Psychology Commons^™

When And Why Narcissists Exhibit Greater Hindsight Bias And Less Perceived Learning, Satoris S. Howes, Edgar E. Kausel, Alexander T. Jackson, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The present research sought to examine the impact of narcissism, prediction accuracy, and should counterfactual thinking—which includes thoughts such as “I should have done something different”—on hindsight bias (the tendency to exaggerate in hindsight what one knew in foresight) and perceived learning. To test these effects, we conducted four studies (total n = 727). First, in Study 1 we examined a moderated mediation model, in which should counterfactual thinking mediates the relation between narcissism and hindsight bias, and this mediation is moderated by prediction accuracy such that the relationship is negative when predictions are accurate and positive when predictions are …

A Unifying Framework To Study Workplace Decision-Making Aptitude And Performance, Nikki Blacksmith, Maureen E. Mccusker, Theodore L. Hayes

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Employers are facing a skills shortage in the labor market: there are not enough workers who can perform the complex decision-making tasks that characterize 21st-century work. This manuscript aims to stimulate research investigating the relationship among individual differences, decision-making aptitude, and decision performance. We offer guidelines for future research by laying out a framework to unify disparate streams of research from organizational science, and judgment and decision-making research. We advocate for the use of pattern-oriented analytical approaches to capture the complexities of the predictor and criterion space.

Clarifying Job Search Clarity: Investigating Job Search As A Self-Regulatory Process, Lisa Kuron

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The central role of goals in facilitating self-regulation throughout the multiple stages of job search has been recognized by scholars and models of the job search process. I argue that despite numerous calls for more research on job search goals, critical questions remain unanswered and that an explicit focus on job search goals can advance the job search literature by enhancing our understanding of job search behaviours and outcomes, while also providing actionable advice for managing the emotional and exhausting process of looking for a job. In this dissertation, I contribute to job search research by identifying gaps in the …

Diversity Team Building: Impact On Virtual Team Performance, Nina C. Magpili-Smith

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Although organizations have addressed diversity issues at the organizational-level with resulting positive employee outcomes, lack of scholarly attention to team-level interventions remain. Team-level interventions would benefit organizations more directly as they address issues directly related to task accomplishment. Since diversity may lead to negative performance results for teams, a team building intervention based on the latest empirical research was developed and tested to address the potential performance losses associated to diversity in decision-making teams. The team building intervention provides six crucial elements, namely (1) direct experience of how deep-level team diversity affect team dynamics, (2) diversity education, (3) cultivation of …

Moral Traps: When Self-Serving Attributions Backfire In Prosocial Behavior, Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev, Dale T. Miller

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Two assumptions guide the current research. First, people's desire to see themselves as moral disposes them to make attributions that enhance or protect their moral self-image: When approached with a prosocial request, people are inclined to attribute their own noncompliance to external factors, while attributing their own compliance to internal factors. Second, these attributions can backfire when put to a material test. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that people who attribute their refusal of a prosocial request to an external factor (e.g., having an appointment), but then have that excuse removed, are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior than …

Sidestepping The Rock And The Hard Place: The Private Avoidance Of Prosocial Requests, Stephanie C. Lin, Rebecca L. Schaumberg, Taly Reich

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For some, facing a prosocial request feels like being trapped between a rock and a hard place, requiring either a resource (e.g., money) or psychological (e.g., self-reproach) cost. Because both outcomes are dissatisfying, we propose that these people are motivated to avoid prosocial requests, even when they face these requests in private, anonymous contexts. In two experiments, in which participants' anonymity and privacy was assured, participants avoided facing prosocial requests and were willing to do so at a personal cost. This was true both for people who would have otherwise complied with the request and those who would have otherwise …

Creativity In Organizations: Antecedents And Outcomes Of Individual Creativity, Goran Calic

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I set out to expand our collective understanding of creativity in organizations. I accomplish this through three related studies, each organized into independent chapters of this dissertation.

