Kim Peters

The University of Exeter

The gap in pay between those at the top of organizations and other organizational members continues to grow. In this paper, we tested the link between the perception of this vertical pay gap and people’s well-being at work. Specifically, we tested whether greater perceptions that pay is unequally distributed couples with people’s feelings that they...

Both older and younger employees are stereotyped at work, making them susceptible to age-based stereotype threat or the concern about being negatively stereotyped based on their age. To date, there is limited understanding of the workplace events that spark age-based stereotype threat and the mechanisms through which they do so. The current daily d...

There is some evidence that organizations with higher pay inequality have more problematic social dynamics. The present research examines whether pay inequality introduces pay‐based intergroup dynamics and shapes the stereotypes of the highest‐ and lowest‐paid employees in the workplace. In two studies (a cross‐sectional survey N = 413, and an expe...

Organizational identification underpins a range of important outcomes in the workplace, including workers' well-being. Drawing on the social identity approach to health (SIAH), here we explore whether certain organizational forms-specifically , organizational decentralization-can boost organizational identification and, in this way, employee well-b...

Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein participants first read a sentence that implies the object property (i.e., shape and orientation). Partic...

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity-variation...

The social identity approach to leadership argues that leaders’ capacity to influence and inspire others is grounded in a shared sense of social identity (or ‘us-ness’) that those leaders create, advance, represent, and embed for the groups they lead. The approach therefore argues that a key task for leaders is to develop insights and skills of (so...

In recent decades, the economies of many countries have produced increasingly unequal outcomes for the rich and poor. This economic trend has attracted interest from members of the media, public and political classes as well as researchers who are interested in its societal implications. While this research has traditionally been the purview of eco...

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of w...

In this paper we describe a bottom-up exploration of the social evaluations that emerge from the gossip people hear about others in a workplace context. We used the Dual Perspective Model (DPM: Abele & Wojciszke, 2007, 2014, 2018) to code open-format gossip stories provided by 522 participants for evaluations of gossip targets’ warmth and morality...

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...

Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. These studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations in both healthy and clinical populations; however, they have suffered from several issues including generally low sample sizes and a la...

Can perceptions of economic inequalities trigger conspiratorial thinking? We provide evidence that high economic inequality may enhance conspiratorial thinking because, as a form of collective-level crisis, it undermines the social fabric of society and engenders anomie. We focus on the mechanism through which inequality should affect conspiratoria...

The present research examines why organizations with more unequal pay structures have been found to be characterized by a range of negative workplace outcomes. Drawing on the social identity approach, we propose that higher pay disparity can increase the comparative fit of pay categories whereby the organizational “haves” (the highest paid employee...

Coping well with transitions (e.g., progressing from youth to senior level, transferring between clubs, retiring from sport) is an integral part of elite athletes’ lives—poor adjustment can lead to dropout, poor performance, and even alcohol and drug abuse. Recent research from the wider social psychology literature has demonstrated that people’s s...

Two pre-registered experiments (Total N = 822) explored the effect of economic inequality on social class stereotyping and the social mechanisms driving this relationship. In both experiments, participants were randomly assigned to a fictitious society with high or low levels of inequality and rated a wealthy and a poor individual on Vertical (i.e....

Economic inequality has been found to have pernicious effects, reducing mental and physical health, decreasing societal cohesion, and fueling support for nativist parties and illiberal autocratic leaders. We start this review with an outline of what social identity theorizing offers to the study of inequality. We then articulate four hypotheses tha...

The motivational theory of role modeling proposes motivational processes as critical mechanisms through which attainable role models can increase role aspirants' adoption of more ambitious goals. We conducted four studies to empirically test this proposition with role aspirants and their role models in field and experimental settings (total N = 2,1...

Gossip, or sharing information about absent others, has been identified as an effective solution to free rider problems in situations with conflicting interests. Yet, the information transmitted via gossip can be biased, because gossipers may send dishonest information about others for personal gains. Such dishonest gossip makes reputation-based co...

The possibility that gossipers may share dishonest reputational information is a key challenge to claims that gossip can shore up cooperation in social groups. It has been suggested that imposing social costs on dishonest gossipers should increase the honesty of these reputational signals. However, at present, there is little evidence of people's w...

There is evidence that in more economically unequal societies, social relations are more strained. We argue that this may reflect the tendency for wealth to become a more fitting lens for seeing the world, so that in economically more unequal circumstances, people more readily divide the world into “the haves” and “have nots.” Our argument is suppo...

Gossip, or sharing information about absent others, has been identified as an effective solution to free rider problems in situations with conflicting interests. Yet, the information transmitted via gossip can be biased, because gossipers may send dishonest information about others for personal gains. Such dishonest gossip makes reputation-based co...

