John Angus D. Hildreth’s research while affiliated with Cornell College and other places

Building on the perspectives reflected in the Western intellectual tradition of the psychology of identity and the self, current research in cultural psychology tends to conceptualize uniqueness preferences as reflecting an identity-based motive and argues that people in Western cultures value uniqueness because it is viewed as inherently important to their identity and individuality. In this research, we introduce a complementary Eastern perspective to understand uniqueness preferences and argue that uniqueness preferences can also reflect a strategic motive where people in East Asian cultures may also value uniqueness because of the instrumental material and social benefits they believe uniqueness may confer. We tested our propositions in nine preregistered studies contrasting the decision making of people in the United States with those in China. We found that compared to participants from the United States, those from China were more likely to pursue uniqueness or believe others would pursue uniqueness in situations where being unique could potentially confer material and social benefits (Studies 1a–1c, 2, 4, 5), and this behavioral tendency could be explained in part by participants from China exhibiting a greater strategic motive for uniqueness seeking (Studies 3–5). Further, correlational and experimental studies provided some evidence for the roles of the need for power, power distance orientation, trait competitiveness, and upward social comparison as psychological antecedents to the strategic motive for uniqueness seeking (Studies 5–7). Overall, this research provides an alternative Eastern cultural perspective to balance the prevailing Western cultural perspective for understanding uniqueness preferences.

Emerging trends toward greater pay transparency and more freedom in teaming decisions intersect to highlight a potential conflict. Extant research suggests that visible pay disparities should adversely affect collaborations, particularly with higher paid partners, but we challenge this thesis and present three preregistered studies demonstrating that visible salary disparities can positively affect collaboration with higher paid peers in teaming decisions. In Studies 1 and 2, people chose to collaborate with higher rather than lower paid peers unless explicitly told that their potential collaborators’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience were similar, suggesting that pay was viewed as a signal for competence. In Study 3, the preference for working with higher paid peers was replicated even when the decision-makers were familiar with their potential coworkers. In contrast to teaming decisions, in a fourth preregistered study (Study 4) focused on hiring decisions, people were less likely to hire a candidate with a higher (vs. lower) pay history for a subordinate position on their team. Taken together, the studies demonstrate that visible pay disparities affect collaboration and selection decisions but in different ways: People tend to show a bias in favor of higher paid peers as collaboration partners, while they show an aversion to hiring people with higher pay histories as subordinates.

Does the status people possess shape their subjective well-being (SWB)? Prior research that has addressed this question has been correlational. Therefore, in the current research, we provide causal evidence of this effect: In two experiments, we found that individuals reported higher SWB when their own status was higher compared to when it was lower. However, individuals’ SWB was not only shaped by their own status, but also by others’ status. Specifically, individuals reported higher SWB when others’ status was lower than when it was higher. Thus, people have a competitive orientation towards status; they not only want to have high status on an absolute level (e.g., to be highly respected and admired), but also to have higher status than others (e.g., to be more respected and admired than others). A standard self-affirmation manipulation was used in an attempt to mitigate individuals’ competitive orientation towards status, but only helped already high-status members feel happier in groups of high-status members, rather than help low-status members feel happier when they uniquely held low status.

How are some criminals able to get away with wrongdoing for months or even years? Here, we consider the role of loyalty in facilitating networks of support for wrongdoers, examining whether the obligations of loyalty to direct ties (here, brokers) transfer through individuals’ social networks to their indirect ties, prompting them to support those indirect ties in moral dilemmas. Integrating research on brokering, loyalty, relational identity, and social norms, we propose that loyalty to a broker will prompt an individual to support an indirect tie accused of wrongdoing because loyalty activates one’s relational identity with the broker, which highlights the descriptive and relational injunctive norms associated with their role, leading them to view the broker’s request to support an indirect tie accused of wrongdoing as falling within the bounds of their loyalty-based obligations to the broker. Specifically, these norms reveal to the actor their benevolence-based trust in the broker, their value alignment with the broker, and relational concerns for not granting the broker’s request. We further demonstrate how a broker’s history of creating divisions between people moderates how the actor sees the broker and reduces their willingness to grant the request. Across 11 preregistered studies (n = 2,249)—10 experiments and a field study—we found support for our hypotheses: the obligations of loyalty to brokers did indeed transfer to indirect ties accused of wrongdoing, regardless of the type of wrongdoing or strength of evidence presented against the accused. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18003 .

The popular maxim holds that power corrupts, and research to date supports the view that power increases self-interested unethical behavior. However, we predict the opposite effect when unethical behavior, specifically lying, helps an individual self-promote: lower rather than higher power increases self-promotional lying. Drawing from compensatory consumption theory, we propose that this effect occurs because lower power people feel less esteemed in their organizations than do higher power people. To compensate for this need to view themselves as esteemed members of their organizations, lower power individuals are more likely to inflate their accomplishments. Evidence from four studies supports our predictions: compared with those with higher power, executives with lower power in their organizations were more likely to lie about their work achievements (Study 1, n = 230); graduate students with lower power in their Ph.D. studies were more likely to lie about their publication records (Study 2, n = 164); and employees with lower power were more likely to lie about having signed a business contract (Studies 3 and 4). Mediation analyses suggest that lower power increased lying because lower power individuals feel lower esteem in their organizations (Study 3, n = 562). Further supporting this mechanism, a self-affirmation intervention reduced the effect of lower power on self-promotional lying (Study 4, n = 536). These converging findings show that, when lies are self-promotional, lower power can be more corruptive than higher power.