Are women's career choices influenced by hormones in the womb?

The paucity of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) professions continues to cause concern and controversy. There are no doubt social reasons for the situation: in many cultures, girls are brought up with the expectation that they will eventually enter stereotypically "female" professions. A pertinent 2009 study by Brian Nosek and colleagues found that girls tend to perform worse on science tests in those countries where gender stereotypes are more strongly endorsed.

But that's not to say that biological factors don't also play a role. In a new study, Adriene Beltz and her team have studied males and females with congenital adrenal hyperplesia (CAH): a genetic condition, which for women involves exposure to higher-than-usual levels of testosterone and other androgens in the womb. The researchers say their results show that biological factors related to sex have a real influence on occupational interest, and that by acknowledging this, we'll be more successful in encouraging more women into science and maths careers.

Forty-six females with CAH; 21 of their unaffected sisters; 27 males with CAH; and 31 of their unaffected brothers (aged 9 to 26 years) all rated their interest in 61 jobs from astronomer to social worker.

Females with CAH are raised as girls and identify as girls, even though their genitalia may, to varying degrees, resemble that of a man. For psychologists interested in gender and career choice, the condition allows the usual sex and socialisation confound to be disentangled. Females with CAH, though treated by society largely like other girls, have been exposed to biological factors associated with the male sex.

The listed jobs were analysed according to how much they pertained to "things" or to "people". The unaffected male and female participants showed the divergence in interests that you'd expect, with the males on average showing more of a bias than females towards "things" jobs like mechanic or biologist than "people" jobs such as high school teacher or dancer. The key finding is that female participants with CAH also differed from unaffected female participants, rating jobs that pertain to "things" more favourably (whilst rating "people" jobs just the same as unaffected females). Moreover, the more androgen they were exposed to in the womb, based on their type of CAH and their genital development, the stronger their interest in thing-related jobs. Male participants with CAH did not answer differently from unaffected male participants.

"Our findings indicate that career choices are influenced by prenatal androgens through a psychological orientation to objects versus people that manifests in gender-typed occupational interests," the researchers said. They also acknowledged the large amount of within-sex variation in interests, and the role played by socio-cultural factors. "Our results are relevant to efforts to increase participation of girls and women in STEM careers. It is important to recognise that career choices have roots in early-developing and biologically-influenced interests. Girls and women might be encouraged to pursue STEM careers by focusing on the ways in which an orientation to people is compatible with those careers."

These conclusions chime with a 2006 study that tested the effects of a programme designed to teach girls about the altruistic value of science. The programme actually failed in this objective, but girls who believed in the altruistic value of science were found to be more interested in it, thus reinforcing the idea science could be made more appealing to women by highlighting its human importance.
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Beltz, A., Swanson, J., and Berenbaum, S. (2011). Gendered occupational interests: Prenatal androgen effects on psychological orientation to Things versus People. Hormones and Behavior, 60 (4), 313-317 DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

How not to spot personality test fakers

Personality tests are an effective recruitment tool: higher scorers on conscientiousness and lower scorers on neuroticism tend to perform better in the job. But a major weakness of such tests is people's tendency to answer dishonestly. A study now shows that a popular approach to spotting cheaters is likely to be ineffective.

This approach, which has gained momentum in the research literature, is to focus on applicants' response times. Honest test-takers show an inverted U-shaped response profile, being fast when they strongly agree or disagree with test items (these come in the form of statements about the self, such as "I pay attention to details"), and slower when they answer more equivocally. This is thought to reflect a process whereby test takers refer to their self-schema and find it easier to answer when statements clearly conform or contradict this schema.

At least two theories predict that fakers won't show this inverted U-shape, and that response times therefore offer a way to expose those who are cheating. One theory has it that fakers refer to their self-schema and then exaggerate the truth on key statements. This has the effect of extending answer times for unequivocal answers, flattening out the inverted U-shape response time profile shown by honest answerers. Another theory says that fakers don't refer to a self-schema at all - they simply assess the social desirability of each item and exaggerate answers where necessary. This is a cognitively simpler task than referral to a self-schema, and again the inverted U-shaped response profile is predicted to flatten.

To test these predictions, Mindy Shoss and Michael Strube had 60 undergrads (38 women) complete a personality test (the Revised NEO Personality inventory) three times: once honestly, once to create a general good impression, and lastly, either to create a good impression specifically for a public relations role, or specifically for an accountant role.

The key finding is that participants showed the inverted U-shaped response time profile regardless of whether they were answering honestly or not. Response times were faster overall for the fakery conditions, and the inverted U-shape was actually accentuated in the specific public relations fakery condition. Shoss and Strube said these results are consistent with the idea that fakers form, and refer to, an idealised personality schema in their mind when completing a personality test, and so their answers show a similar response time profile to an honest test-taker. The accentuated inverted U-shape for the PR-role condition comes from the fact that the schema for such a role is like a caricature, making unequivocal answers for certain items even easier to provide than usual.

Digging deeper, the researchers found that when striving to make a good impression, participants scored higher on extraversion, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness and lower on neuroticism.  The inverted U-shape in response times was greater for agreeableness and conscientiousness in the fake conditions than when answering honestly.

"This study casts doubt on the validity of response times for detecting faking in general," the researchers said. "... it seems that researchers and practitioners interested in detecting and reducing faking would do well to focus on other strategies."

An alternative approach to reducing test fakery is to force applicants to choose between pairs of equally appealing statements about themselves, as reported previously on the Digest. Other recent research has shown that many recruitment measures might actually be testing applicants' ability to discern what's required of them, rather than anything more specific, as reported recently by the BPS Occupational Digest.
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Shoss, M., and Strube, M. (2011). How do you fake a personality test? An investigation of cognitive models of impression-managed responding. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116 (1), 163-171 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.05.003

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

What exactly are candidate selection measures measuring?

This post originally appeared on our offspring title, the BPS Occupational Digest, written by Dr Alex Fradera. It's like the main Research Digest but focuses on psychology in the work place.

While we know that modern selection procedures such as ability tests and structured interviews are successful in predicting job performance, it's much less clear how they pull off those predictions. The occupational psychology process – and thus our belief system of how things work - is essentially a) identify what the job needs b) distil this to measurable dimensions c) assess performance on your dimensions. But a recent review article by Martin Kleinman and colleagues suggests that in some cases, we may largely be assessing something else: the “ability to identify criteria”.

