Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth

Understanding consumer reactions to chatbot service failures: Evidence from a Wizard-of-Oz experiment

Previous studies have found that individuals react differently to online customer service interactions with chatbots than human agents. However, it remains unclear which agent is more effective at mitigating negative consumer evaluations in the context of service failures. This article explores whether online customer service agents, informed by social perception theory, can influence consumer evaluations by simulating service failure scenarios for future reference. In this study, human participants responded to a service failure interaction task with the Wizard-of-Oz method. This study conducted the pretest to verify the validity of stimuli and the main experiment to verify the proposed hypotheses. Results indicated that participants in human conditions were more likely to mitigate negative evaluations brought about by service failures, while a chatbot aggravated this negative effect. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics between online chatbots and human agents in the context of service failures. Interactions with human agents can mitigate consumers' negative evaluations of services, as human agents are perceived to demonstrate higher competence than chatbots.

Activation or Rigidity: The Dual‐Channel Mechanism of Responsibility on Consumer Citizenship Behavior Beneficial to Community Members

In recent years, private domain communities have become key hubs for connecting businesses and users. However, many private domain communities remain “rigid” rather than “activated,” limiting their marketing potential. This paper, grounded in psychological reactance theory, examines how dual‐channel responsibility affects consumer citizenship behavior beneficial to community members. Using surveys, experiments, and regression analysis across seven studies, the research shows that taking charge boosts freedom and promotes citizenship behavior beneficial to community members. In contrast, responsibility diffusion limits such behavior by imposing constraints. Community warmth moderates the effects of responsibility diffusion and taking charge on these behaviors.

Multiple Reputations: Selective Attention to Competence and Character

Reputation is multidimensional, with some traits being more relevant than others in particular contexts. Can people selectively respond to reputational cues relevant to the task at hand? Across three studies, we examined how people weigh cues about helpfulness and competence when forming expectations about strangers' behavior. Using adapted investment games, we varied whether a stranger's helpfulness or competence predicted participants' future payoffs. We found that when helpfulness is task-relevant (Experiments 1 and 2), participants correctly use this cue in investment decisions. When competence matters most (Experiment 3), participants use it as the primary cue. Overall, a high reputation for outcome-irrelevant characteristics did not compensate for a low reputation for the outcome-relevant reputational cue. However, we also find an asymmetric spillover: Decision-makers prefer cooperating with others who are highly competent and highly helpful, regardless of task demands. We discuss our results within the theoretical framework of person perception and theories of reputation.

Validating a brief measure of four facets of social evaluation

Five studies (N = 7972) validated a brief measure and model of four facets of social evaluation (friendliness and morality as horizontal facets; ability and assertiveness as vertical facets). Perceivers expressed their personal impressions or estimated society's impression of different types of targets (i.e., envisioned or encountered groups or individuals) and numbers of targets (i.e., between six and 100) in the separate, items-within-target mode or the joint, targets-within-item mode. Factor analyses confirmed that a two-items-per-facet measure fit the data well and better than a four-items-per-dimension measure that captured the Big Two model (i.e., no facets, just the horizontal and vertical dimensions). As predicted, the correlation between the two horizontal facets and between the two vertical facets was higher than the correlations between any horizontal facet and any vertical facet. Perceivers' evaluations of targets on each facet were predictors of unique and relevant behavior intentions. Perceiving a target as more friendly, moral, able, and assertive increased the likelihood of relying on the target's loyalty, fairness, intellect, and hubris in an economic game, respectively. These results establish the external, internal, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the brief measure and model of four facets of social evaluation.

Using Conditional Entropy Networks of Ordinal Measures to Examine Changes in Self-Worth Among Adolescent Students in High School

We implement an analytic approach for ordinal measures and we use it to investigate the structure and the changes over time of self-worth in a sample of adolescents students in high school. We represent the variations in self-worth and its various sub-domains using entropy-based measures that capture the observed uncertainty. We then study the evolution of the entropy across four time points throughout a semester of high school. Our analytic approach yields information about the configuration of the various dimensions of the self together with time-related changes and associations among these dimensions. We represent the results using a network that depicts self-worth changes over time. This approach also identifies groups of adolescent students who show different patterns of associations, thus emphasizing the need to consider heterogeneity in the data.