Women's lower career advancement relative to men is sometimes explained by internal factors such as women's lower willingness to make sacrifices for their career, and sometimes by external barriers such as discrimination. In the current research, positing a dynamic interplay between internal and external factors, we empirically test how external wo...

Having access to the “secrets” of leadership promises to be immensely valuable to those wishing to lead. But what are these “secrets”? In this study, we examined the types of non-academic theorizing (communicated as leadership “secrets”) that writings for a general audience convey. A content analysis of 131 commercial books on leadership “secrets”...

Overtraining, exhaustion, and burnout are widely recognized problems amongst elite athletes. The present research addresses this issue by exploring the extent to which high-quality athlete leadership is associated with elite athletes’ health and burnout. Participants (120 male athletes from three top-division Australian football teams) were asked t...

While most leadership programs seek to develop the leadership qualities of the formal team leader, programs that aim to develop the leadership qualities of team members are rare. This article draws on insights from organisational and sport psychology to develop and introduce a new leadership development program — the 5R Shared Leadership Program (5...

It is widely assumed that people will share inaccurate gossip for their own selfish purposes. This assumption, if true, presents a challenge to the growing body of work positing that gossip is a ready source of accurate reputational information and therefore is welfare improving. We tested this inaccuracy assumption by examining the frequency and f...

Societal inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. The last decade has seen a marked increase in public consciousness around income inequality, in response to both major economic turmoil and a growing body of research that spells out some of the ways in which living in unequal societies does us harm. However, somewhat lacking in this di...

The large discrepancy between the pay of chief executive officers (CEOs) and their subordinates within organizations is attracting increasing attention and controversy. While there is evidence that this pay disparity may be contributing to rises in societal income inequality (and thus the range of associated social ills), there is little understand...

In the present research, we replicate previous research showing that death increases attributions of a leader’s charisma and that this is mediated by followers’ perceptions of a connection between the leader and their group (identity fusion). We also extend previous research by including identity leadership as a further mediator, examining the impo...

Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community s...

The social identity approach to leadership has focused on examining how leaders’ (single) group prototypicality (i.e., the extent to which a leader is seen to embody what it means to be “one of us”) affects various follower and organizational outcomes. The current registered report advances this approach by introducing the idea of leader multiple i...

Much research on moral judgment is centered on moral dilemmas in which deontological perspectives (i.e., emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with utilitarian judgements (i.e., following the greater good defined through consequences). A central finding of this field Greene et al. showed that psychological and situational...

Identity construction – the process of creating and building a new future self – is an integral part of a person’s professional career development. However, at present we have little understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underpin this process. Likewise, we have little understanding of the barriers that obstruct it, and which thus may c...

Economic inequality has been of considerable interest to academics, citizens, and politicians worldwide for the past decade–and while economic inequality has attracted a considerable amount of research attention, it is only more recently that researchers have considered that economic inequality may have broader societal implications. However, while...

There is evidence that the social groups to which people belong can be a source of resilience in challenging times. In this paper, we examine whether social group memberships can also increase resilience in the face of negative performance feedback by encouraging task persistence. In two experiments (Ns = 63, 61) participants completed three rounds...

Norm talk is verbal communication that explicitly states or implicitly implies a social norm. To investigate its ability to shape cultural dynamics, 2 types of norm talk were examined: injunction, which explicitly states what should be done, and gossip, which implies a norm by stating an action approved or disapproved of by the communicator. In 2 e...

Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of real objects. Evidence from sentence-picture verification tasks has shown that people mentally represent various visual properties such as shape, color, and size. However, the evidence for mental simulations of object orientation...

Economists have recently proposed a theory of identity economics in which behavior is understood to be shaped by motivations associated with identities that people share with others. At the same time psychologists have proposed a theory of identity leadership in which leaders' influence flows from their creation and promotion of shared identity wit...

It is acknowledged that identity plays an important role in a person's leadership development. To date, however, there has been little consideration of the possibility – suggested by the social identity perspective – that individuals who identify as followers may be especially likely to emerge as leaders. We test this possibility in a longitudinal...

There is a general assumption that we choose role models from the ranks of those who have demonstrated extraordinary competence. However, the person perception literature supports the expectation that morality may also matter, and that we may be most likely to role model competent individuals if we also believe that they have good moral character....

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with an intelligent category (“professor”) subsequently performed 13.1% better on a trivia test than participants primed with an unintelligent category (“soccer hooligans”). Two unpublished replications of this study by the original authors, designed to verify the appropriate...

Micro cultural dynamics are concerned with the mechanisms of transmission, retention, and modification of cultural information in social networks. When interacting individuals mutually recognize that they share psychological reactions to given cultural information, it may be grounded as an aspect of their shared reality under specifiable conditions...