The review unpacks a field of research that recognises that people aren't passive when being assessed. Candidates try to squirrel out what they are being asked to do, or even who they are being asked to be, and funnel their energies towards that. When the situation is ambiguous, a so-called “weak” situation, those better at squirrelling – those with high “ability to identify criteria” (ATIC) - will put on the right performance, and those that are worse will put on Peer Gynt for the panto crowd.

Some people are better at guessing what an assessment is measuring than others, so in itself ATIC is a real phenomenon. And the research shows that higher ATIC scores are associated with higher overall assessment performance, and better scores specifically on the dimensions they correctly guess. ATIC clearly has a 'figuring-out' element, so we might suspect its effects are an artefact of it being strongly associated with cognitive ability, itself associated with better performance in many types of assessment. But if anything the evidence works the other way. ATIC has an effect over and above cognitive ability, and it seems possible that cognitive ability buffs assessment scores mainly due to its contribution to the ATIC effect.

In a recent study, ATIC, assessment performance, and candidate job performance were examined within a single selection scenario. Remarkably it found that job performance correlated better with ATIC than it did with the assessment scores themselves. In fact, the relationship between assessment scores and job performance became insignificant after controlling for ATIC. This offers the provocative possibility that the main reason assessments are useful is as a window into ATIC, which the authors consider “the cognitive component of social competence in selection situations”. After all, many modern jobs, particularly managerial ones, depend upon figuring out what a social situation demands of you.

So what to make of this, especially if you are an assessment practitioner? We must be realistic about what we are really assessing, which in no small part is 'figuring out the rules of the game'. If you're unhappy about that, there's a simple way to wipe out the ATIC effect: making the assessed dimensions transparent, turning the weak situation into a strong, unambiguous one. Losing the contamination of ATIC leads to more accurate measures of the individual dimensions you decided were important. But overall your prediction of job performance measures will be weaker, because you've lost the ATIC factor which does genuinely seem to matter. And while no-one is suggesting that it is all that matters in the job, it may be the aspect of work that assessments are best positioned to pick up.

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Kleinmann, M., Ingold, P., Lievens, F., Jansen, A., Melchers, K., and Konig, C. (2011). A different look at why selection procedures work: The role of candidates' ability to identify criteria. Organizational Psychology Review, 1 (2), 128-146 DOI: 10.1177/2041386610387000

Investigating the personality of companies

When we think about other people, we do so in terms that can be boiled down to five discrete personality dimensions: extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness (known as the Big Five factors). A new study suggests that a similar process is at work in our perception of companies and corporations. Google and Apple have personalities too, it seems.

Philipp Otto, Nick Chater and Henry Stott quizzed thousands of people about their perception of hundreds of companies and they've found that our view of companies is encapsulated by four fundamental dimensions: honesty, prestige, innovation and power. These perceived characteristics correlate with traditional economic measures of company performance, but they offer something more.

"With the introduction of personality factors for companies, a new way of describing companies is provided," the trio said, "which directly reflects the public understanding of companies ... Tracking measures of corporate personality might add important dimensions to economic measures of company performance and could be used both in shaping marketing and brand strategy, and potentially also in evaluating and predicting company success."

Otto's team kicked off its investigation by using George Kelly's Repertory Grid technique. Six participants named nine well-known companies and then, taking three at a time, they identified an adjective on which two companies in that group differed from the third (a process known as "triadic elicitation"). The idea of this approach is to cultivate responses from participants without putting ideas into their heads. Named companies included Tesco, BT and Chanel, and popular themes were quality, price, general appearance and experiences with the companies.

For a second study, the adjectives from the first were combined with adjectives taken from the existing literature on categorising objects, giving a total of 118. Twenty students then rated 20 companies on all these 118 adjectives. Any inconsistency or instability was weeded out. So, adjectives were retained if they distinguished between companies (an adjective is useless if all companies score the same on it), and if different participants tended to give the same company a similar rating on the same measure. This whittling led to a list of 31 adjectives. In turn, these 31 were analysed for clustering so that highly correlated adjectives like "luxurious" and "upper class" were part of the "prestige" dimension.

Next, thousands of participants recruited via the I-points web-service rated sixty-four companies along four of the 31 adjectives, and 10 more social adjectives like "friendly" and "helpful". Again, the superordinate factors of honesty, prestige, innovation and power fitted the results well and were found to correlate with traditional economic factors: for example, prestige correlated with company size and profit; innovation correlated with company growth. The final phase of the study repeated this exercise precisely a year later (in 2006) with many of the same companies, to investigate the stability of the measures. There was a high correlation in the factor scores the companies achieved, although there were also some interesting changes in the relative rankings of the companies on these measures - for example, German car manufacturers showed gains in perceived innovativeness.

"The proposed methodology not only has substantial commercial value in helping companies understand and track their public perception, but scales of this type can potentially guide and manage the decision-making of individuals or groups inside and outside rated organizations, thus influencing their organizational culture," the researchers said.
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Otto, P., Chater, N., and Stott, H. (2011). The psychological representation of corporate ‘personality’. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25 (4), 605-614 DOI: 10.1002/acp.1729

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

It doesn't always pay to be pretty

The beautiful people have it all, or so we're usually told. According to research, they're seen as friendlier, more intelligent, and they earn more. But a pair of new journal articles tells a different story, outlining some contexts in which being pretty doesn't pay.

Maria Agthe and her team had 400 students appraise one of four job candidates based on his or her CV, with their photo attached. Although the detailed CVs suggested all the candidates were equally qualified for the job, appearances affected the results. Participants judging a candidate of the opposite sex showed the positive bias you'd expect for highly attractive candidates, being more likely to recommend them for the job. By contrast, participants judging a same-sex candidate showed the opposite pattern, exhibiting a negative bias towards same-sex good lookers. This pattern was mediated partially by the desire for social contact with the candidates - that is, participants were more likely to say they wanted to work with and be friends with opposite-sex beauties, but showed the opposite pattern for good-looking, same-sex candidates. Men and women were similarly prone to negative bias against attractive specimens of their own sex (the effect size was -.5 and -.39, respectively).

