It Pays to Be Yourself

Francesca Gino
hbr.org
Originally posted 13 Feb 20

Whether it’s trying to land a new job or a new deal or client, we often focus on making a good initial impression on people, especially when they don’t know us well or the stakes are high. One strategy people often use is to cater to the interests, preferences, and expectations of the person they want to impress. Most people, it seems, believe this is a more promising strategy than being themselves and use it in high-stakes interpersonal first meetings. But research I conducted with Ovul Sezer of the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laura Huang of Harvard Business School found those beliefs are wrong.

Our research confirmed that catering to others’ interests and expectations is quite common. When we asked over 450 employed adults to imagine they were about to have an important professional interaction — such as interviewing for their dream job, conducting a valuable negotiation for their company, pitching an entrepreneurial idea to potential investors, or making a presentation to a client — 66% of them indicated they would use catering techniques, rather than simply being themselves; 71% reported believing that catering would be the most effective approach in the situation.

But another study we conducted found that catering was much less effective than being yourself. We asked 166 entrepreneurs to participate in a “fast-pitch” competition held at a private university in the northeastern United States. Each entrepreneur presented his or her venture idea to a panel of three judges: experienced, active members of angel investment groups. The ideas pitched were all in the early stages; none had received any external financing. At the end of the event, the judges collectively deliberated to choose 10 semifinalists who would be invited to participate in the final round. After entrepreneurs made their pitches, we had them answer a few questions about their presentations. We found that when they were genuine in their pitches, they were more than three times as likely to be chosen as semifinalists than when they tried to cater to the judges.

The info is here.

The lesser of two evils: Explaining a bad choice by revealing the choice set

Andras Molnar & Shereen J. Chaudhry
PsyArXiv
Last edited 4 Feb 20

Abstract

Making the right choice does not always lead to a good outcome—sometimes there are only bad outcomes to choose from. Situations like this are likely to lead others to misunderstand the decision maker’s intentions. However, simply revealing the choice set could set the record straight. Are decision-makers intrinsically driven to fix this misjudgment? If so, why, and what is the effect on the audience? Previous studies could not examine this desire to be understood because the research designs used did not isolate the decision to reveal information from the original choice. In two experiments (N=448 pairs), we address this gap in the literature and show that people are willing to pay ex post to reveal their choice set to the person who was negatively affected by their decision (the recipient), even after a one-shot anonymous interaction with no reputational consequences, and in some cases even when doing so reveals their selfish intentions. We find that this revealing behavior is effective at improving recipients’ rating of their outcome when it signals generous intentions, but not when it signals selfish intentions. It follows that the choice to reveal is driven by concern for the thoughts and feelings of strangers, but only when revealing signals generous intentions; those who reveal a choice that appears selfish report doing so out of a desire to be and/or appear honest. Individual differences in the drive to reveal cannot be explained by selection effects or mistakes in predicting the observer’s reaction. Thus, we find that people are intrinsically (i.e., even in one-shot anonymous settings) driven to correct a misunderstanding of their intentions, but they may do so for a variety of reasons, not all of which are self-enhancing. And though some people leave a misunderstanding in place when it is self-enhancing to do so, almost no one is willing to create a misunderstanding (by hiding the other option), even when it could conceal selfish behavior.

The research is here.

Building trust by tearing others down: When accusing others of unethical behavior engenders trust

Jessica A. Kennedy, Maurice E. Schweitzer.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume 149, November 2018, Pages 111-128

Abstract

We demonstrate that accusations harm trust in targets, but boost trust in the accuser when the accusation signals that the accuser has high integrity. Compared to individuals who did not accuse targets of engaging in unethical behavior, accusers engendered greater trust when observers perceived the accusation to be motivated by a desire to defend moral norms, rather than by a desire to advance ulterior motives. We also found that the accuser’s moral hypocrisy, the accusation's revealed veracity, and the target’s intentions when committing the unethical act moderate the trust benefits conferred to accusers. Taken together, we find that accusations have important interpersonal consequences.

Highlights

•    Accusing others of unethical behavior can engender greater trust in an accuser.
•    Accusations can elevate trust by boosting perceptions of accusers’ integrity.
•    Accusations fail to build trust when they are perceived to reflect ulterior motives.
•    Morally hypocritical accusers and false accusations fail to build trust.
•    Accusations harm trust in the target.

The research is here.