Unconstrained Descriptions of Facebook Profile Pictures Support High-Dimensional Models of Impression Formation

Dominant models of impression formation focus on two fundamental dimensions: a horizontal dimension of warmth/communion/trustworthiness and a vertical dimension of competence/agency/dominance. However, these models have typically been studied using theory-driven methods and stimuli of restricted complexity. We used a data-driven approach and naturalistic stimuli to explore the latent dimensions underlying >300,000 unconstrained linguistic descriptions of 1,000 Facebook profile pictures from 2,188 participants. Via traditional (Exploratory Factor Analysis) and modern (natural language dictionaries, semantic sentence embeddings) approaches, we observed impressions to form with regard to the horizontal and vertical dimensions and their respective facets of sociability/morality and ability/assertiveness, plus the key demographic variables of gender, age, and race. However, we also observed impressions to form along numerous further dimensions, including adventurousness, conservatism, fitness, non-conformity, and stylishness. These results serve to emphasize the importance of high-dimensional models of impression formation and help to clarify the content dimensions underlying unconstrained descriptions of individuals.

Perceptions of artificial intelligence system's aptitude to judge morality and competence amidst the rise of Chatbots

This paper examines how humans judge the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate human attributes, specifically focusing on two key dimensions of human social evaluation: morality and competence. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of exposure to advanced Large Language Models on these perceptions. In three studies (combined N = 200), we tested the hypothesis that people will find it less plausible that AI is capable of judging the morality conveyed by a behavior compared to judging its competence. Participants estimated the plausibility of AI origin for a set of written impressions of positive and negative behaviors related to morality and competence. Studies 1 and 3 supported our hypothesis that people would be more inclined to attribute AI origin to competence-related impressions compared to morality-related ones. In Study 2, we found this effect only for impressions of positive behaviors. Additional exploratory analyses clarified that the differentiation between the AI origin of competence and morality judgments persisted throughout the first half year after the public launch of popular AI chatbot (i.e., ChatGPT) and could not be explained by participants' general attitudes toward AI, or the actual source of the impressions (i.e., AI or human). These findings suggest an enduring belief that AI is less adept at assessing the morality compared to the competence of human behavior, even as AI capabilities continued to advance.

The neural representation of stereotype content

Judgments about social groups are characterized by their position in a representational space defined by two axes, warmth and competence. We examined serial dependence (SD) in evaluations of warmth and competence while measuring participants' electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, as a means to address the independence between these two psychological axes. SD is the attraction of perceptual reports towards things seen in the recent past and has recently been intensely investigated in vision. SD occurs at multiple levels of visual processing, from basic features to meaningful objects. The current study aims to (1) measure whether SD occurs between non-visual objects, in particular social groups and (2) uncover the neural correlates of social group evaluation and SD using EEG. Participants' judgments about social groups such as "nurses" or "accountants" were serially dependent, but only when the two successive groups were close in representational space. The pattern of results argues in favor of a non-separability between the two axes, because groups nearby on one dimension but far on the other were not subject to SD, even though that other dimension was irrelevant to the task at hand. Using representational similarity analysis, we found a brain signature that differentiated social groups as a function of their position in the representational space. Our results thus argue that SD may be a ubiquitous cognitive phenomenon, that social evaluations are serially dependent, and that reproducible neural signatures of social evaluations can be uncovered.