The investigation continued with another set of participants appraising candidates shown in a video interview, and again there was a negative bias against attractive same-sex candidates. A final study with yet more participants included a measure of their self-esteem. This showed that high self-esteem participants displayed a positive bias not only towards attractive opposite-sex candidates but also towards attractive candidates of their own sex. Agthe and her colleagues said this suggests the usual negative bias against same-sex beautiful people is all to do with the threat they represent, a threat that those with high self-esteem are immune to.

What are the practical implications of all this? Agthe's team said that the practice of including photos with CVs should be discouraged (it's standard practice to include a photo in several countries including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland), and that assessment panels should be comprised of a mix of men and women, to help cancel out any beauty-based biases.

Coincidentally, another new journal paper has looked at the interaction between attractiveness, gender and forgiveness. April Phillips and Cassandra Hranek had dozens of heterosexual college students imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they were let down by a female student with whom they were meant to be giving a joint class presentation. Participants were shown a picture of this "offender" and told that she either had or hadn't apologised. So long as she apologised, male participants were more likely to forgive an attractive female offender than an apologetic unattractive one. But female participants showed the opposite pattern, being more likely to forgive an apologetic unattractive female student. A follow-up study replicated this result and found that women were more forgiving of an unattractive female student because they found her apology more sincere, whilst men thought the same thing about the attractive offender's apology.

"For female offenders, being attractive can be an asset or a hindrance, depending on the gender of the victim," the researchers said. "A male victim, who might want to pursue a relationship with her in the future, can preserve this possibility if he is willing to offer forgiveness in some circumstances, whereas a female victim who perceives the offender to be a potential rival might be less likely to offer forgiveness."
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Agthe, M., Sporrle, M., and Maner, J. (2011). Does Being Attractive Always Help? Positive and Negative Effects of Attractiveness on Social Decision Making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37 (8), 1042-1054 DOI: 10.1177/0146167211410355

PHILLIPS, A. and HRANEK, C. (2011). Is beauty a gift or a curse? The influence of an offender's physical attractiveness on forgiveness. Personal Relationships DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2011.01370.x

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

Psychologically safe teams can incubate bad behaviour

The following is written by Dr Alex Fradera and is being cross-posted here and over at the new BPS Occupational Digest - a 'child' blog of the Research Digest with a focus on psychology at work.

When impropriety or corruption emerges in an organisation, some cry “bad apple!” where others reply “more like bad barrel!” Yet between individuals and organisations we have teams, the context in which decisions are increasingly made. A new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology sheds some light on what it takes for teams to behave badly.

Researchers Matthew Pearsall and Aleksander Ellis recruited 378 undergraduate management studies students (about 1/3 female), already organised into study groups of three who had collaborated for months. Participants were asked to rate themselves on items relating to different philosophical outlooks, the pertinent one being utilitarianism, where the focus is on outcomes. Previous research suggests individuals who highly value utilitarianism tend to behave more unethically, as they are more prepared to bend rules or mislead if they perceive the ends to justify the means. Pearsall and Ellis suspected the same to be true in groups.

Each team was given a real opportunity to behave unethically, by cheating in the self-evaluation of a piece of coursework. Buried within the scoring criteria was an issue that could not possibly have been covered in the assignment, meaning any team that ticked this off was faking it. As expected, teams with a higher average utilitarianism score were more likely to cheat, mirroring the effect found for individuals.

However, there is a protective buffer against acting unethically in a team. You may be willing to bend the rules, and even suspect others share your view... but do you really want to be the first to say so out loud? Pearsall and Ellis predicted that making this step requires a strong feeling of psychological safety, the sense that others will not judge or report you for speaking out or taking risks. It turns out that the cheating behaviour observed in teams with high utilitarianism scores was almost entirely dependent on a psychologically safe environment, as measured using items like “It is safe to take a risk on this team”. Lacking that safe environment, the highly utilitarian teams were almost as well-behaved as their lower-scoring counterparts.

The researchers note that academic cheating involves relatively low stakes, so this may be a constraint on how far we should generalise to other situations. They also emphasise that psychological safety is generally something we prize in teams, and rightly so: through facilitating open communication and consideration of alternate views it can enhance performance, learning and adaptation to change. However, this evidence suggests that it can also incubate unethical behaviour, and the researchers urge that the field continues to look beyond the traits of individual miscreants to consider state factors such as psychological safety, that allow bad behaviour to take root.
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Pearsall, M., & Ellis, A. (2011). Thick as thieves: The effects of ethical orientation and psychological safety on unethical team behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96 (2), 401-411 DOI: 10.1037/a0021503

Why positive fantasies make your dreams less likely to come true

It's a trusted tool in the self-help armoury - visualising yourself having achieved your goals, be that weighing less, enjoying the view atop Everest, or walking down the aisle with the girl or boy of your dreams. Trouble is, reams of research shows that indulging in positive fantasies actually makes people's fantasised ambitions less likely to become reality. Why? A new study claims it's because positive fantasies are de-energising.

They "make energy seem unnecessary" say Heather Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen.  "By allowing people to consummate a desired future", the researchers explain, positive fantasies trigger the relaxation that would normally accompany actual achievement, rather than marshaling the energy needed to obtain it.

The researchers demonstrated this process across four studies. The first was the least convincing and read like a throwback to the 1960s. Women who were asked to fantasise positively about looking and feeling good in high-heeled shoes subsequently demonstrated lower energy, as revealed by their having lowing blood pressure, than did women asked to fantasise more critically about the pros and cons of wearing trendy, high-heeled shoes.

The research improved. In the second study, participants asked to fantasise positively about winning an essay contest subsequently reported feeling less energised than did participants asked to fantasise more negatively about their prospects.

Next, a positive fantasy about the coming week led participants to feel less energised, and when surveyed a week later, they'd achieved fewer of their week's goals, than had control participants who'd originally been asked to day-dream freely about the coming week.

