Maurice E Schweitzer

University of Pennsylvania | UP · The Wharton School

To create favorable impressions and receive credit, individuals need to share information about their past accomplishments. Broadcasting one’s past accomplishments or claiming credit to demonstrate competence, however, can harm perceptions of warmth and likability. In fact, prior work has conceptualized self-promotion as a hydraulic challenge: tact...

Individuals value benevolence and integrity in their partners. However, in many workplace dilemmas benevolence and integrity conflict. Across 5 experiments (and 8 supplemental studies), we demonstrate that the relative importance individuals attach to having partners that prioritize either benevolence or integrity systematically shifts across relat...

Across a pilot study and three preregistered experiments (N = 4128), we demonstrated that people knowingly shared conspiracy theories to advance social motives (e.g., to receive “likes”). In addition to accuracy, people seemed to value social engagement (e.g., “likes” and reactions). Importantly, people not only expected most conspiracy theories to...

Decisions about future behaviors are clearly shaped by the content of past experiences, but whether the order of past experiences matters remains controversial. By analyzing the largest field experiment about prosocial behavior to date, a natural field experiment involving 14,383 volunteer crisis counselors over five years, we examine how the conte...

We investigate perceptions of emotional deception and introduce a novel distinction between the Up-display of emotion (the fabricated and the exaggerated expression of emotions) and the Down-display of emotion (the suppression of felt emotions). Observers judge Down-displays of anger, sadness, and happiness as more ethical (less deceptive, less int...

Deception scholarship has focused on deceivers and has largely conceptualized targets as passive victims. We integrate the articles in this special issue, along with a broad body of literature on deception, moral judgment, and blame, to introduce the Shared Responsibility Model of deception (SR Model). The SR Model conceptualizes deception as a soc...

Many fundamental relationships, from the spread of disease to climate change, as well as common scales, such as the Richter, pH, and Decibel scales, are characterized by exponential relationships. Across six pre-registered studies (N = 3522) and three supplemental studies (N = 1079), we introduce and test a measure of exponential numeracy. We demon...

Deception pervades negotiations and shapes both the negotiation process and outcomes. In this article, we review recent scholarship investigating deception in negotiations. We offer an integrative review of recent theoretical and empirical research, and we argue that the dominant experimental paradigms that scholars have used to study deception hav...

When should negotiators care relatively more about their relationships with their counterparts than about the deal terms? We introduce a new dimension to characterize negotiation contexts to answer this question: the Economic Relevance of Relational Outcomes (ERRO). ERRO reflects the extent to which the total economic value of a negotiation hinges...

In this article, we introduce the Norms for Behavior Change model (NBC) to explain how injunctive norms coupled with enforcement promote community-level behavior change. We examine the NBC model in the context of open science. We conceptualize journal submission requirements as injunctive norms, and the shift towards open science as a profound chan...

The meaning of success in conversation depends on people’s goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, and persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical framework, the Conversational Circumplex, to classify conversati...

Self-confidence is associated with many positive outcomes, and training programs routinely seek to build participants’ self-efficacy. In this article, however, we consider whether self-confidence increases unethical behavior. In a series of studies, we explore the relationship between negotiator self-efficacy—an individual’s confidence in his or he...

Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of organizational culture to elucidate whether organizational culture can influence how emplo...

Deception is pervasive in negotiations and organizations, and emotions are critical to using, detecting, and responding to deception. In this article, we introduce a theoretical model to explore the interplay between emotional intelligence (the ability to perceive and express, understand, regulate, and use emotions) and deception in negotiations. I...

Within a conversation, individuals balance competing objectives, such as the motive to gather information and the motive to create a favorable impression. Across five experimental studies (N = 1427), we show that individuals avoid asking sensitive questions because they believe that asking sensitive questions will make their conversational partners...

Negotiation scholars have assumed that participants enter negotiations with the intent to reach an agreement. In addition, negotiation scholars have assumed that negotiators cannot be significantly harmed by the negotiation process itself. We challenge both of these assumptions and identify important implications. We introduce the term insincere ne...

A substantial literature asserts that anger expressions boost status. Across seven studies (N = 4027), we demonstrate that this assertion is often wrong. Rather than boosting status, many anger expressions predictably diminish status. We find that the intensity of expressed anger profoundly influences social perceptions and status conferral. Compar...

The negotiation process can harm post-agreement motivation. For example, a homeowner might negotiate with a landscaper, but through the process of negotiating harm the landscaper’s motivation to deliver high quality service. In contrast to prior work that has assumed that negotiated agreements represent the full economic value of negotiated outcome...

