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Across three laboratory studies, this paper illustrates how a common strategic decision aimed at increasing one's own power—investing in outside options—can lead to opportunistic behavior in exchange relationships. We show that the extent to which individuals have invested in creating outside options increases the likelihood that they will exploit their current exchange partners, even after controlling for the leverage provided by the outside options. Our results demonstrate that having previously sunk investments in an outside option leads to a heightened sense of entitlement, even when the outside option has been foregone. In turn, feelings of entitlement result in higher aspirations for what is to be gained in the current relationship, and these aspirations fuel opportunism. Finally, we show that other parties may fail to anticipate these effects, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

This paper investigates whether an employee's perception of customer wealth affects his likelihood of engaging in illegal behavior. We propose that envy and empathy lead employees to discriminate in illicitly helping customers based on customer wealth. We test for this hypothesis in the vehicle emissions testing market, where employees have the opportunity to illegally help customers by passing vehicles that would otherwise fail emissions tests. We find that for a significant number of inspectors, leniency is much higher for those customers with standard vehicles than for those with luxury cars, although a smaller group appears to favor wealthy drivers. We also investigate the psychological mechanisms explaining this wealth-based discriminatory behavior using a laboratory study. Our experiment shows that individuals are more willing to illegally help peers when those peers drive standard rather than luxury cars, and that envy and empathy mediate this effect. Collectively, our results suggest the presence of wealth-based discrimination in employee–customer relations and that envy toward wealthy customers and empathy toward those of similar economic status drive much of this illegal behavior. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

When a person's language appears to be political-such as being politically correct or incorrect-it can influence fundamental impressions of him or her. Political correctness is "using language or behavior to seem sensitive to others' feelings, especially those others who seem socially disadvantaged." One pilot study, 6 experiments, and 3 supplemental experiments (N = 4,956) demonstrate that being politically incorrect makes communicators appear more authentic-specifically, less susceptible to external influence-albeit also less warm. These effects, however, are moderated by perceivers' political ideology and how sympathetic perceivers feel toward the target group being labeled politically correctly. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3 using politically incorrect language (e.g., calling undocumented immigrants illegals) made a communicator appear particularly authentic among conservative perceivers but particularly cold among liberal perceivers. However, in Experiment 4 these effects reversed when conservatives felt sympathetic toward the group that was being labeled politically correctly or incorrectly (e.g., calling poor Whites white trash). Experiment 5 tests why political incorrectness can boost authenticity, demonstrating that it makes communicators seem less strategic. Finally, Experiment 6 examines the use of political language in a meaningful field context: perceived persuasion in real political debates. Debaters instructed to be politically correct (vs. politically incorrect) were judged by their uninstructed conversation partners to be easier to persuade during the conversation, although they actually reported being similarly persuaded. Together, these findings demonstrate when and how using politically incorrect language can enhance a person's authenticity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In this paper, we examine the consequences of social networking for an individual's morality, arguing that the content and approach of networking have different implications for how a person feels during the development and maintenance of social ties. We focus in particular on professional-instrumental networking: the purposeful creation of social ties in support of task and professional goals. Unlike personal networking in pursuit of emotional support or friendship, and unlike social ties that emerge spontaneously, instrumental networking in pursuit of professional goals can impinge on an individual's moral purity—a psychological state that results from viewing the self as clean from a moral standpoint—and thus make an individual feel dirty. We theorize that such feelings of dirtiness decrease the frequency of instrumental networking and, as a result, work performance. We conducted four studies using both field and laboratory data from different populations to investigate the psychological consequences of networking behaviors. Two experiments provide support for a causal relationship between instrumental networking for professional goals, feeling dirty, and need for cleansing. A survey study of lawyers in a large North American business law firm offers correlational evidence that professionals who experience feelings of dirtiness from instrumental networking, relative to those who do not, tend to engage in it less frequently and have lower job performance. With regard to sources of variability in dirtiness from instrumental networking for professional goals, we document that when those who engage in such networking have high versus low power, they experience fewer feelings of dirtiness. An additional experimental study constructively replicates this finding.

Abstract
This research examines how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. A series of studies demonstrates that people confer higher status and competence to nonconforming rather than conforming individuals. These positive inferences derived from signals of nonconformity are mediated by perceived autonomy and moderated by individual differences in need for uniqueness in the observers. An investigation of boundary conditions demonstrates that the positive inferences disappear when the observer is unfamiliar with the environment, when the nonconforming behavior is depicted as unintentional, and in the absence of expected norms and shared standards of formal conduct.

Socialization theory has focused on enculturating new employees such that they develop pride in their new organization and internalize its values. We draw on authenticity research to theorize that the initial stage of socialization leads to more effective employment relationships when it instead primarily encourages newcomers to express their personal identities. In a field experiment carried out in a large business process outsourcing company in India, we found that initial socialization focused on personal identity (emphasizing newcomers' authentic best selves) led to greater customer satisfaction and employee retention after six months than socialization that focused on organizational identity (emphasizing the pride to be gained from organizational affiliation) or the organization's traditional approach, which focused primarily on skills training. To confirm causation and explore the mechanisms underlying the effects, we replicated the results in a laboratory experiment in a U.S. university. We found that individuals working temporarily as part of a research team were more engaged and satisfied with their work, performed their tasks more effectively, and were less likely to quit when initial socialization focused on personal identity rather than on organizational identity or a control condition. In addition, authentic self-expression mediated these relationships. We call for a new direction in socialization theory that examines how both organizations and employees can benefit by emphasizing newcomers' authentic best selves.

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 experiments (n=290, n=188), an organization-based field study (n=94), and a negotiation simulation (n=124) demonstrate that giving advice enhances the advisor's sense of power because it gives the advisor perceived influence over others' actions. Two of our studies further demonstrate that people with a high tendency to seek power are more likely to give advice than those with a low tendency. This research establishes advice giving as a subtle route to a sense of power, shows that the desire to feel powerful motivates advice giving, and highlights the dynamic interplay between power and advice.