Finally, Kappes and Oettingen highlighted the role of context, showing that positive fantasies about a pressing need are particularly de-energising. This elaborate study involved asking student participants to refrain from food and water for several hours, and then having some of them eat crackers (ostensibly as part of a taste test). For these super-thirsty participants it was a positive fantasy about a tall glass of icy water, not a fantasy about exam success, that led them to be de-energised (as indicated by a drop in blood pressure). For participants allowed to have a glass of water, by contrast, it was positive fantasies about exam success, not water, that led to them being de-energised.

Across all the studies, the researchers took pains to factor out other explanations - for example, they ruled out the effect of irritation, in case negative fantasies are energising by virtue of being irritating. They ruled out the possibility that some fantasies are easier to conjure than others. And they had a neutral fantasy condition, allowing them to confirm that positive fantasies really are de-energising, rather than it simply being that negative fantasies are energising.

So, is there any benefit to positive fantasies? From a survival perspective, if a goal, such as food or water, is unobtainable, there could be some advantage to enjoying a fantasy that switches you into a low-energy mode. Similarly, if a task fills you with dread and your short-term goal is relaxation, then indulging in positive fantasies about desired outcomes could be a way to reduce anxiety.

But ultimately, Happes and Oettingen believe that positive fantasies are likely to scupper your chances of obtaining your goals. "Instead of promoting achievement, positive fantasies will sap job-seekers of the energy to pound the pavement, and drain the lovelorn of the energy to approach the one they like," they write. "Fantasies that are less positive - that question whether an ideal future can be achieved, and that depict obstacles, problems and setbacks - should be more beneficial for mustering the energy needed to obtain success."

This study isn't the first to explode the myth of a traditional self-help tool. A 2009 paper found that repeating positive mantras about themselves led people low in self-esteem to feel worse.
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Kappes, H., and Oettingen, G. (2011). Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 (4), 719-729 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.02.003

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

The much maligned group brainstorm can aid the process of combining ideas

Research on group creativity shows consistently that the same people come up with more ideas working on their own than they do when brainstorming together. But perhaps it's time to move beyond this striking yet superficial discovery. After all, having a list of initial ideas is not the end of the creative process. A new study by Nicholas Kohn and colleagues has focused on the creative task of idea combination, finding that in this context groups do have advantages over individuals working alone.

One hundred and eight student participants formed groups of three working at computer terminals located apart (this set-up was used to rule out the influence of various social factors that emerge in face-to-face situations). The participants' ten-minute task was to come up with fresh ideas for how to improve their university. Some of the groups of three shared their ideas electronically - that is, each individual could see the ideas of their two fellow team members appear on their own screen as they worked. Other groups worked alone, each individual entirely cut off from their two team members.

The next stage was about idea combination. All participants, whether they previously worked alone or not, now had access to a list of their own existing ideas and the already proposed ideas of their team members. For the next fifteen minutes participants attempted to combine these existing ideas into novel concepts, or to combine an existing idea with a new one. Crucially, half the participants (whether they previously worked alone or collaboratively) now did the combining on their own; the other half could see their team members' newly combined ideas appear on-screen as they worked.

Consistent with past research, participants who worked alone in the first phase came up with more ideas than those who worked cooperatively with their team members. However, team working was more successful in the second, idea combination phase. Although participants working on their own came up with more combined ideas, it was the combined ideas produced by participants working together that were rated by independent judges as being more useful.

Another finding was that participants who worked alone in the first phase were more likely to use other people's ideas to form novel combinations in the second phase (rather than just combining their own earlier ideas), perhaps because they were seeing them for the first time and therefore finding them more stimulating.

A second study was similar to the first except the participants were asked to form newly combined ideas out of existing ideas from an external source (ie. not generated by themselves or their team members). The topic was as before - how to improve the university. Some groups worked with ideas categorised as common, others with rare ideas. This time the collaborators sat around a table and followed a "brain writing" technique - each time they conceived of a new idea combination they wrote it down on a piece of paper and passed it to their neighbour, who rated its usefulness. The purpose of this was to make sure collaborating participants engaged with each others' ideas.

Again, individuals working alone generated more freshly combined ideas than individuals working collaboratively - this was unsurprising since the brain writing process is time consuming. However, participants working collaboratively with rare material came up with combined ideas that judges rated as more novel and feasible, than did participants working alone. And collaborating participants working with common material came up with combined ideas rated as having more impact. This result shows again that there are times in the creative process when working collaboratively has advantages.

'Our results provide a fertile basis for future studies to examine the factors that influence this process and enhance the ability of groups to generate combinations that are both original and useful,' Kohn and his team concluded.
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Kohn, N., Paulus, P., and Choi, Y. (2011). Building on the ideas of others: An examination of the idea combination process. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.01.004

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

What does your handshake say about you?

We all have our prejudices when reading personality into other people's handshake style - especially at the knuckle-crunching and limp extremes. In a new study, rather than correlating different handshake styles with the assumptions they provoke, Frank Bernieri and Kristen Petty have tested what accurate personality information, if any, is conveyed by handshakes.

The researchers screened the personality of 300 students and selected ten with contrasting personality profiles (five men and five women). These ten folk became the targets who would introduce themselves and either shake hands, or not, with over a hundred student participants (male targets introduced themselves to male participants and female targets met female participants). The participants' task after these five-second introductions was to compare the targets and list them in rank order for each of the Big Five personality traits of extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. The key question was whether participants who shook hands with the targets would be more accurate for any of the personality traits than the participants who didn't get to shake hands with the targets.

The format of the introductions was always the same and designed to imitate a job interview situation. Five targets, either all men or all women, walked one at a time into a room in which a participant was seated at a desk, they said their name to the participant (they used a stage name), shook hands or not (for half the participants they did so), and then they went and sat in a nearby chair until the session was over. All targets were instructed to make eye contact when they introduced themselves. The participants only began rating the targets after they'd met all five. Targets and participants had never met before.

Overall, the participants' assessment of the targets' personalities was generally poor except for the extraversion ratings. This is unsurprising given the cursory nature of the introductions. But here's the take-home finding. For male participants only, those who got to shake the targets' hands were substantially more accurate when rating the targets' conscientiousness, a trait that, among other things, is known to be an effective predictor of success at work. Handshaking made no difference to the accuracy of ratings for any of the other personality traits.