Therapist's warmth and competence increased positive outcome expectations and alliance in an analogue experiment

Objective: The quality of the therapeutic alliance, treatment motivation, outcome expectations (OE), and specific health behaviour predicts psychotherapy success. Therapists should be able to improve these factors to optimize outcomes. This study investigated the therapist's interpersonal behaviour to optimize alliance, motivation, OE, and health behaviour. Method: A stressed study sample (N = 465) completed an online analogue experiment. We gave participants positive information about psychotherapy effectiveness and varied the therapist's interpersonal behaviour along the dimensions of warmth and competence.Results: High (vs. low) competence and high (vs. low) warmth increased alliance, OE, and help-seeking scores, while high (vs. low) competence increased motivation to do psychotherapy. We found no effects on health behaviour.Conclusion: In contrast to previous correlational analyses, our experimental study supports the causal role of the therapist's warmth and competence and its impact on alliance, motivation, and OE. We discuss approaches for future studies and clinical implications.

A systematic literature review of the stereotype content model in the fields of psychology and marketing: main themes examined in the literature and an agenda for future research in marketing

The stereotypes content model indicates that two traits (i.e., warmth and competence) govern individuals' impression formation. The great variety of research that has used this theory since the early 2000s leads to a need for a structured overview of prior findings. The goal of this study is to provide a concise map of research streams and present a research agenda. We conducted a systematic literature review of 955 articles. A bibliographic coupling analysis showed four clusters, i.e., (1) the general theoretical foundations of the SCM, (2) the societal impact of key stereotypes (with emphasis on gender), (3) research in clinical psychology and child development, and (4) marketing. Taking a closer look at research in marketing (using co-occurrence analysis), six research streams were identified, including research on branding, country-of-origin, front-line service providers, prosocial consumer behavior, perception of endorsers, and, more recently, on artificial intelligence (AI). The review presents key findings and research gaps across these topics. Finally, we reviewed the few articles that, although not falling into these streams, opened important research veins. This process provided the essential information to present a promising and complete research agenda, to continue building knowledge with impactful implications in different contexts.

You're heartless, I'm less: self-image and social norms in moral judgment

Are moral judgments to sacrificial dilemmas shaped by a latent social norm? The present research addresses this issue. We report a set of six studies (plus a supplementary one) which question the existence of a social norm in the longstanding deontism/utilitarian debate by relying on two original tools, namely substitution technique and self-presentation paradigm. Study 1 showed that American participants asked to answer like most Americans would do gave more utilitarian responses than control participants who answered in their own name (Study 1). Study 2 showed that participants instructed to answer in a disapproval fashion were more utilitarian than both participants instructed to answer in an approval fashion and control participants. Importantly, no difference was observed between the approval and control conditions, suggesting that participants naturally align their moral judgments with a latent norm they think is the most socially desirable. Studies 3-5 explored in addition the effect of the activation of a deontism-skewed norm using the substitution instruction on subsequent impression formation. For the latter task, participants were instructed to evaluate a random participant selected from a previous study who gave utilitarian-like responses (Studies 3a-3b), or to evaluate a fictitious politician who endorsed either a deontic or utilitarian orientation (Studies 4-5). Although we consistently replicated the effect of substitution instruction, we failed to show that attempts to activate a norm in a given individual shaped their evaluation of other people who do not align with this norm. Finally, we report a mini meta-analysis targeting the pooled effect and homogeneity among our studies.

The many faces of compensation: The similarities and differences between social and facial models of perception

Previous research shows that stereotypes can distort the visual representation of groups in a top-down fashion. In the present endeavor, we tested if the compensation effect-the negative relationship that emerges between the social dimensions of warmth and competence when judging two social targets-would bias the visual representations of these targets in a compensatory way. We captured participants' near spontaneous facial prototypes of social targets by means of an unconstrained technique, namely the reverse correlation. We relied on a large multi-phase study (N = 869) and found that the expectations of the facial content of two novel groups that differed on one of the two social dimensions are biased in a compensatory manner on the facial dimensions of trustworthiness, warmth, and dominance but not competence. The present research opens new avenues by showing that compensation not only manifests itself on abstract ratings but that it also orients the visual representations of social targets.

