Gender Differences in Climbing up the Ladder: Why Experience Closes the Ambition Gender Gap

Psychological Science · 2024 · 7 citations

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology

Women are unequally represented in the highest positions in society. Beyond discrimination and bias, women are missing from the top because they are less likely to pursue high-ranking opportunities. We propose that experience is a critical moderator of gender differences in pursuing leadership opportunities, with low-experience women being particularly unlikely to seek higher level positions. We used field analyses of 96 years of U.S. senator and governor elections to examine male and female politicians' propensity to run for higher political offices. As predicted, among those with little political experience, women were less likely than men to run for higher office, but experience closed this gender gap. A preregistered experiment among U.S.-based adults replicated the field findings and revealed that it was the increased self-confidence of experienced women that reduced the gender gap. The findings suggest experience, and the self-confidence that comes with it, is one lever for closing the gender gap in seeking to climb professional hierarchies.

A Potential Pitfall of Passion: Passion is Associated with Performance Overconfidence

2024

• Psychology
• Social psychology

Having passion is almost universally lauded. People strive to follow their passion at work, and organizations increasingly seek out passionate employees. Supporting the benefits of passion, prior research finds a robust relationship between passion and higher levels of job performance. At the same time, this research also reveals significant variability in the size of the effect. To explain this heterogeneity, we propose that passion is associated with performance overconfidence—inflated views about how well the self is performing—and that this association provides a helpful lens in understanding when passion will be more or less beneficial for performance. A daily diary field study with 829 employees (33,160 observations) and an experiment with 396 participants provide evidence that passion is associated with performance overconfidence. These findings provide a lens through which to discuss when, why, and for whom passion may be more helpful for performance or a potential pitfall.

Enclothed Harmony or Enclothed Dissonance? The Effect of Attire on the Authenticity, Power, and Engagement of Remote Workers

Academy of Management Discoveries · 2022 · 29 citations

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Aesthetics

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a record number of employees began working remotely. These workers have a wider array of attire options, from work outfits (which are consistent with the content of work) to home outfits (which are consistent with remote work settings). Media accounts suggest this shift has created a new outfit—business tops with casual bottoms. Although this “Zoom mullet” outfit has been called “the perfect pandemic work-from-home attire”, it is not fully consistent with either the work or home context. To investigate the psychological consequences of attire on remote workers, we conducted two multi-day experiments. We randomly assigned remote workers, both within- and between-participants, to wear Work Attire, Home Attire, or Mixed Attire (work-attire-on-top/home-attire-on-bottom), and measured their authenticity, power, and engagement at work. The experiments produced three key findings. First, Home Attire increased authenticity and engagement. Second, Work Attire did not consistently increase power. Finally, the media-hyped Mixed Attire outfit did not produce any psychological or work-related benefits. To understand these effects, we introduce the concepts of enclothed harmony and enclothed dissonance, which capture whether one’s attire is symbolically consistent with one’s context. The results suggest clothing choices, even for remote workers, are psychologically and organizationally impactful.

How Personality and Policy Predict Pandemic Behavior: Understanding Sheltering-in-Place in 55 Countries at the Onset of COVID-19

2020 · 6 citations

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Demographic economics

The spread of COVID-19 within any given country or community at the onset of the pandemic depended in part on the sheltering-in-place rate of its citizens. The pandemic led us to revisit one of psychology’s most fundamental and most basic questions in a high-stakes context: What determines human behavior? Adopting a Lewinian interactionist lens, we investigate the independent and joint effects of macro-level government policies and micro-level psychological factors—i.e., personality—on whether individuals sheltered-in-place. We analyzed data collected in late March and early April 2020 from 101,005 participants in 55 countries, a time period that coincided with the early and accelerating stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time period also contained substantial variation in the stringency of governmental policy towards sheltering-in-place, both between countries and within each country over time. Analyses revealed that personality and the stringency of governmental policies independently predicted sheltering-in-place rates. Policy stringency was positively related to sheltering-in-place. For the personality dimensions, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism all predicted higher rates of sheltering-in-place, whereas extraversion was negatively related to staying at home. In addition, two personality traits—openness to experience and neuroticism—interacted with governmental policy to predict whether individuals sheltered-in-place; openness and neuroticism each had weaker effects on sheltering-in-place as governmental policies became stricter. Theoretically, the findings demonstrate that individual differences predict behavior (i.e., sheltering-in-place) even when governments take strong action targeting that behavior. Practically, they suggest that even if governments lift their shelter-in-place restrictions, some individuals will shelter-in-place less than others.

How Personality and Policy Predict Pandemic Behavior: Understanding Sheltering-in-Place in 55 Countries at the Onset of COVID-19

2020 · 10 citations

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Demographic economics

The spread of COVID-19 within any given country or community at the onset of the pandemic depended in part on the sheltering-in-place rate of its citizens. The pandemic led us to revisit one of psychology’s most fundamental and most basic questions in a high-stakes context: What determines human behavior? Adopting a Lewinian interactionist lens, we investigate the independent and joint effects of macro-level government policies and micro-level psychological factors—i.e., personality—on whether individuals sheltered-in-place. We analyzed data collected in late March and early April 2020 from 101,005 participants in 55 countries, a time period that coincided with the early and accelerating stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time period also contained substantial variation in the stringency of governmental policy towards sheltering-in-place, both between countries and within each country over time. Analyses revealed that personality and the stringency of governmental policies independently predicted sheltering-in-place rates. Policy stringency was positively related to sheltering-in-place. For the personality dimensions, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism all predicted higher rates of sheltering-in-place, whereas extraversion was negatively related to staying at home. In addition, two personality traits—openness to experience and neuroticism—interacted with governmental policy to predict whether individuals sheltered-in-place; openness and neuroticism each had weaker effects on sheltering-in-place as governmental policies became stricter. Theoretically, the findings demonstrate that individual differences predict behavior (i.e., sheltering-in-place) even when governments take strong action targeting that behavior. Practically, they suggest that even if governments lift their shelter-in-place restrictions, some individuals will shelter-in-place less than others.

Compensatory conspicuous communication: Low status increases jargon use

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2020 · 40 citations

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Linguistics