Why this one specific insight gleaned from handshaking? Bernieri and Petty's explanation is that conscientiousness is a trait that reflects how successfully a person can learn any complex behaviour, be that a musical instrument or a handshake. "The ubiquitous handshake may not be as ritualized or as precise as the Japanese tea ceremony," they said, "but it certainly requires some knowledge of the prevailing social norms and some interpersonal coordination." In other words, the researchers think that conscientious men are more adept handshakers and this was detected by the participants. For cultural reasons, the researchers think that handshakes don't play as big a role in women's lives and so the same result wasn't found for them. However, they speculated that the same conscientiousness/handshake link might be found with business women who shake hands regularly as part of their professional culture.

"So, are handshakes a window into one's soul?" the researchers asked. "They certainly play a part in generating a first impression, but the data reported here suggest that, with the possible exception of conscientiousness, handshakes should not be considered a necessary diagnostic tool in the evaluation of others. They may, however, predict whether someone will show up for their next appointment with you on time."

If all this talk is causing you concern about your own technique, here's some advice from Emily Post's Etiquette; 'The Blue book of social usage', published in 1940:

"The proper handshake is made briefly: but there should be a feeling of strength and warmth to the clasp, and as in bowing, one should at the same time look into the countenance of the person whose hand one takes."

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Bernieri, F., and Petty, K. (2011). The influence of handshakes on first impression accuracy. Social Influence, 6 (2), 78-87 DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2011.566706

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

How losing can increase your chances of winning

When is losing the route to winning? When you're losing by just a little. That's according to Jonah Berger and Devin Pope who think the paradoxical effect works because losing by a whisker is highly motivating.

Berger and Pope began by studying over 18,000 NBA basketball games. Specifically they compared half-time scores with final results. Much of the data was as you'd expect - the further in the lead a team was at half time, the more likely they were to win the game, and vice versa for teams losing at half time. In fact, there was a reliable pattern - for every two points a team was in the lead at half time, they were six to eight per cent more likely to win out at the end.

But there was also a clear blip in the data. Teams that were behind by one point at half time were actually more likely to end up winning than teams that were ahead by one point. Compared against the larger trend, teams behind by one point were approximately six per cent more likely to win than you'd expect - an effect about half the size of the benefit of playing at home. The researchers don't think it has to do with coaches changing strategy or giving inspiring half-time talks: the 'losing leading to winning' effect was no greater among teams with more successful coaches. Rather, Berger and Pope think the effect is purely to do with the motivating influence of being just a bit behind.

The pair tested this idea with a simple lab task. Participants tapped two keyboard keys alternately as fast as they could for thirty seconds in a race against a partner. Then there was a pause in which they were given false performance feedback: told they were far behind their partner, just behind, tied, just ahead, or given no feedback. The 30-second key-tapping was then repeated. The result was striking. Those participants told they were just behind increased their effort in the second phase far more than all the other participants.

A final study was identical except that the researchers also measured the participants' self-efficacy - that is, their belief in their ability to succeed. The just-behind benefit was replicated and for these participants only, self-efficacy made a big difference. That is, participants told they were just-behind at half-time and who had high self-efficacy were the ones who most increased their effort in the second phase. Losing by a whisker is highly motivating it seems, especially for those who believe they can do something about it.

Berger and Pope think their findings have real-life implications, in business as well as in sport. 'Managers trying to encourage employees to work harder, for example, might provide feedback about how a person is doing relative to a slightly better performer,' they said. 'Strategically scheduling breaks when someone is behind should also help focus people on the deficit and subsequently increase effort. This should lead to stronger performance and ultimately success.'
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Berger, J., and Pope, D. (2011). Can Losing Lead to Winning? Management Science DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1328 PDF via author website. [HT: Ian Leslie]. 

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

Organisations, are your citizens impulsive and your deviants emotionally intelligent?

The following is written by Dr Alex Fradera and is being cross-posted here and over at the new BPS Occupational Digest - a 'child' blog of the Research Digest with a focus on psychology at work.

How would you feel about having someone impulsive join your team? It's possible you'd be concerned: all reckless decisions and blurting out sensitive information, they'll hardly help. How about someone high in emotional intelligence (EI)? A better prospect, surely: mindful of others and pretty decent all round.

In a recent study, Doan Winkel of Illinois State University and his collaborators found a different picture. Impulsivity, the degree to which we act spontaneously, was found to lead to more organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), discretionary behaviours that promote the organisation. Meanwhile emotional intelligence, as measured using an ability-based assessment (a credible research strategy we've noted before), was associated with deviant behaviours that harm the organisation. These findings are based on 234 participants who rated themselves on a series of questionnaire instruments; the participants came from a range of industries, suggesting the effect may be fairly generalisable.

The findings actually aren't so surprising. EI is a useful resource that helps develop networks, figure out hierarchy, and influence others. But the capacity for action that this provides can be put to many uses. The emotionally intelligent may figure out that they can get away with self-interested behaviours such as falsifying receipts, or calculate when a well-timed put-down will serve their interests. By rating items on these and other deviant behaviours, participants with higher EI reported more of these activities.

How can we make sense of the impulsivity finding? Well, OCBs are discretionary and can take time away from assigned responsibilities. “In an ideal world, sure I'd keep on top of organisational developments and help out my struggling colleagues, but now, with this deadline?” reasons the cautious employee. Meanwhile, the rating data suggests that their impulsive colleagues jump in to help more often, less mindful of downsides to doing the right thing. In a sense, impulsivity reflects a 'can-do' spirit, full of motivational energy to act.

The researchers expected to also find more intuitive effects of impulsivity being associated with deviant behaviours and EI relating to organisational citizenship. Surprisingly, these previously reported effects weren't found here, leading the authors to call for a greater understanding of what is needed for them to arise.