More Than Meets the Eyes: Bringing Attention to the Eyes Increases First Impressions of Warmth and Competence

The present research examined how face masks alter first impressions of warmth and competence for different racial groups. Participants were randomly assigned to view photographs of White, Black, and Asian targets with or without masks. Across four separate studies (total N = 1,012), masked targets were rated significantly higher in warmth and competence compared with unmasked targets, regardless of their race. However, Asian targets benefited the least from being seen masked compared with Black or White targets. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate how the positive effect of masks is likely due to these clothing garments re-directing attention toward the eyes of the wearer. Participants viewing faces cropped to the eyes (Study 3), or instructed to gaze into the eyes of faces (Study 4), rated these targets similarly to masked targets, and higher than unmasked targets. Neither political affiliation, belief in mask effectiveness, nor explicit racial prejudice moderated any hypothesized effects.

The semantics of gaze in person perception: a novel qualitative-quantitative approach

Interpreting gaze behavior is essential in evaluating interaction partners, yet the 'semantics of gaze' in dynamic interactions are still poorly understood. We aimed to comprehensively investigate effects of gaze behavior patterns in different conversation contexts, using a two-step, qualitative-quantitative procedure. Participants watched video clips of single persons listening to autobiographic narrations by another (invisible) person. The listener's gaze behavior was manipulated in terms of gaze direction, frequency and direction of gaze shifts, and blink frequency; emotional context was manipulated through the valence of the narration (neutral/negative). In Experiment 1 (qualitative-exploratory), participants freely described which states and traits they attributed to the listener in each condition, allowing us to identify relevant aspects of person perception and to construct distinct rating scales that were implemented in Experiment 2 (quantitative-confirmatory). Results revealed systematic and differential meanings ascribed to the listener's gaze behavior. For example, rapid blinking and fast gaze shifts were rated more negatively (e.g., restless and unnatural) than slower gaze behavior; downward gaze was evaluated more favorably (e.g., empathetic) than other gaze aversion types, especially in the emotionally negative context. Overall, our study contributes to a more systematic understanding of flexible gaze semantics in social interaction.

Happy thoughts: The role of communion in accepting and sharing (mis)beliefs

The negativity bias favours the cultural diffusion of negative beliefs, yet many common (mis)beliefs-naturopathy works, there's a heaven-are positive. Why? People might share 'happy thoughts'-beliefs that might make others happy-to display their kindness. Five experiments conducted among Japanese and English-speaking participants (N = 2412) show that: (i) people higher on communion are more likely to believe and share happier beliefs, by contrast with people higher in competence and dominance; (ii) when they want to appear nice and kind, rather than competent and dominant, people avoid sharing sad beliefs, and instead prefer sharing happy beliefs; (iii) sharing happier beliefs instead of sad beliefs leads to being perceived as nicer and kinder; and (iv) sharing happy beliefs instead of sad beliefs fleads to being perceived as less dominant. Happy beliefs could spread, despite a general negativity bias, because they allow their senders to signal kindness.

Decoding cultural conflicts

As pioneers of the Carnegie Perspective recognized, conflicts in organizations can exist even when incentives of all parties are aligned. These can often be traced to differences in cognitions such as beliefs and values, which are foundational components of any given culture. This paper refines the operationalization of cultural clashes by identifying differences in beliefs about causality ("which actions cause which outcomes") and morality (in the broad sense of "what is evaluated as desirable") as two fundamental sources of conflict. In our first study, we demonstrate empirically that participants recognize and distinguish between these two sources of conflict. In our second study, we test the hypotheses that while misalignments in either causal or moral codes increase observers' perceptions of relationship conflict, negative affect, likelihood of avoidance, and lower perceived likelihood of conflict resolution, the effects are stronger for misalignments in moral codes than misalignments in causal codes and strongest when both causal and moral codes are misaligned. We test these arguments using vignette-based experimental studies. Our findings support our hypotheses. This research has significant implications for the understanding of conflict dynamics within and beyond organizational contexts. By recognizing the pivotal role of cultural differences in shaping conflicts, organizations and decision-makers can better anticipate, manage, and potentially preempt such conflicts.