Direct, difficult questions (e.g., Do you have other offers? When do you plan on having children?) pose a challenge. Respondents may incur economic costs for honestly revealing information, reputational costs for engaging in deception, and interpersonal costs, including harm to perceptions of trust and liking, for directly declining to answer the q...

Across five studies, we identify humor as a powerful impression management tool that influences perceptions of veracity. In many domains, such as negotiations and interviews, individuals face a challenge with respect to disclosing negative information and managing impressions. For example, an interviewer may ask an applicant to name their greatest...

Across six studies, we find that both incidental anger and integral anger reduce perspective-taking. In Study 1, participants who felt incidental anger were less likely to take others’ perspectives than those who felt neutral emotion. In Study 2, we demonstrate that arousal mediates the relationship between anger and diminished perspective-taking....

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3437468 ********************* Within a conversation, individuals balance competing concerns, such as the motive to gather information and the motives to avoid discomfort and to create a favorable impression. Across three pilot studies and four experimental studies, we demonstrate that individuals...

We demonstrate that accusations harm trust in targets, but boost trust in the accuser when the accusation signals that the accuser has high integrity. Compared to individuals who did not accuse targets of engaging in unethical behavior, accusers engendered greater trust when observers perceived the accusation to be motivated by a desire to defend m...

Existing trust research has disproportionately focused on what makes people more or less trusting, and has largely ignored the question of what makes people more or less trustworthy. In this investigation, we deepen our understanding of trustworthiness. Across six studies using economic games that measure trustworthy behavior and survey items that...

In strategic information exchanges (such as negotiations and job interviews), different question formulations communicate information about the question asker, and systematically influence the veracity of responses. We demonstrate this function of questions by contrasting Negative Assumption questions that presuppose a problem, Positive Assumption...

Scholars have assumed that trust is fragile: difficult to build and easily broken. We demonstrate, however, that in some cases trust is surprisingly robust—even when harmful deception is revealed, some individuals maintain high levels of trust in the deceiver. In this paper, we describe how implicit theories moderate the harmful effects of revealed...

Trash-talking increases the psychological stakes of competition and motivates targets to outperform their opponents. In Studies 1 and 2, participants in a competition who were targets of trash-talking outperformed participants who faced the same economic incentives, but were not targets of trash-talking. Perceptions of rivalry mediate the relations...

Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across 2 pilot studies and 6 experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant information) and lying by commission (the active use of false statements). Our findings reve...

Across 8 experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm status. The relationship between the successful use of humor and status is mediated b...

Across six studies, we examine how the magnitude of expressed happiness influences social perception and interpersonal behavior. We find that happiness evokes different judgments when expressed at high levels than when expressed at moderate levels, and that these judgments influence opportunistic behavior. Specifically, people perceive very happy i...

Emotions influence ethical behavior. Across four studies, we demonstrate that incidental anger, anger triggered by an unrelated situation, promotes the use of deception. In Study 1, participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to deceive their counterpart than those who felt neutral emotion. In Study 2, we demonstrate that empathy mediat...

Trust is critical for our cooperation and effective working relationships, but trust also enables exploitation and unethical behavior. Prior trust research has disproportionately focused on the benefits of trust, even though some of the most egregious unethical behaviors occur because of misplaced trust. Targets of exploitation misplace their trust...

Although individuals can derive substantial benefits from exchanging information and ideas, many individuals are reluctant to seek advice from others. We find that people are reticent to seek advice for fear of appearing incompetent. This fear, however, is misplaced. We demonstrate that individuals perceive those who seek advice as more competent t...

Despite the importance of trust for efficient social and organizational functioning, transgressions that betray trust are common. We know little about the personal characteristics that affect the extent to which transgressions actually harm trust. In this research, we examine how gender moderates responses to trust violations. Across three studies,...

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we fi...

Trust is essential for effective personal and professional relationships, and a substantial literature has studied the antecedents and consequences of trust. Most of this research has adopted a shared definition of trust: the willingness to be vulnerable based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another (Davis, Mayer, & Scho...

Existing trust research has largely focused on what makes people more or less trusting. Surprisingly little attention has focused on what makes people more or less trustworthy. In this investigation, we introduce new measures of trustworthiness and we establish links between trustworthiness and guilt. Across four studies, we demonstrate that both d...

Trust is critical for our cooperation and effective working relationships, but trust also enables exploitation and unethical behavior. Prior trust research has disproportionately focused on the benefits of trust, even though some of the most egregious unethical behaviors occur because of misplaced trust. Targets of exploitation often overweight the...

Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm status. The relationship between the successful use of humor and status is mediat...

We demonstrate that some lies are perceived to be more ethical than honest statements. Across three studies, we find that individuals who tell prosocial lies, lies told with the intention of benefitting others, are perceived to be more moral than individuals who tell the truth. In Study 1, we compare altruistic lies to selfish truths. In Study 2, w...

Emotions influence ethical behavior. Across four studies, we demonstrate that incidental anger, anger triggered by an unrelated situation, promotes the use of deception. In Study 1, participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to deceive their counterpart than those who felt neutral emotion. In Study 2, we demonstrate that empathy mediat...

Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this article, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a "cheater's high." Across 6 studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels o...

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. We break new ground by demonstrating that some types of deception increase trust. Across five studies, we demonstrate that prosocial lying increases both behavioral and attitudinal measures of trust. We find that perceived benevolence...

The incidence of obesity in the United States has tripled over the past fifty years. A substantial literature has explored the health consequences of this epidemic, but little is known about the social consequences of obesity. Across five studies, we demonstrate that obesity signals low competence. We build on stereotype content research and demons...

Existing apology research has conceptualized apologies as a device to rebuild relationships following a transgression. Individuals, however, often apologize for circumstances for which they are obviously not culpable (e.g., heavy traffic or bad weather). In this article, we define superfluous apologies as expressions of regret for an undesirable ci...

Alcohol consumption and cognitive impairment frequently co-occur. We propose that the relationship is so familiar that exposure to alcohol cues primes expectations of cognitive impairment. Across five studies, we find that in the absence of any evidence of reduced cognitive performance, people who hold an alcoholic beverage are perceived to be less i...

Alcohol consumption and cognitive impairment frequently co‐occur. We propose that the relationship is so familiar that exposure to alcohol cues primes expectations of cognitive impairment. Across five studies, we find that in the absence of any evidence of reduced cognitive performance, people who hold an alcoholic beverage are perceived to be less...

Across four studies, we demonstrate that the magnitude of emotion matters. The same emotion (e.g., happiness) can have very different effects at high levels than it does at moderate levels. In our studies, we show that the magnitude of an emotion expression significantly influences social cognition. Participants perceive very happy individuals to b...

Deception is pervasive in negotiations. Negotiations are characterized by information asymmetries, and negotiators often have both opportunities and incentives to mislead their counterparts. Effective negotiators need to contend with the risk of being deceived, to effectively respond when they identify deception, and to manage the temptation to use...

Within organizations, individuals both collaborate with peers in pursuit of common goals and compete with those same peers for rewards and promotions. Whether individuals perceive their peers in competitive or collaborative terms can fundamentally influence important organizational interactions and decisions. In this work, we document the prevalenc...

Monitoring changes the behavior of those who are monitored and those who monitor others. We studied behavior under different monitoring regimes in repeated trust games. We found that trustees behaved opportunistically when they anticipated monitoring—they were compliant when they knew in advance that they would be monitored, but exploited trustors...

Organizations often expect employees to collaborate with and trust the same coworkers with whom they compete for promotions and raises. This paper explores how social comparisons in self-relevant achievement domains influence affective and cognitive trust. We find that both upward and downward social comparisons harm trust. Upward comparisons harm...

Personal experience matters. In a field setting with longitudinal data, we disentangle the effects of learning new information from the effects of personal experience. We demonstrate that experience with a fine, controlling for the effect of learning new information, significantly boosts future compliance. We also show that experience with a large...

Across 8 experiments, the influence of anxiety on advice seeking and advice taking is described. Anxious individuals are found to be more likely to seek and rely on advice than are those in a neutral emotional state (Experiment 1), but this pattern of results does not generalize to other negatively valenced emotions (Experiment 2). The relationship...

Although experimental studies have documented systematic decision errors, many leading scholars believe that experience, competition, and large stakes will reliably extinguish biases. We test for the presence of a fundamental bias, loss aversion, in a high-stakes context: professional golfers' performance on the PGA Tour. Golf provides a natural se...

Many unethical decisions stem from a lack of awareness. In this article, we consider how mindfulness, an individual’s awareness of his or her present experience, impacts ethical decision making. In our first study, we demonstrate that compared to individuals low in mindfulness, individuals high in mindfulness report that they are more likely to act...