The first study explores how demands of organizations, particularly strategic contradictions faced by decision makers, affect creative processes and products. In this chapter I develop the theory of paradoxical creativity, which posits that creative discovery is a function of how strategic contradictions are perceived by decision-makers. The key insight of the theory of paradoxical creativity is that strategic contradictions have independent effects on the two stages of creative discovery (generation …

The Technology Effect: How Perceptions Of Technology Drive Excessive Optimism, Brent B. Clark, Christopher Robert, Stephen A. Hampton

Marketing and Management Faculty Publications

Purpose: We propose that constant exposure to advances in technology has resulted in an implicit association between technology and success that has conditioned decision makers to be overly optimistic about the potential for technology to drive successful outcomes. Three studies examine this phenomenon and explore the boundaries of this “technology effect.”

Design/Methodology/Approach: In Study 1, participants (N = 147) made simulated investment decisions where the information about technology was systematically varied. In Study 2 (N = 143), participants made decisions in a resource dilemma where technology was implicated in determining the amount of a resource available for harvest. Study 3 …

On Getting Better And Working Hard: Using Improvement As A Heuristic For Judging Effort, Monica El Gamal

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

There is a strong conceptual association between improvement and effort. Therefore, we propose that people tend to use improvement as a heuristic for judging effort in others. Hence, they would perceive greater effort in improved performance records than in non-improved records with superior overall performance. To examine whether people use improvement as a heuristic for effort, we compared judgments of effort investments and trait effort in improved and consistently-strong performance profiles with equivalent recent performance. Across six empirical studies, participants thought that those with improved profiles exerted more effort and were more hardworking than those with consistently-strong profiles, and this …

Organizational Leaders’ Experience With Fear-Related Emotions: A Critical Incident Study, Al Barkouli

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This study used the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to better understand how organizational leaders experienced fear-related emotions. Through semi-structured interviews, fifteen executive leaders, mainly chief executive officers (CEOs), shared their experiences in response to threatening, risky, or dangerous incidents. In addition to a phenomenological understanding of the experience, participants illuminated the role that fear-related emotions play in leader decisions, how these emotions influence leader-follower relationships, the impacts of fear-related emotions on leaders’ health and well-being, and the ways leaders managed their experience with fear-related emotions including the role courage played. Leaders often faced threats, risks, or dangers (stimuli) from within …

Anticipated Regret In Time-Based Work-Family Conflict, Jessica Bagger, Jochen Reb, Andrew Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the role of anticipated regret in time-based work-family conflict decisions.

A total of 90 working parents responded to a decision making problem describing a time-based conflict between a work event and a family event. Participants' preference for which event to attend constituted the dependent variable. Independent variables were participants' work and family centralities. Anticipated regret for choosing the work option and anticipated regret for choosing the family option were measured as hypothesized mediators.

Structural equation modeling revealed that anticipated regret for choosing the family option mediated the relationship between work centrality …

Can Consumers Make Affordable Care Affordable? The Value Of Choice Architecture, Eric J. Johnson, Ran Hassin, Tom Baker, Allison T. Bajger, Galen Treuer

All Faculty Scholarship

Starting this October, tens of millions will be choosing health coverage on a state or federal health insurance exchange as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We examine how well people make these choices, how well they think they do, and what can be done to improve these choices. We conducted 6 experiments asking people to choose the most cost-effective policy using websites modeled on current exchanges. Our results suggest there is significant room for improvement. Without interventions, respondents perform at near chance levels and show a significant bias, overweighting out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles. Financial incentives do …

Regret In Cancer-Related Decisions, Terry Connolly, Jochen Reb

Jochen Reb

Decision-related regret is a negative emotion associated with thinking about a past or future choice. The thinking component generally takes the form of a wish that things were otherwise and involves a comparison of what actually did or will take place with some better alternative--a counterfactual thought. For predecisional (anticipated) regret, the thinking involves a mental simulation of the outcomes that might result from different choice options. Prior research has focused on regret associated with decision outcomes, addressing especially (a) the comparison outcome selected and (b) whether the outcome resulted from action or inaction. More recent research examines regret associated …