Psychological value theory: A computational cognitive model of charitable giving

Charitable giving involves a complex economic and social decision because the giver expends resources for goods or services they will never receive. Although psychologists have identified numerous factors that influence charitable giving, there currently exists no unifying computational model of charitable choice. Here, we submit one such model, based within the strictures of Psychological Value Theory (PVT). In four experiments, we assess whether charitable giving is driven by the perceived Psychological Value of the recipient. Across all four experiments, we simultaneously predict response choice and response time with high accuracy. In a fifth experiment, we show that PVT predicts charitable giving more accurately than an account based on competence and warmth. PVT accurately predicts which charity a respondent will choose to donate to and separately, whether a respondent will choose to donate at all. PVT models the cognitive processes underlying charitable donations and it provides a computational framework for integrating known influences on charitable giving. For example, we show that in-group preference influences charitable giving by changing the Psychological Values of the options, rather than by bringing about a response bias toward the in-group.

Boring People: Stereotype Characteristics, Interpersonal Attributions, and Social Reactions

Unfortunately, some people are perceived as boring. Despite the potential relevance that these perceptions might have in everyday life, the underlying psychological processes and consequences of perceiving a person as "boring" have been largely unexplored. We examined the stereotypical features of boring others by having people generate (Study 1) and then rate (Study 2) these. We focused on occupations (e.g., data analytics, taxation, and accounting), hobbies (e.g., sleeping, religion, and watching TV), and personal characteristics (e.g., lacking humor and opinions, being negative) that people ascribed to stereotypically boring others. Experiments then showed that those who were ascribed boring characteristics were seen as lacking interpersonal warmth and competence (Study 3), were socially avoided (Study 4), and enduring their company required compensation (Study 5). These results suggest that being stereotyped as a bore may come with substantially negative interpersonal consequences.

Conflict experience and resolution underlying obedience to authority

Definitions of obedience require the experience of conflict in response to an authority's demands. Nevertheless, we know little about this conflict and its resolution. Two experiments tested the suitability of the 'object-destruction paradigm' for the study of conflict in obedience. An experimenter instructed participants to shred bugs (among other objects) in a manipulated coffee grinder. In contrast to the demand condition, participants in the control condition were reminded of their free choice. Both received several prods if they defied the experimenter. Results show that participants were more willing to kill bugs in the demand condition. Self-reported negative affect was increased after instructions to destroy bugs relative to other objects (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 2, compliant participants additionally showed an increase in tonic skin conductance and, crucially, self-reported more agency and responsibility after alleged bug-destruction. These findings elucidate the conflict experience and resolution underlying obedience. Implications for prominent explanations (agentic shift, engaged followership) are discussed.

When Does Competence Matter? Character as a Moderator in the Development of Trust

This article examines the relationship between the two fundamental attributes of the trustee: character and competence. Although the trust research predominantly adopts an additive perspective, our research emphasizes a moderation (i.e., multiplicative) relationship and the significance of their interaction. We find that competence is an important but not always reliable predictor of trust. First, the positive effect of competence is conditional on the trustee's high character. Second, higher competence can have a lower marginal effect as character decreases. Furthermore, situational assurance weakens the effect of character on competence, which explains the additive joint effect found in previous research. Our modified trust game also makes a methodological contribution by examining the interaction between the various personal and situational sources of trust (as compared with the lone operationalization of character in the classic trust game). We discuss the shortcomings of the additive perspective and the implications of our method and findings.

Science for Others or the Self? Presumed Motives for Science Shape Public Trust in Science

Science can improve life around the world, but public trust in science is at risk. Understanding the presumed motives of scientists and science can inform the social psychological underpinnings of public trust in science. Across five independent datasets, perceiving the motives of science and scientists as prosocial promoted public trust in science. In Studies 1 and 2, perceptions that science was more prosocially oriented were associated with greater trust in science. Studies 3 and 4a & 4b employed experimental methods to establish that perceiving other-oriented motives, versus self-oriented motives, enhanced public trust in science. Respondents recommend greater funding allocations for science subdomains described as prosocially oriented versus power-oriented. Emphasizing the prosocial aspects of science can build stronger foundations of public trust in science.