The fact that gossip can be inaccurate, intentionally or otherwise, has led to questions over its ability to build cooperation in large societies. We explore the impact of gossip accuracy on trust and trustworthiness in a population playing decentralized, two-player trust games. We observed non-trivial levels of spontaneous inaccuracy in gossip, an...

In this paper we discuss the factors that influence women’s likelihood to gain positions of power, and what impedes women’s effectiveness once in these roles. We have reviewed the research from an international perspective and have highlighted the common trends that impact women across the globe. Although progress has been made, there is still much...

We propose that the gossip that is triggered when people witness behaviors that deviate from social norms builds social bonds. To test this possibility, we showed dyads of unacquainted students a short video of everyday campus life that either did or did not include an incident of negative or positive deviance (dropping or cleaning up litter). Stud...

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

Even though there is growing awareness that economic inequality is harmful for people’s health, the way that such inequality affects social behavior and political attitudes remains poorly understood. Moving beyond a focus on the health and well-being costs of income inequality, we review research that examines how economic inequality shapes dynamic...

Social identity research shows that leadership is a process of group identity development but has not examined how leaders can manage group identities in the workplace. The 5R leadership development program addresses this issue. This takes leaders through a five-stage process of (1) Readying: explaining the importance of social identity processes f...

Research aims. The present article provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between playing position and leadership in sport. More particularly, it explores links between leadership and a player’s interactional centrality — defined as the degree to which their playing position provides opportunities for interaction with other team m...

The valid percentage of high-level, low-level, and youth athlete leaders playing in a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The playing positions of appointed athlete leaders and the team captain in the different sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The valid percentage of male and female athlete leaders playing on a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

Agency (A) and communion (C) are fundamental content dimensions. We propose a facet-model that differentiates A into assertiveness (AA) and competence (AC) and C into warmth (CW) and morality (CM). We tested the model in a cross-cultural study by comparing data from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the USA (overall N = 1.808). Exploratory and confirmat...

In the present research, we shed light on the nature and origins of charisma by examining changes in a person’s perceived charisma that follow their death. We propose that death is an event that will strengthen the connection between the leader and the group they belong to, which in turn will increase perceptions of leaders’ charisma. In Study 1...

The glass cliff refers to the tendency for women to be more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions that are risky and precarious. This paper reviews the first decade of research into the phenomenon and has three key aims: (a) to summarize and integrate evidence of the glass cliff, (b) to clarify the processes that have been shown t...

Role models are often suggested as a way of motivating individuals to set and achieve ambitious goals, especially for members of stigmatized groups in achievement settings. Yet, the literature on role models tends not to draw on the motivational literature to explain how role models may help role aspirants achieve these outcomes. In this paper, we...

There is broad consensus in the literature that affect diffuses through social networks (such that a person may "acquire" or "catch" an affective state from his or her social contacts). It is further assumed that affect diffusion primarily occurs as the result of people's tendencies to synchronize their affective actions (such as smiles and frowns)...

From a folk perspective, gossipers (individuals who talk about the behaviours of others) are considered to be immoral individuals, doing harm to those they discuss. However, this folk perspective sits uneasily with recent claims that gossipers may actually do some good. In particular, it has been suggested that gossipers who share diagnostic inform...

Women have made substantial inroads into some traditionally masculine occupations (e.g., accounting, journalism) but not into others (e.g., military, surgery). Evidence suggests the latter group of occupations is characterized by hyper-masculine 'macho' stereotypes that are especially disadvantageous to women. Here, we explore whether such macho oc...

Many lists that purport to gauge the quality of journals in management and organization studies (MOS) are based on the judgments of experts in the field. This article develops an identity concerns model (ICM) that suggests that such judgments are likely to be shaped by the personal and social identities of evaluators. The model was tested in a stud...

Although nearly two decades of research have provided support for the social identity approach to leadership, most previous work has focused on leaders' identity prototypicality while neglecting the assessment of other equally important dimensions of social identity management. However, recent theoretical developments have argued that in order to m...

Kim Peters and Michelle Ryan argue that macho surgeon stereotypes lie at the heart of women’s relative lack of interest in a career in surgery and need to be changed if future skills shortages are to be avoided

A growing body of evidence indicates that organizational identification underpins a range of important organizational outcomes. However, to date, the literature has provided little empirically grounded guidance for organizations that are trying to develop organizational identification among their employees. In this article, the authors aim to addre...

Women continue to be underrepresented in traditionally masculine occupations. We argue that this may be explained in part by women’s perceptions that they do not fit in with the dominant identities in these occupations, contributing to occupational disidentification and an inclination to "opt out." We tested this argument in two samples of trainee...

In two studies we examined the role of two regulatory foci (i.e., prevention and promotion) in predicting Australian's attitudes to different types of migrants. According to regulatory focus theory, promotion-focused self-regulation is concerned with nurturance and accomplishment needs and involves the pursuit of wishes and aspirations. As such, it...