Humblebragging: A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy

Ovul  Sezer; Francesca  Gino; Michael I. Norton

Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Humblebragging: A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy

by Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton

Abstract

Self-presentation is a fundamental aspect of social life, with myriad critical outcomes dependent on others’ impressions. We identify and offer the first empirical investigation of a prevalent, yet understudied, self-presentation strategy: humblebragging. Across nine studies, including a week-long diary study and a field experiment, we identify humblebragging—bragging masked by a complaint or humility—as a common, conceptually distinct, and ineffective form of self-presentation. We first document the ubiquity of humblebragging across several domains, from everyday life to social media. We then show that both forms of humblebragging—complaint-based or humility-based—are less effective than straightforward bragging, as they reduce liking, perceived competence, compliance with requests, and financial generosity. Despite being more common, complaint-based humblebrags are less effective than humility-based humblebrags and are even less effective than simply complaining. We show that people choose to deploy humblebrags particularly when motivated both to elicit sympathy and impress others. Despite the belief that combining bragging with complaining or humility confers the benefits of each strategy, we find that humblebragging confers the benefits of neither, instead backfiring because it is seen as insincere.

Keywords: Humblebragging; impression management; Self-presentation; interpersonal perception; competence; liking; sincerity; Behavior; Perception; Interpersonal Communication; Personal Characteristics;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Sezer, Ovul, Francesca Gino, and Michael I. Norton. "Humblebragging: A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 1 (January 2018): 52–74.

We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then show that in contentious policy discussions, government executives who were rated as more receptive—according to our algorithm and their partners but not their own self-evaluations—were considered better teammates, advisors, and workplace representatives (Study 2). Furthermore, using field data from a setting where conflict management is endemic to productivity, we show that conversational receptiveness at the beginning of a conversation forestalls conflict escalation at the end. Specifically, Wikipedia editors who write more receptive posts are less prone to receiving personal attacks from disagreeing editors (Study 3). We develop a “receptiveness recipe” intervention based on our algorithm. We find that writers who follow the recipe are seen as more desirable partners for future collaboration and their messages are seen as more persuasive (Study 4). Overall, we find that conversational receptiveness is reliably measurable, has meaningful relational consequences, and can be substantially improved using our intervention.

When a person’s language appears 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, six experiments, and three 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 tests our hypothesis in an externally valid field context: exploring the impact of politically incorrect language on perceived persuasion in real political debates. Debaters instructed to be politically incorrect (vs. politically correct) were judged by their uninstructed conversation partners to be less easily persuaded 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.

Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020

RBC: Transforming Transformation (A)

Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Aldo Sesia

In 2017, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a Canadian financial icon, mandated a swat team of “enablers of collaboration” (their job description) to support the personal and commercial bank in the enterprise-wide RBC Cultural Transformation initiative. Historically, personal and commercial banks (P&CB) maintained long relationships with their clients who tended to do most if not all of their banking with one bank. However, by 2017, industry-wide change was well underway as switching costs had become negligible if not non-existent. New entrants were disrupting the banking industry as digitization allowed upstarts to break through long-standing barriers to entry. RBC’s Cultural Transformation, intended to reposition the enterprise for the “new normal” in the financial industry, included the creation of this team of collaboration enablers (called Operations Transformation or OT) to drive efficiencies across operations within the current fulfillment operating model and importantly to envision and enable a new digital operating model where people only intervened in a transaction when there was an exception, i.e., a transaction that fell outside the technology’s capabilities. OT was tasked with enabling—through collaboration and without radical surgery—the day-to-day optimization of P&CB fulfillment activities and facilitating major change in the way work was done. At the time of the case, eighteen months in, the team was seeing mixed results, which deeply troubled its leadership. Questions abounded: Was it foolish to try to enable major change through collaboration without upending the traditional RBC organization with more radical approaches? Or was the OT group not structured correctly to enable it—and if not, what changes should be made? Was a different collaboration model needed? Internally, some questioned whether the group was optimally located within the organization (as part of the back office organization structure), since the back office was often viewed as more of a servant to the front office. Others wondered if OT’s internal structure was getting in the way of its purpose. The case examines three major transformation projects that OT is collaborating on with colleagues from Banking Operations and Risk Operations to understand what contributed to less than hoped for results. With this information OT leadership needs to think about changes, if any, moving forward from a structural, organizational, and capability perspective.

Keywords: Service Delivery; Technology; Transformation; Change Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Decision Making; Human Resources; Management Systems; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Management Teams; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Canada;

Citation:

Bernstein, Ethan, Francesca Gino, and Aldo Sesia. "RBC: Transforming Transformation (A)." Harvard Business School Case 920-008, June 2020. View Details

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Humblebragging: A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy

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