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• Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 2018

  Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control

  D. A. Tian, J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton and F. Gino

  Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in six experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual prior to a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures enacted were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline undergirded the facilitative effect of rituals on behavioral self-control. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts.

  Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Health;

  Citation:

  Tian, D. A., J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton, and F. Gino. "Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 6 (2018): 851–876.  View Details

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• Article | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | May 2018

  Advice Giving: A Subtle Pathway to Power

  M. Schaerer, L.P. Tost, L. Huang, F. Gino and R. P. Larrick

  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.

  Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Behavior; Power and Influence;

  Citation:

  Schaerer, M., L.P. Tost, L. Huang, F. Gino, and R. P. Larrick. "Advice Giving: A Subtle Pathway to Power." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 44, no. 5 (May 2018): 746–761.  View Details

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• Article | Academy of Management Journal | April 2018

  Compromised Ethics in Hiring Processes? How Referrers' Power Affects Employees' Reactions to Referral Practices

  Rellie Derfler-Rozin, Bradford Baker and F. Gino

  In this paper, we explore referral-based hiring practices and show how a referrer’s power (relative to the hiring manager) influences other organizational members’ support (or lack thereof) for who is hired through perceptions of the hiring manager’s motives and morality. We apply principles derived from the literature on attribution of motives to research on relational power to delineate a model that explains employees’ moral evaluations of and reactions to referral practices based on the power relationship between a referrer and a hiring manager. Specifically, we predict that employees are more likely to see the acceptance of a referral from a higher- (as opposed to a lower-) power referrer as a way for the hiring manager to gain more power in the relationship with the referrer, thereby attributing more self-interested motives and more counter-organizational motives to the hiring manager in such situations. These motives are then associated with harsher moral judgments of the hiring manager, which in turn lead to less support for the hiring decision. We find support for our model in two experimental studies and two field studies. We discuss implications for the literature on referral practices, ethics, and observers’ reactions to power dynamics.

  Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Ethics; Perception;

  Citation:

  Derfler-Rozin, Rellie, Bradford Baker, and F. Gino. "Compromised Ethics in Hiring Processes? How Referrers' Power Affects Employees' Reactions to Referral Practices." Academy of Management Journal 61, no. 2 (April 2018): 615–636.  View Details

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