Towards Interactive, Internet-Based Decision Aid For Vaccination Decisions: Better Information Alone Is Not Enough, Terry Connolly, Jochen Reb

Jochen Reb

Vaccination decisions, as in choosing whether or not to immunize one's small child against specific diseases, are both psychologically and computationally complex. The psychological complexities have been extensively studied, often in the context of shaping convincing or persuasive messages that will encourage parents to vaccinate their children. The computational complexity of the decision has been less noted. However, even if the parent has access to neutral, accurate, credible information on vaccination risks and benefits, he or she can easily be overwhelmed by the task of combining this information into a well-reasoned decision. We argue here that the Internet, in addition …

Learn To Interview More Effectively, Kristie L. Campana

Psychology Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Adding Small Differences Can Increase Similarity And Choice, Jongmin Kim, Nathan Novemsky, Ravi Dhar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Similarity plays a critical role in many judgments and choices. Traditional models of similarity posit that increasing the number of differences between objects cannot increase judged similarity between them. In contrast to these previous models, the present research shows that introducing a small difference in an attribute that previously was identical across objects can increase perceived similarity between those objects. We propose an explanation based on the idea that small differences draw more attention than identical attributes do and that people’s perceptions of similarity involve averaging attributes that are salient. We provide evidence that introducing small differences between objects increases …

Weak Signals In American History: Applying Historical Events To Present Decisions In Business, Taylor Diane Robinson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Towards Interactive, Internet-Based Decision Aid For Vaccination Decisions: Better Information Alone Is Not Enough, Terry Connolly, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Vaccination decisions, as in choosing whether or not to immunize one's small child against specific diseases, are both psychologically and computationally complex. The psychological complexities have been extensively studied, often in the context of shaping convincing or persuasive messages that will encourage parents to vaccinate their children. The computational complexity of the decision has been less noted. However, even if the parent has access to neutral, accurate, credible information on vaccination risks and benefits, he or she can easily be overwhelmed by the task of combining this information into a well-reasoned decision. We argue here that the Internet, in addition …

Hidden Consequences Of The Group Serving Bias: Causal Attributions And The Quality Of Group Decision Making, Jack Goncalo, Michelle M. Duguid

Jack Goncalo

A long stream of research in attribution theory suggests that groups are biased toward attributing their success to factors that are internal to their group. However, the existing research has confounded two types of attributions that are both internal to the group, but theoretically distinct: (1) Attributions that differentiate between the contributions made by each individual group member and (2) attributions that focus on the group as a whole. This dichotomy is important because, drawing on theories of social influence, we predict that different types of attributions will have different consequences for the quality of group decision making. In experiment …

Regret In Cancer-Related Decisions, Terry Connolly, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Decision-related regret is a negative emotion associated with thinking about a past or future choice. The thinking component generally takes the form of a wish that things were otherwise and involves a comparison of what actually did or will take place with some better alternative--a counterfactual thought. For predecisional (anticipated) regret, the thinking involves a mental simulation of the outcomes that might result from different choice options. Prior research has focused on regret associated with decision outcomes, addressing especially (a) the comparison outcome selected and (b) whether the outcome resulted from action or inaction. More recent research examines regret associated …

The Effects Of Individual, Contextual, And Moral Intensity Factors On Environmental Ethical Decision Making, Brenda L. Flannery

Management and Entrepreneurship Department Publications

Most extant studies of organizational ethical decision making have been remiss in doing one or more of the following: (a) building theoretical foundations; (b) encompassing the individual, contextual, and issue-specific determinants impacting ethical judgments; (c) offering testable hypotheses; and/or (d) establishing methodological rigor. This study confronted those challenges aiming to understand the decision intentions of top managers in the metal finishing industry concerning the treatment of hazardous wastewater. This study employed an extended version of Ajzen's (1988) theory of planned behavior. The theory accommodatingly modeled the individual (i.e., attitudes, self-efficacy, personal moral obligation), contextual (subjective norms, organizational climate, and financial …