This study is not the first to find these kinds of incongruous effects. There's evidence that optimism and cognitive ability, both sought by employers everywhere, also predict deviant behaviour. These counter-intuitive findings are useful; they caution us against viewing individual qualities as forever good or bad, turning organisational people strategy into a game of Top Trumps where we try to collect the 'best'. It's clear instead that a characteristic represents both benefit and risk, is a potential rather than given, and that potential depends on many factors, including the workplace situation itself.
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Winkel, D., Wyland, R., Shaffer, M., and Clason, P. (2011). A new perspective on psychological resources: Unanticipated consequences of impulsivity and emotional intelligence Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 84 (1), 78-94 DOI: 10.1348/2044-8325.002001

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Physical distance boosts the success of computer-based negotiation

A sense of physical distance encourages more abstract thought 

Negotiations that take place over computer, without face-to-face contact, have more chance of success when those negotiating think there is greater physical distance between each other. That's according to Marlone Henderson who says the new finding is compatible with Construal Level Theory. This is the discovery that people think about things more abstractly when they perceive that they're further away in time or space (e.g. see earlier). In terms of negotiations, thinking more abstractly is beneficial because it encourages negotiators to reflect on and express their underlying motives and priorities.

Across two studies, Henderson had over a hundred undergrads form pairs and negotiate via AOL Instant Messenger about either the purchase of a motorcycle, or ways to split several shared prizes. Crucially, some of the pairs were led to believe that their partner was located in a sister lab on the floor below, whereas other pairs were told that their partner was located thousands of feet away in a sister lab on the other side of town. The terms of negotiation were arranged such that each partner had different priorities, so it was possible in theory to reach vary degrees of mutually agreeable outcome.

Overall, the negotiating pairs who thought their partners were located further away, on the other side of town, tended to reach more mutually agreeable terms. To test if this benefit was to do with thinking about one's priorities more abstractly, as Construal Level Theory would predict, Henderson conducted a further study in which some of the negotiating pairs were explicitly instructed to reflect on the motives underlying their negotiation goals. Receiving these instructions led participants who thought their partner was nearby to negotiate just as successfully as participants who thought their partner was on the other side of town, consistent with the idea that the perception of physical distance exerts its usual benefit by encouraging more reflective and abstract thought about negotiation goals. Other explanations for the main result - such as that partners located nearer to each other were more concerned they might bump into each other afterwards - were ruled out by participants' questionnaire answers.

'Our findings imply that negotiators might benefit from waiting until circumstances create a large amount of distance between them before they start negotiating,' Henderson said. However, he concluded with a more profound message. 'More and more, cultures are incorporating increased physical distance into fundamental aspects of human interaction, including distant learning and education, distant therapy and treatment, and distant political participation,' he said. 'Critically, social conflict can arise in any of these areas. The current research helps to understand whether increased geographical distance offers the potential to facilitate social harmony or magnify the social ills of our society, and represents the beginning of a systematic investigation of such issues.'
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Henderson, M. (2011). Mere physical distance and integrative agreements: When more space improves negotiation outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 (1), 7-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.011

How male oil rig staff learned to lose their machismo

Psychologists investigating two (non-BP) deep-water, offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have applauded the working-practices they observed, claiming they allowed the predominantly male workforce to 'undo' gender - that is, to stop pursuing a counter-productive, masculine ideal.

Setting the scene in their new paper, Robin Ely and Debra Meyerson argue that dangerous work-places have traditionally encouraged male staff to 'do gender' by demonstrating physical prowess, taking risks, concealing technical incompetence and coming across as fearless and unflappable. Such behaviours detrimentally affect staff training, lead to accidents and poor decision making, human rights violations, and the marginalisation of female colleagues.  Oil rigs would normally be the classic example of such a work culture, but during several visits to two Gulf of Mexico rigs, the researchers and their colleagues found that a strong corporate focus on safety had led the staff to acknowledge their physical limitations, to be open about their skill shortcomings and freely express their feelings.

Ely and Meyerson highlight three specific work-place factors that they say led the workers to 'undo gender': having collectivist goals (especially putting safety first); defining competence according to task requirements rather than masculine ideals; and having a learning orientation towards work. Regarding the last factor, it was widely accepted on the rigs that people make mistakes and that the important thing is to learn from them. One rig had even established a 'Millionaire Club' to 'honour' workers whose mistakes had cost the company a million dollars (an ironic nod to the IBM sales club that recognised successful salespeople). 'To become a member was not a source of shame,' the researchers explained, 'but rather, a mark of being human.'

Ely and Meyerson think their research has implications beyond dangerous workplaces, including for 'white-collar jobs, such as manager, scientist and lawyer,' which they said can all serve as proving grounds for masculinity. 'In short,' they concluded, 'dangerous workplaces provide a window on how processes associated with masculinity unfold in organisations, and highly effective dangerous workplaces provide a window on how these processes could be different. Indeed, if men can "undo gender" on offshore oil platforms - arguably one of the most macho work environments in the modern world - then they should be able to undo it anywhere.'
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Ely, R., and Meyerson, D. (2010). An organizational approach to undoing gender: The unlikely case of offshore oil platforms. Research in Organizational Behavior, 30, 3-34 DOI: 10.1016/j.riob.2010.09.002

Queen Bees are the consequence not the cause of sexist work-places

Queen Bee is a term used in business psychology to refer to women in senior positions who boast about their own masculine attributes, whilst derogating their female subordinates and endorsing sexist stereotypes. According to articles in the popular press, the presence of Queen Bees is as much a cause of gender inequality at work as is the sexism shown by men. A new article by Belle Derks and her colleagues challenges this claim, arguing instead that sexist work-places are a breeding ground for Queen Bees - that the latter are a consequence, not a cause, of sexism at work.

Derks team surveyed 94 women holding senior positions in several Dutch organisations (in the Netherlands, women make up only 7 per cent of the boards of the largest 100 companies and on average earn 6.5 per cent lower pay than men). The central finding was that those women who showed all the hall-marks of a Queen Bee tended to recall having suffered more sexism and prejudice in their own careers and, moreover, tended to report feeling less identification with other women when they started their careers.

According to Derks and her colleagues, when women join a sexist work-place, they have two options - they can either bolster their ties to other women or they can distance themselves from their feminine identity. The new findings are consistent with the idea that women who have a weaker feminine identity in the first place are more likely to go for the second option. Derks' central point is that it's the sexist culture that forces women to make this choice and start on the path to becoming a Queen Bee.

As with so much psychological research, this study suffers from the serious weakness of being cross-sectional in design. This means that rather than a sexist culture causing women to reject their feminine identity and become a Queen Bee, the effect could work backwards such that being a Queen Bee somehow makes you more likely to recall being the victim of sexism. However, the researchers argue this is unlikely - if anything they think established Queen Bees would be likely to downplay the presence of gender discrimination.

