About

Eileen Chou is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Professor of Public Policy, and a professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the organizational, social, and psychological forces that influence individual and group behavior within organizational settings. She explores questions related to how contract terms promote or inhibit cooperation among team members, the effectiveness of hierarchy as a social organization mechanism, the strategic use of trust, and the dynamics of leadership and loneliness at the top. Chou's work has been published in academic journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Economics Journal, Experimental Economics, and Organizational Psychological Review. Her research on prosocial behaviors was featured in the 'Best Paper Proceedings' by the Organizational Behavior division at the 2010 conference of the Academy of Management. She holds a Ph.D. in Management and Organization from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, an M.S. in Social Science from Caltech, and a B.A. in Psychology and Economics from UCLA.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Public relations
• Internet privacy
• Economics
• Business
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Empowered Employees Strategically Use More Supportive Voice than Challenge the Status Quo

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Many companies have instituted programs that empower employees to speak up more. However, little is known about the type of voice – supportive versus challenging – that powerful employees tend to adopt when communicating with supervisors. To this end, we hypothesized that fueling employees’ inner sense of power would actually promote them to strategically voice supportively than challenge the status quo. Importantly, we identified underlying motivational and cognitive mechanisms that drive this effect. Across three multi-method studies, we provide empirical support to the proposed model. In Study 1, a preregistered experiment, we revealed a causal relationship between employees’ sense of power and preference for supportive over challenging voice. In Study 2, a field study with high-tech employees and their supervisors, we showed that power significantly fuels instrumental motive among employees and their subsequent use of more supportive voice. Finally in Study 3, a field experiment with call center agents, we further demonstrated the mediating effects of instrumental motive and task conflict on the use of supportive voice. Together, these findings reveal power’s influence goes beyond the simple liberation of more employee voice; power ironically also motivates more strategic usage of supportive voice that may not result in the intended goal for change.

  PublisherDOI

• Brokered Distances: Trust in Brokers within and Between Organizations

  Organizational Psychology Review · 2025-04-13 · 12 citations

  article

  Organizational brokers, such as producers, diplomats, and middle managers, connect people within and across organizations. Trust in brokers promotes their effectiveness in connecting unfamiliar counterparts and transferring information between disconnected parties. Often, however, the very conditions that create the need for brokering, such as the existence of structural holes, undermine trust in brokers. We introduce an organizing framework to explain how fundamental features of brokering processes shape the perceived trustworthiness of brokers. Specifically, we describe how individuals make inferences about brokers’ ability, benevolence, and integrity based on the horizontal and vertical distances they bridge, the extent to which their brokering involves in-role versus extra-role behavior, and the extent to which they facilitate indirect versus direct exchanges between counterparts. Our model links situational features of brokering processes with established antecedents of interpersonal trust, thereby identifying challenges and opportunities for brokers and organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Merit or Misstep? The Opportunities and Risks of Algorithmic Hiring for Women in Male-Dominated Field

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  This research explores how algorithmic hiring impacts perceptions of women in male-dominated fields, addressing biases tied to diversity initiatives and tokenism. Across five studies, findings reveal that women hired through algorithms are perceived as more meritorious compared to those selected by humans, as algorithms are viewed as less prone to bias. Studies 1a and 1b show this merit-enhancing effect, while Study 2 identifies perceived reduced discriminatory capacity as the mechanism. Study 3 confirms these results, noting that biased algorithms reverse the effect. Study 4 delves into mental representations, showing that women hired by algorithms are seen as more masculine and dominant, reflecting gender stereotypes. The research contributes to understanding tokenism, algorithm psychology, and diversity management, emphasizing that while algorithms can improve perceptions, they may also reinforce existing stereotypes. The study advocates for careful algorithmic design and systemic changes to address underlying biases in workplace diversity efforts.

  PublisherDOI

• Effectiveness of Ex-Ante Honesty Oaths in Reducing Dishonesty Depends on Content

  2024-03-04 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Dishonest behaviors such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex-ante honesty oaths—commitments to honesty before action—have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behavior, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)—proposed, evaluated, and selected by 44 expert researchers—and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.com who played an incentivized tax evasion game online. Of the 21 interventions, 10 significantly improved tax compliance by 4.5 to 8.5 percentage points, with the most successful nearly halving tax evasion. Limited evidence for moderators was found. Experts and laypeople failed to predict the most effective interventions, though experts’ predictions were more accurate. In conclusion, honesty oaths were effective in curbing dishonesty but their effectiveness varied depending on content. These findings can help design impactful interventions to curb dishonesty.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Crowdsourcing Treatments

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2024-10-18

  otherOpen access
  Publisher

• Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024-10-21 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supplementary Material

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2024-10-18

  otherOpen access
  Publisher

• The Humor Advantage: Humorous Bragging Benefits Job Candidates and Entrepreneurs

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Public relations

  From job candidates to entrepreneurs, people often face an inherent tension between the need to share personal accomplishments and the need to avoid appearing arrogant. We propose that humorbragging-incorporating self-enhancing humor into self-promoting communications-can signal warmth and competence simultaneously, leading to instrumental benefits. Four studies explored humorbragging as a potential solution to the self-promotion paradox. Study 1 demonstrated that a humorbragging (vs. self-promoting) resume attracted more hiring interest from recruiters. Study 2 showed that perceived warmth and competence mediate the positive effect of humorbragging on hiring intentions. Study 3 found that humorbragging entrepreneurs achieved greater success securing funding compared to entrepreneurs who used other kinds of humor. Finally, Studies 4a to 4c established that the positive effect of humorbragging on hiring intentions is unique to self-enhancing humor. Overall, the current research establishes the instrumental benefits of humorbragging and explains why and when it functions as an effective impression management strategy.

  PublisherDOI

• Once bitten, twice shy: The negative spillover effect of seeing betrayal of trust.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied · 2022 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Social psychology
  • Psychology

  From financial improprieties to fraudulent claims, scandals and trust transgressions can incite feelings of betrayal. Can these negative reactions spillover and taint other entities that were not involved in the original transgression? We conducted six studies to investigate this question directly. Results consistently demonstrated that people who had perceived a recent betrayal by a transgressing trustee were significantly less likely to trust a new entity that shared nominal group membership with the previous trust transgressor. This betrayal spillover effect occurs both in economic game environments and can be applied to real-world charitable contexts in which people made actual donation decisions or assessed the likelihood that a charity would be embroiled in a scandal in the future. Importantly, the betrayal spillover effect only spilled over to those that shared a nominal group identity with the original trust transgressor, and this behavior was driven by a sense of distrust stemming from people's expectations having been violated. By systematically investigating whether and to what extent betrayals can contaminate subsequent trust development, this research provides a deeper and broadened understanding on how one may be vicariously affected by other entities' trust indiscretions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking the Black box: How inter- and intra-team forces motivate team rationality.

  Decision · 2022-03-14 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nir Halevy

  32 shared

• J. Keith Murnighan

  Northwestern University

  10 shared

• Adam D. Galinsky

  8 shared

• Colin F. Camerer

  7 shared

• Taya R. Cohen

  Carnegie Mellon University

  7 shared

• Robert Östling

  7 shared

• Joseph Tao‐yi Wang

  6 shared

• J. Keith Murnighan

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• Selected to be featured in 'the Best Paper Proceedings' by t…