Michael Schaerer

• Ph.D. in Management (INSEAD)
• Associate Professor at Singapore Management University

We examine the role of low-power individuals in social power research. A multi-method literature review reveals that low-power individuals may be insufficiently understood because many studies lack necessary control conditions to draw inferences about low power, effects are predominantly attributed to high power, and qualitative reviews primarily f...

We propose that interpersonal behaviors can activate feelings of power, and we examine this idea in the context of advice giving. Specifically, we show a) that advice giving is an interpersonal behavior that enhances individuals’ sense of power and b) that those who seek power are motivated to engage in advice giving. Four studies, including two ex...

This research demonstrates that people can act more powerfully without having power. Researchers and practitioners advise people to obtain alternatives in social exchange relationships to enhance their power. However, alternatives are not always readily available, often forcing people to interact without having much power. Building on research sugg...

The present research shows that managers communicate negative feedback ineffectively because they suffer from transparency illusions that cause them to overestimate how accurately employees perceive their feedback. We propose that these illusions emerge because managers are insufficiently motivated to engage in effortful thinking, which reduces the...

The current research finds that having no power can be better than having a little power. Negotiators prefer having some power (weak negotiation alternatives) to no power (no alternatives). We challenge this belief that having any alternative is beneficial by demonstrating that weak alternatives create a low anchor that reduces the value of first o...

A preregistered meta-analysis, including 244 effect sizes from 85 field audits and 361,645 individual job applications, tested for gender bias in hiring practices in female-stereotypical and gender-balanced as well as male-stereotypical jobs from 1976 to 2020. A “red team” of independent experts was recruited to increase the rigor and robustness of...

Past research suggests that when organizations communicate the benefits of their work for human welfare—that is, use a social impact framing for work—job candidates are willing to accept lower wages because they expect the work to be personally meaningful. We argue that this explanation overlooks a less socially desirable mechanism by which social...

To revitalize the study of unconscious bias, Gawronski, Ledgerwood, and Eastwick (this issue) propose a paradigm shift away from implicit measures of intergroup attitudes and beliefs. Specifically, researchers should capture discriminatory biases and demonstrate that participants are unaware of the influence of social category cues on their judgmen...

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching...

Because trust is essential in the development and maintenance of well-functioning relationships, scholars across numerous scientific disciplines have sought to determine what causes people to trust others. Power dynamics are known to predict trust, but research on the relationship between power and trust is inconclusive, with mixed results and with...

Due to its pervasive negative consequences, failing to understand the origins of paranoia can be costly for organizations. Prior research suggests that powerful employees are particularly likely to experience paranoia as others want to exploit the resources they control, implying that employees low in power should feel less paranoid. In contrast, w...

We propose that making a series of decreasing concessions (e.g., $1,500-1,210-1,180-1,170) signals that negotiators are reaching their limit and that this results in a negotiation disadvantage for offer recipients. Although we find that most negotiators do not use this strategy naturally, seven studies (N=2,311) demonstrate that decreasing concessi...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question...

Social power research has been limited by theoretical and methodological traditions that prioritize static comparisons of high and low-power states. This is a crucial limitation given power’s inherently dynamic nature. Accordingly, Anicich and Hirsh (2017a) recently developed a theoretical framework related to the consequences of vertical code-swit...

We investigate the psychological recovery process of full-time employees during the 2-week period at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Past research suggests that recovery processes start after stressors abate and can take months or years to unfold. In contrast, we build on autonomy restoration theory to suggest that recovery of imp...

In distributive negotiations, people often feel that they have to choose between maximizing their economic outcomes (claiming more value) or improving their relational outcomes (having a satisfied opponent). The present research proposes a conversational strategy that can help negotiators achieve both. Specifically, we show that using an offer fram...

Although powerlessness is a pervasive experience for employees, prior social power research has predominantly focused on consequences of powerfulness. This has led to contradictory predictions for how experienced powerlessness influences employees’ social perceptions and behaviors. To resolve this theoretical tension, we build on Social Distance Th...

This review synthesizes the impact of power on individual and joint negotiation performance. Although power generally has positive effects on negotiators’ individual performance (value claiming), recent work suggests that more power is not always beneficial. Taking a dyadic perspective, we also find mixed evidence for how power affects joint perfor...

Although there has been tremendous scientific interest in social power, much of this recent research has relied on experiments in context-poor settings. However, organizations – a context in which power differences emerge naturally – are more complex and dynamic. The current review discusses whether and how defining organizational features at the i...

Purpose This paper aims to identify and discuss four major sources of power in negotiations. Findings The four sources of power are alternatives, information, status and social capital. Each of these sources of power can enhance a negotiator’s likelihood of obtaining their ideal outcome because power allows negotiators to be more confident and pro...

Past research has suggested a fundamental principle of price precision: The more precise an opening price, the more it anchors counteroffers. The present research challenges this principle by demonstrating a too-much-precision effect. Five experiments (involving 1,320 experts and amateurs in real-estate, jewelry, car, and human-resources negotiatio...

We present the data from a crowdsourced project seeking to replicate findings in independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. In this Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) initiative, 25 research groups attempted to replicate 10 moral judgment effects from a single laboratory’s research pipeline of unpublished fi...

We challenge the assumption that having multiple alternatives is always better than a single alternative by showing that negotiators who have additional, less attractive alternatives ironically exhibit downward-biased perceptions of their own and their opponent’s reservation price, make lower demands, and achieve worse outcomes in distributive nego...

This crowdsourced project introduces a collaborative approach to improving the reproducibility of scientific research, in which findings are replicated in qualified independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. Our goal is to establish a non-adversarial replication process with highly informative final results. To illustra...

Negotiators have a natural preference for more over fewer alternatives. After all, alternatives seem to provide the necessary leverage to achieve superior negotiation outcomes (Study 1). The present research shows that although negotiating with multiple alternatives makes negotiators feel more powerful than negotiating with only one alternative, th...

This article provides an answer to the question of why negative feedback in organizational settings is often perceived more positively than intended. Past research has primarily focused on empathic buffering and conflict avoidance to explain why feedback inflation occurs. We argue that these accounts are incomplete and propose that there is a disco...

Five studies examined the relationship between talent and team performance. Two survey studies found that people believe there is a linear and nearly monotonic relationship between talent and performance: participants expected that more talent increases performance and that this relationship would never turn negative. However, building off research...