The new results have important implications for organisations seeking to reduce sexism. Simply appointing a few token female senior managers in a sexist culture is likely to backfire as this will dispose them to becoming Queen Bees, thus worsening the situation for their female subordinates. Instead greater emphasis should be placed on reducing sexist beliefs and practices in the organisation. 'In companies that ensure that women can achieve career success without having to forgo their gender identification,' the researchers said, 'women in senior positions are more likely to become inspiring role models who have positive attitudes about the potential of their female subordinates.'
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Derks B, Ellemers N, van Laar C, and de Groot K (2010). Do sexist organizational cultures create the Queen Bee? The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society PMID: 20964948

For group creativity, two narcissists are better than one

"God is really an artist, like me ... I am God, I am God, I am God." Pablo Picasso

Some experts have suggested there's a link between narcissism and creativity - that the self-obsession and self-belief create the necessary time and space for originality to flourish. On the contrary, Jack Goncalo at Cornell University has just published results from three experiments which show that narcissists on their own aren't any more creative than usual, even though they think they are. The narcissist's braggadocio also leads others to overestimate the originality of their ideas. On the other hand, Goncalo's team show that when it comes to group creativity, the competitiveness of multiple narcissists really is beneficial, so long as you don't have too many of them.

Two hundred and forty-four undergrads completed a standardised measure of narcissism (sample items included 'I really like to be the centre of attention')  followed by two classic tests of creativity. One of these involved thinking up new uses for a brick, the other required them to draw a new kind of alien. Students who were more narcissistic didn't excel any more than usual on the creativity tests, but they thought they had.

For the second study, 76 students were formed into pairs and allocated the role of movie pitcher or evaluator. The former had 10 minutes to plan an idea for a new Hollywood movie before pitching it to the latter.

Ideas pitched by students who scored higher in narcissism tended to be rated as more creative and feasible - an association that was mediated by the fact that narcissistic pitchers were perceived as more energetic and enthusiastic. However, when the transcripts of the pitches were coded carefully by independent judges unaware of who had delivered which pitches, the more narcissistic participants no longer scored higher on creativity and feasibility.

The implication seems to be that the braggadocio of the narcissists, rather than the true quality of their ideas, led evaluators to rate their pitches more highly. The researchers said that this finding should be alarming for people who work in fields that lack objective measures of the quality of ideas. 'In such fields, creative output may gradually decline as true creative talent is continuously traded for charisma and enthusiasm,' they warned.

So far the research has challenged the idea that narcissists on their own really are more creative. But what about in groups? The final study involved 292 undergrads completing a measure of narcissism before forming 73 four-person groups. Their task was to suggest ways for a real company to improve its performance. The key finding here was that groups with approximately two narcissists on board tended to outperform those with more or fewer narcissists. Why should this be? Goncalo's team think that the presence of two narcissists generates a healthy dose of in-group competition, thus helping idea generation. However too many narcissists in the proverbial kitchen and the excessive internal competition spoils the creative broth.

'The same needs for recognition and power that cast a dark shadow on narcissists may position them as catalysts for creative colloquy,' the researchers said. 'The results suggest that to capitalise on the narcissists in our midst, we should collaborate with them and encourage them to collaborate with each other. In so doing, groups could turn what is often considered a decidedly negative trait into a valuable source of creative tension.'
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Goncalo JA, Flynn FJ, and Kim SH (2010). Are Two Narcissists Better Than One? The Link Between Narcissism, Perceived Creativity, and Creative Performance. Personality and social psychology bulletin PMID: 20947771

The Social Comparison Bias - or why we recommend new candidates who don't compete with our own strengths

Whether it's a gift for small talk or a knack for arithmetic, many of us have something we feel we're particularly good at. What happens from an early age is that this strength then becomes important for our self-esteem, which affects our behaviour in various ways. For example, children tend to choose friends who excel on different dimensions than themselves, presumably to protect their self-esteem from threat. A new study reveals another consequence - 'the social comparison bias' - that's relevant to business contexts. Stated simply, when making hiring decisions, people tend to favour potential candidates who don't compete with their own particular strengths.

Stephen Garcia and colleagues first demonstrated this idea in a hypothetical context. Twenty-nine undergrads were asked to imagine that they were a law professor with responsibility for recommending one of two new professorial candidates to join the law faculty. Half had to imagine they were a professor with a particularly high number of mixed-quality journal publications. These participants tended to say they would recommend the imaginary candidate with fewer but higher quality publications. By contrast, the other half of the participants were tasked with imagining that they were a professor with few but particularly high quality publications. You guessed it - they tended to recommend the candidate with the lower quality but more prolific publication record. In each case the participants favoured the candidate who didn't challenge their own particular area of (imaginary) strength, be that publication quality or quantity. The participants had been told that the department had a balanced mix of existing staff so it's unlikely their motive was a selfless one based on achieving a balanced team.

To make things more realistic, a second study involved a real decision. Forty undergrads completed verbal and maths tasks to which they were given false feedback. Next, they were presented with the scores achieved by two other students, one of whom they had to select to join their team for an up-coming group 'coordination task' that would involve throwing a tennis ball around. Participants tricked into thinking they'd excelled at the maths tended to choose the potential team member who was weak at maths but stronger verbally, and vice versa for those participants fed false feedback indicating they'd excelled verbally. Again, the researchers argued that it was unlikely the participants were simply striving for a balanced team because the maths and verbal skills in question weren't relevant to the tennis ball task.

A final study involved 55 employees at a Midwestern university - they were asked to imagine that they were in a company role with either high pay or great decision-making power. Next they had to recommend to their company that it either offer high pay or high decision-making power to a new recruit. The participants tended to advise offering the new recruit the opposite of whatever they had. The participants also said the particular perk of their imaginary post - pay or decision-making - would be the most important to their self-esteem.

'The present analysis introduces the social comparison bias: a social comparison-based bias that taints the recommendation process,' the researchers said. 'At a broader level, the social comparison bias might help partially to explain why some top-notch departments or organisational units lose prestige over time ... Individuals unwittingly fail to reproduce departmental strengths by protecting their personal standing instead of the standing of the broader department.'
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Garcia, S., Song, H., and Tesser, A. (2010). Tainted recommendations: The social comparison bias. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 113 (2), 97-101 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2010.06.002

Why are women chosen to lead organisations in a crisis?