After a trust violation, some people are quick to forgive, whereas others never trust again. In this report, we identify a key characteristic that moderates trust recovery: implicit beliefs of moral character. Individuals who believe that moral character can change over time (incremental beliefs) are more likely to trust their counterpart following...

Across three studies, we demonstrate that anxiety is both commonly associated with negotiations and harmful to negotiator performance. In our experiments, we induced either low anxiety or high anxiety. Compared to negotiators experiencing low levels of anxiety, negotiators who experience high levels of anxiety make steeper concessions and exit barg...

Though negotiation scholars have generally recommended that negotiators suppress their expressions of emotion, extant research has pointed to the expression of emotions as a powerful strategy in negotiations. For example, Ho and Andrade (2010) suggest that people tend to use the expression of emotions to their advantage in one-shot games and are fu...

Anger can lead to positive organizational outcomes. Anger is an important emotion in negotiations and organizations create situations that promote anger, yet little research has examined the conditions under which anger expressions can lead to positive outcomes in organizations. We analyzed 129 anger episodes across six organizations. In these epis...

Although experimental studies have documented systematic decision errors, many leading scholars believe that experience, competition, and large stakes will reliably extinguish biases. We test for the presence of a fundamental bias, loss aversion, in a high-stakes context: professional golfers' performance on the PGA Tour. Golf provides a natural se...

The opportunity to profit from dishonesty evokes a motivational conflict between the temptation to cheat for selfish gain and the desire to act in a socially appropriate manner. Honesty may depend on self-control given that self-control is the capacity that enables people to override antisocial selfish responses in favor of socially desirable respo...

In this article, we define good scholarship, highlight our points of disagreement with Locke and Latham (2009), and call for further academic research to examine the full range of goal setting's effects. We reiterate our original claim that goal setting, like a potent medication, can produce both beneficial effects and systematic, negative outcomes...

Executive Overview: Goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature. Hundreds of studies conducted in numerous countries and contexts have consistently demonstrated that setting specific, challenging goals can powerfully drive behavior and boost performance. Advocates of goal setting have had a subs...

Goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature. Hundreds of studies conducted in numerous countries and contexts have consistently demonstrated that setting specific, challenging goals can powerfully drive behavior and boost performance. Advocates of goal setting have had a substantial impact on re...

In this paper, we disentangle the effects of new information from the effects of personal experience to describe how personal experience changes behavior. We examine personal experience with one of the most ubiquitous managerial and policy tools: the monetary fine. We demonstrate that experience with a fine, controlling for the effect of learning n...

Across 2 experiments, the authors demonstrate that emotional states influence how receptive people are to advice. The focus of these experiments is on incidental emotions, emotions triggered by a prior experience that is irrelevant to the current situation. The authors demonstrate that people who feel incidental gratitude are more trusting and more...

A substantial literature has examined negotiation problems. Throughout this literature, scholars have assumed that participants approach negotiations with the intent of reaching a deal and that negotiation participants cannot be significantly harmed by the negotiation process. In this paper, we challenge these assumptions. We define situations in w...

We demonstrate that implicit beliefs influence trust. In an experiment, we induced one of two types of implicit beliefs: entity beliefs about negotiation ability (a belief that negotiation ability is fixed over time), and incremental beliefs about negotiation ability (a belief that negotiation ability can change over time). We find that people indu...

In this article, we describe how envy motivates deception. We find that individuals who envy a counterpart are more likely to deceive them than are individuals who do not envy their counterpart. Across both a scenario and a laboratory study, we explore the influence of envy in a negotiation setting. Negotiations represent a domain in which social c...

In this article, we describe the influence of violations of community standards of fairness (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, 1986a) on subsequent ethical decision-making and emotions. Across two studies, we manipulated explanations for a common action, and we find that explanations that violate community standards of fairness (e.g., by taking advant...

This is a qualitative theory-building study that examines the relationship between organizational display rules and social norms (e.g. occupational, status and personal norms) and their influence on anger expressions in the workplace. The emotional labor literature has focused on the impact of organizational display rules which typically work to co...

Trust is critical for organizations, effective management, and efficient negotiations, yet trust violations are common. Prior work has often assumed trust to be fragile-easily broken and difficult to repair. We investigate this proposition in a laboratory study and find that trust harmed by untrustworthy behavior can be effectively restored when in...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

In this chapter, we develop a model of envy and unethical decision making. We postulate that unfavorable comparisons will induce envy in outperformed coworkers, who are subsequently motivated to engage in unethical acts to harm the envied target. In particular, we consider the differential effects of unfavorable individual-level and unfavorable gro...