Social value, normative features and gender differences associated with speeding and compliance with speed limits

INTRODUCTION

Among risky driving behaviors, speeding is a main causal and aggravating factor of road crashes and is more frequent among males than females. Research suggests that this gender gap could be explained by gender social norms that lead males to assign more social value to speeding than females. However, few studies have proposed directly investigating gendered prescriptive norms associated with speeding. We propose to address this gap through two studies based on the socio-cognitive approach to social norms of judgment.

METHODS

Study 1 (N = 128, within-subject design) investigated the extent to which speeding is subject to social valuation among males, compared to females, through a self-presentation task. Study 2 (N = 885, between-subject design) aimed to identify the dimension of social value (i.e., social desirability, social utility) that both genders associate with speeding, based on a judgment task.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Although results of study 1 indicate that both genders devaluate speeding and valuate speed limits compliance, we found that males do so to a lesser extent than females. Results of study 2 further suggest that males less valuate speed limit compliance than females on the social desirability dimension, while no gender difference were found in valuation of speeding on both dimensions of social value. Regardless of gender, results also indicate that speeding is valued more on the social utility than on the social desirability dimension, while speed limit compliance is valued similarly on both dimensions.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Road safety campaigns toward males could benefit to focus more on enhancing the representations of speed compliant drivers, in terms of social desirability, than devaluing the representation of speeding drivers.

A WEIRD Theory? On the Prevalence of Western Folk Theory of Social Change in the West and Asia

According to Western folk theory of social change, modernization of societies causes them to become less warm but more competent over time. Since WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are often at the forefront of modernization (with some exceptions, most notably China), these societies may also be most prone to internalizing this folk theory. In this research, we test this idea by making a comparison across a sample group of Western and Asian societies, using a self-report measure of perceived societal warmth and competence: The Social Change Perception Scale (SCPS). We found the scale to be metrically invariant among university students from a set of Western and Asian countries (United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, The Philippines, China, and Malaysia). In all seven countries, people expected their society to become more competent over time. In most countries, people also expected their society to become colder over time, although this tendency was slight and insignificant among New Zealanders and Americans. The perceived social cooling tended to be more prevalent in Asian countries rather than in Western countries. The countries’ degrees of WEIRDness, as reflected in their country-level indicators of individualism, education, industrialization, wealth, and democracy, did not adequately account for the observed variation. Though there is still much work to be done in applying the SCPS to broader samples and contexts, this study provides a starting point for measuring and understanding how people experience the social implications of modernization around the world.

Users taking the blame? How service failure, recovery, and robot design affect user attributions and retention

Firms use robots to deliver an ever-expanding range of services. However, as service failures are common, service recovery actions are necessary to prevent user churn. This research further suggests that firms need to know how to design service robots that avoid alienating users in case of service failures. Robust evidence across two experiments demonstrates that users attribute successful service outcomes internally, while robot-induced service failures are blamed on the firm (and not the robot), confirming the well-known self-serving bias. While this external attributional shift occurs regardless of the robot design (i.e., it is the same for warm vs. competent robots), the findings imply that service recovery minimizes the undesirable external shift and that this effect is particularly pronounced for warm robots. For practitioners, this implies prioritizing service robots with a warm design for maximizing user retention for either type of service outcome (i.e., success, failure, and failure with recovery). For theory, this work demonstrates that attribution represents a meaningful mechanism to explain the proposed relationships.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12525-022-00613-4.

Leader failed humor and follower advice seeking

Purpose

Drawing on benign violation theory (BVT), this paper aimed to investigate the underlining mechanism and boundary condition of the relationship between follower perception of leader failed humor and follower advice seeking.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-wave survey with 256 leader-follower dyads and an online experiment with 117 participants were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The results showed that leader failed humor decreased follower liking toward leader and subsequently reduced follower advice seeking. Moreover, this negative relationship was exacerbated when leader and follower had infrequent interaction.