The majority of major corporations and countries are headed by men. When women are appointed to leadership positions, it tends to be when an organisation is in crisis - a phenomenon known as the glass cliff. Recent examples include: the appointment of Lynn Elsenhans as CEO of the oil company Sunoco in 2008, just after their shares had halved in value; and the election of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir as prime minister of Iceland, just after her country's economy had been crippled by the global recession.

Real life examples are supported by lab studies in which male and female participants show a bias for selecting female candidates to take charge of fictitious organisations in crisis. Further investigation has ruled out possible explanations for the glass cliff - it's not due to malicious sexism nor to women favouring such roles.

Now a brand new study suggests the phenomenon occurs firstly, because a crisis shifts people's stereotyped view of what makes for an ideal leader, and secondly, because men generally don't fit that stereotype. '...[I]t may not be so important for the glass cliff that women are stereotypically seen as possessing more of the attributes that matter in times of crisis,' the researchers wrote, 'but rather that men are seen as lacking these attributes ...'.

Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla Branscombe first established when the glass cliff is most likely to occur. They presented 119 male and female participants with different versions of newspaper articles about an organic food company. Participants were more likely to select a fictitious female candidate to take over the company if it was described as being in crisis, and its previous three leaders had all been male. For participants who read that the previous managers had all been female, the glass cliff disappeared - they were just as likely to select a fictitious male candidate to take over the crisis stricken firm as they were to select a female.

This finding suggests the glass cliff has to do with people believing that a change from the status quo (from male leaders to a female) is what's needed in a crisis. However, this explanation breaks down because the reverse pattern wasn't found. Participants didn't show a bias for a male candidate to take over a crisis-stricken company that had had a run of three previous female leaders.

A second study explored the role of gender and leadership stereotypes and involved 122 male and female participants reading about a supermarket chain described either as thriving or in crisis. Next the participants rated their impression of two briefly described, fictitious managerial candidates, one male, one female, using attributes previously identified as being stereotypically male (e.g. competitive) or stereotypically female (e.g. strong communication skills). Finally, the participants rated the suitability of each candidate and stated which of them they'd hire.

In a successful context, the male candidate was judged to be more suitable for the role and was more likely to be selected - a replication of the bias seen in real life. More intriguing was that a crisis context led participants to attribute fewer stereotypically female attributes to the male candidate and to judge him as less suitable for the managerial role. Meanwhile, the crisis context didn't alter the qualities attributed to the the female candidate, nor the perception of her suitability. Crucially, however, she was more likely to be selected in the crisis situation - you might say almost by default, given that the male candidate was now seen as being less suitable and having fewer appropriate attributes.

'Our findings indicate that women find themselves in precarious leadership positions not because they are singled out for them, but because men no longer seem to fit,' Bruckmüller and Branscombe explained. 'There is, of course, a double irony here. When women get to enjoy the spoils of leadership (a) it is not because they are seen to deserve them, but because men no longer do, and (b) this only occurs when, and because, there are fewer spoils to enjoy.'
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Bruckmüller, S. & Branscombe, N. (2010). The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49 (3), 433-451 DOI: 10.1348/014466609X466594

Previously on the Digest:

Women need female role models.
Hey girls: Science helps people.
How ambitious mothers breed successful daughters.

Effect of anger on negotiations depends on cultural context

The expression of anger in negotiations can be an effective strategy, several studies have shown, because it is interpreted by others as a sign of toughness, thus encouraging them to make concessions. However, there's a hefty caveat to this conclusion because those studies were conducted entirely in a Western context. Now Hajo Adam and colleagues have attempted to correct this oversight by studying the effect of anger in negotiations conducted by American students hailing from a Western background and American students with an East Asian ancestry. Adam's finding is that expressions of anger backfire in negotiations involving people with an East Asian background. A follow-up study suggested this is because such behaviour is considered culturally inappropriate.

The first study with 63 participants of European ancestry and 67 of East Asian ancestry involved a hypothetical negotiation situation. The students read a transcript of a negotiation between a salesman and client and imagined they were the salesman. Half the students read a version in which the client was described at one point as speaking in an angry tone. The key measure was whether the students said they would agree to add a warranty into the deal or not. The effect of anger was opposite for the two cultural groups: the Western students were more likely to add the warranty (i.e. make a concession) if the client got angry whereas the East Asian students were less likely to add the warranty in this situation.

To increase the realism, a second study involved another 67 European-ancestry students and 88 East Asian-ancestry students taking part in computer-mediated negotiations in pairs, in which they played the role of mobile phone seller. The whole affair was actually fixed by the researchers and computer-controlled but the students were tricked into thinking they were playing with another student. Another twist to the set-up was that the students were occasionally given a 'sneak insight' into their negotiation partner's typed intentions, for example 'I think I'll offer X'. Replicating the first study, the key finding here was that when these insights contained an expression of anger (e.g. 'This is really getting on my nerves, I'm going to offer X') the Western-ancestry students were more likely to make a concession to their negotiation partner whereas the East-Asian ancestry students were less likely to do so.

The final study provided a rather crude test of one possible explanation for the results - that the effect of anger has to do with what's considered culturally appropriate. Dozens of European and East-Asian-ancestry students took part in a replication of the computer-mediated negotiation task, but this time half the students were told in advance that most people express anger in negotiations and that it was acceptable to do so in this study, whereas the other half were told that expressions of anger were rare and it was not acceptable to get angry in the current task. With these instructions in place, the effects of cultural background disappeared. Instead, regardless of students' cultural background, anger was beneficial following the 'anger is ok' instructions whereas it backfired following the 'anger is unacceptable' instructions.

'Although we believe the present results are an important step in understanding how culture and emotions interact in negotiations,' the researchers said, 'the increasingly global nature of society highlights the importance of continuing to investigate the interplay of culture and emotions in a broad array of social settings.'
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Adam H, Shirako A, & Maddux WW (2010). Cultural variance in the interpersonal effects of anger in negotiations. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (6), 882-9 PMID: 20483822