William Hart’s research while affiliated with University of Alabama and other places

The “bad-begets-bad” phenomenon describes how witnessed or perceived misconduct in an organization promotes mental states and behavior that encourage further misconduct. Based in two perspectives on how the Dark Triad (DT) constructs (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) differentiate, we proposed their roles in contributing to the bad-begets-bad phenomenon. A convenience sample of college students ( N = 454) completed an online study in which they read vignettes depicting workplace misconduct wherein a reporting incentive was (incentive condition) or was not (no-incentive condition) offered. Subsequently, they reported their likelihood of possessing mental states (e.g., goals) and engaging in behavior broadly reflective of the bad-begets-bad phenomenon. Lastly, they completed the Short Dark Triad (SD3) questionnaire to assess narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. We used a series of step-wise regression models to analyze the data. Consistent with the “malicious two” perspective on the DT, only Machiavellianism and psychopathy consistently predicted mental states and behavior reflective of the bad-begets-bad phenomenon. Also, consistent with the “cautious and adaptable Machiavellian perspective,” only Machiavellianism interacted with the incentive condition to influence people’s willingness to report misconduct (i.e., not further promote misconduct). Broadly, the data contribute to understanding the role of the DT in organizational settings and support two perspectives on how the DT should operate in the context of witnessing workplace misconduct.

Introduction: Self-verification theory makes the controversial claim that people higher in depression seek to confirm their depressed identity. Recent evidence suggests that people with higher self-reported depression severity alter their reports of self-relevant information to seem depressed. This article discusses the results of two preregistered studies that examined whether people with higher self-reported depression severity will distort memories of previously encoded events to seem depressed. Methods: In Studies 1 and 2, participants (total N = 665) self-reported their depression severity and then completed a (sham) perceptual task that could presumably diagnose the possession of a brain type that causes depression symptoms. Results: Across the two studies, depression severity (apart from negative affectivity or gender) was related to how people distorted their memories on the task; specifically, people with relatively “high” depression severity distorted their recalls to seem as if they had the depression-prone brain, and people with relatively “low” depression severity showed the opposite bias. These effects did not involve conscious awareness of distortion and had downstream effects on people's self-concepts. Discussion: Broadly, the data align with the possibility that people relatively higher in depression are prone to exhibit biases in reconstructive memory that validate their depressive symptoms.

People with high integrity should stubbornly insist on maintaining their moral stances regardless of how their stances will make them appear. However, we examined whether people who claim to be high in integrity will express different moral stances to appear high in integrity. Participants (N = 433) self-reported their integrity and then read and responded to hypothetical moral dilemmas that introduced tension between utilitarian and deontological moral principles. Participants reported their willingness to choose the utilitarian (vs. deontological) option in each dilemma under conditions in which choosing the utilitarian option signaled high integrity (utilitarian-signals-high-integrity condition) or choosing the deontological option signaled high integrity (deontological-signals-high-integrity condition). Generally, participants reported greater willingness to choose the utilitarian (vs. deontological) option in the utilitarian-signals-high-integrity (vs. deontological-signals-high-integrity) condition, but this effect was greater amongst people higher in self-proclaimed integrity. Additional analyses produced similar effects after accounting for participant sex, other moral personality traits, and experimenter demand. Broadly, the findings support the possibility that self-proclaimed integrity may be partly based on a self-presentation process.

It has been assumed that personality disorders or constituent traits are ego-syntonic, but studies that have addressed this claim have revealed ego-dystonicity. Across three studies (two preregistered), we addressed some methodological weaknesses in these past studies that may conceal ego-syntonicity. Participants (total N = 1,331) completed measures of neuroticism and then imagined experiences that predominantly induced either fear, sadness, or anger (Studies 1 and 2) or recalled past experiences that predominantly elicited each emotion (Study 3). Subsequently, participants judged their emotional reactions on the two ego-syntonicity dimensions of (a) consonance with the self and (b) acceptance (evaluation). Across the studies, neuroticism generally had positive and about moderate-sized relations to consonance judgments and between trivial-sized and small-sized relations to acceptance judgments that were most often positive (Studies 1 and 2) but sometimes negative (Study 3); mean-level analyses suggested that people with relatively higher neuroticism indicated their emotional experiences were, most often, somewhat consonant with the self and acceptable. Regardless, in Study 3, the sample, including those relatively higher in neuroticism, indicated their recalled emotions were too extreme. Broadly, the data suggest that people relatively higher (vs. lower) in neuroticism may regard their contextualized negative emotion as more consonant with the self but not necessarily as more acceptable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction: Sadistic pleasure presumably incorporates processes that support an authentic enjoyment of others' pain. However, antagonism confirmation theory, grounded in social-psychological theorizing on identity maintenance and the notion of ego-syntonicity, suggests that individuals higher in sadism report greater pleasure in response to others' pain because such reports are immoral responses that confirm their self-views. This alternative conception has yet to be tested. Method: In two preregistered experiments (total N = 968), participants completed measures of sadism, read about situations involving others' pain, and rated their pleasure. We manipulated the extent to which pleasure from others' pain could be used to signal morality or antagonism. Results: We found that relatively sadistic people indicated greater pleasure across the studies but, like relatively non-sadistic people, they altered their pleasure ratings to signal greater morality or less antagonism. Conclusions: The findings fail to support antagonism confirmation theory, but they support recent perspectives on sadism which suggest that sadistic people may occasionally care about seeming moral (or not seeming antagonistic) and that sadism may be somewhat ego-dystonic in this respect.