Originality/value

Existing research has encouraged leaders to use humor to build and maintain successful interpersonal relationships. However, the situation that a leader may fail when attempting to present humor is neglected. This study advances the concept of leader failed humor and explores its subsequent consequences.

Stories in Action

Stories have played a central role in human social and political life for thousands of years. Despite their ubiquity in culture and custom, however, they feature only peripherally in formal government policymaking. Government policy has tended to rely on tools with more predictable responses-incentives, transfers, and prohibitions. We argue that stories can and should feature more centrally in government policymaking. We lay out how stories can make policy more effective, specifying how they complement established policy tools. We provide a working definition of stories' key characteristics, contrasting them with other forms of communication. We trace the evolution of stories from their ancient origins to their role in mediating the impact of modern technologies on society. We then provide an account of the mechanisms underlying stories' impacts on their audiences. We conclude by describing three functions of stories-learning, persuasion, and collective action.

The Maximizing Penalty: Maximizers are Perceived as Less Warm and Receive Less Social Support

Economically, maximizing, the tendency to seek the best, is good because it entails possibilities to optimize decision outcomes. However, research has shown that maximizing is costly in that maximizers are more regretful and less satisfied with their decisions. Beyond these intrapersonal downsides, this research investigates another important but largely ignored downside—the interpersonal costs of being a maximizer—and documents a maximizing penalty in social cognition wherein maximizers (vs. satisficers) are viewed as less warm and consequently receive less social support. Four studies provide evidence for the maximizing penalty. This research contributes to the literature on maximizing by revealing the social cost of being a maximizer and the literature on choice perception by showing that decision makers are perceived by their aspiration.

Appearing competent or moral? The role of organizational goals in the evaluation of candidates

The Big Two theoretical framework suggests that two traits, namely morality and competence, govern social judgments of individuals and that morality shows a primacy effect over competence because it has more diagnostic value. In this study we tested the primacy effect of morality in the workplace by examining how instrumental or relational goals of organizations might influence the importance of morality or competence of candidates during the hiring process. We hypothesized that the primacy effect of morality might hold when organizational goals are relational, but it might get reversed when organizational goals are instrumental. Supporting our hypothesis, in a field study and two experiments (both preregistered) we found that people perceive moral candidates as more appropriate for recruitment when an organization prioritizes relational goals (Studies 1, 2, and 3). In contrast, people perceive competent candidates as more appropriate for recruitment when an organization prioritizes instrumental goals (Studies 1 and 2). Perceived appropriateness of a candidate, in turn, predicts a stronger intention to recruit a candidate (Studies 2 and 3). These results provide evidence for a reversal of the primacy effect of morality in a work setting, and illuminate the important role of organizational goals in social judgments.

Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies

Job advertisements are often worded in ways that might pose discrimination risks leading to the exclusion of certain groups of applicants, particularly in relation to their gender. Especially in male-dominated professions or leadership roles, the specific linguistic formulation of job postings acquires relevance if more women are to be attracted to apply. Various technologies have emerged that offer automated text screening, some of them even suggesting alternative formulations to increase gender inclusivity. In this study we analyze four software providers on the German market using a corpus of ∼160, 000 job ads from three different platforms. We identify the relevant social psychological research on gender and language that is at the scientific core of these technologies. We show that, despite sharing a common foundation, the four tools assess the potential for exclusion in job postings in a considerably divergent way on multiple levels of comparison. We discuss the levers in the software pipeline of all four technologies, as well as the potential effect of certain implementation decisions, such as string-based vs. semantic approaches to computational processing of natural language. We argue that the ‘technological translation’ of research is extremely involved and further studies of its use in practice are needed to assess the potential for more gender equality.

Agency and communion as fundamental dimensions of social judgment – and Bogdan Wojciszke’s brilliant idea on perspective