Hayley Blunden

American University | AU · Department of Management

Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy ( n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most stro...

Over the past half century, virtual interactions have become a mainstay of contemporary organizations, whether leveraged for formal job interviews or day-to-day communication. Despite this central role, there is a lack of a holistic understanding of how employees make and manage impressions in these virtual contexts. In this article, we review, org...

Kämmer et al. (2023)’s systematic review of recent advice articles illuminates the increasingly subjective focus of advice research, highlighting advice researchers’ greater emphasis on questions that are not readily measurable or observable but reside in the minds of seekers and advisors. In this commentary on their insightful review, we consider...

Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighti...

Managers and policymakers regularly rely on incentives to encourage valued behaviors. While incentives are often successful, there are also notable and surprising examples of their ineffectiveness. Why? We propose a contributing factor may be that they are not sufficiently conspicuous. In a large-scale field experiment (Experiment 1) and three onli...

In everyday life, people often have opportunities to improve others’ lives, whether offering well-intentioned advice or complimenting someone on a job well done. These are opportunities to provide “prosocial input” (information intended to benefit others), including feedback, advice, compliments, and expressions of gratitude. Despite widespread evi...

Email and text-based communication have become ubiquitous. Although recent findings indicate emotional equivalence between face-to-face and email communication, there is limited evidence of nonverbal behaviors in text-based communication, especially the kinds of unintentional displays central to emotion perception in face-to-face interactions. We i...

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to "shoot the messenger," deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a preregistered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively unlikeable (Study 1). A second set of studies points to the specificity of the effect:...

Prior advice research has focused on why people rely on (or ignore) advice and its impact on judgment accuracy. We expand the consideration of advice-seeking outcomes by investigating the interpersonal consequences of advice seekers’ decisions. Across nine studies, we show that advisors interpersonally penalize seekers who disregard their advice, a...

Advice, defined as a recommendation for action in response to a problem, is a common form of interpersonal support and influence. Indeed, the advice we give and receive from others can be highly consequential, not only affecting us as recipients and advisors but also shaping outcomes for relationships, groups, and organizations. Some of those conse...