indicate that they do. In Study 1 (and a replication), participants expressed an explicit preference for choosing experiential purchases intuitively and material purchases analytically. In Study 2 (and a replication), participants anticipated experiencing more regret after going against reason for material purchases and going against intuition for experiential purchases. Participants in Study 3 who were asked to think about an experiential purchase wanted to see the relevant information presented by alternative, which facilitates intuitive/holistic processing, more than did those who were asked to consider a material purchase. In two additional studies, participants who were induced to think intuitively chose experiential purchases more often (Study 4) and reported a higher willingness to pay for them (Study 5) compared with participants induced to think analytically. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.