AREP Projects

Researchers: Christof Brandtner and Aaron Silverman, PhD Candidates, Sociology

We hypothesized that non-profit and for-profit organizations attract public support by using different kinds of messages in their mission statements. Do for-profit organizations benefit from signaling efficiency while non-profit organizations benefit from signaling values? To examine this question, we administered an online survey experiment to 253 volunteers from the Alumni Research Experience Program (AREP) pool. Participants evaluated two organizational profiles by expressing their level of support (e.g. willingness to patronize/donate to/promote the target organization) for each organization and the extent to which they thought each organization was efficient, moral, unusual, and authentic. The kinds of organizations participants evaluated varied by industry (grocery store vs. childcare program), sector (non-profit vs. for-profit), and mission statement (emphasized measurable outcomes vs. emphasized universal values).

We found that regardless of the mission statement, non-profit organizations received significantly greater support than did for-profit organizations because non-profits were perceived to be more moral and authentic than were for-profits. Furthermore, for-profit child-care organizations received significantly less support when they had a mission statement that emphasized values, as opposed to emphasizing measurable outcomes. Mediation analyses suggest that this penalty is due to perceived phoniness on the part of the for-profit child-care facility, which is consistent with economic research on contract failure. While this research is still under active investigation, our data do point to some preliminary inferences. First, non-profits maintain a competitive edge against for-profits in the same industry because they seem more moral or authentic in pursuit of their mission. Second, organizations that generate profits from interacting with children will earn more support if they emphasize concrete outcomes by which their charges benefit from the experience. Our next steps prior to publication are to extend the research design to further industries. This addition will allow us to evaluate what explains differences in the nonprofit premium across contexts. We also further investigate the linkages between different forms of instrumental and value-rational expressions, such as formal structures, goal statements, and activities.

Researcher: Andrew Pearlmutter, PhD Candidate, Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business

In this study, we investigated whether and how overworking behavior in job candidate would be perceived differently for men and women. We hypothesized that male overworking candidates, as compared with female candidates who overworked, would be perceived more positively as more competent and relatable than female candidates, who would be perceived more negatively by comparison for the same behavior. We did not find the gender-based differences in candidate evaluations that we hypothesized.

Researcher: Seth Werfel, Graduate Student, Political Science

The goal of this study was to explore the direction of spillover effects associated with prosocial behavior. The hypothesis was that initial prosocial behavior (prior behavior that was intended primarily to benefit others rather than oneself), that is framed as progress toward a goal will induce negative spillover, while initial prosocial behavior that is framed as commitment toward a goal will induce positive spillover (when prior behavior increases the likelihood of future behavior). This hypothesis was tested in the context of subjects' voluntary participation in AREP itself, which was randomly framed as either progress or commitment toward social science research. The outcome variable measured support for increased federal funding of social science research. The results of the study indicate that there was no statistically significant different in levels of support across all experimental conditions. This null finding may be attributed to either a lack of statistical power, a weak operationalization of the treatment, or an incorrect hypothesis.

Researcher: Jessica Santana, PhD Candidate, Sociology

“Multiplexity and the Tolerance of Failure” Presented at the Academy of Management 2016 Annual Meeting, Anaheim, USA, August 2016.
“Multiplexity and the Tolerance of Failure” Presented at the American Sociological Association 2016 Annual Meeting, Seattle, USA, August 2016.

Exchange relations rely on the mutual confidence that each party will fulfill its contractual obligations. When one party fails to meet its obligation, the contract is broken and the exchange relation should cease. Yet, examples abound of such relations continuing despite transactional failures. This study considers the role of relational dimensionality, or multiplexity, in the maintenance of underperforming ties. Multiplexity, or relational dimensionality, is the "overlap of roles, exchanges, or affiliations" (Verbrugge 1979). In other words, two people may know each other as friends, coworkers, classmates, and many other relational dimensions. We expect multiplexity to provoke a re-evaluation of an exchange actor’s identity hierarchy. If the actors’ identity hierarchies are similar, the exchange relation will be strengthened and failure will be tolerated. We leverage the salience of transactional failure in the context of startup investments to experimentally evaluate the effect of multiplexity on relational commitment. We find that the effect of multiplexity depends on the population, supporting the role of identity distance in actor bonding.

Researcher: Sarah Harkness, PhD Candidate '11, Sociology

One of the key ways individuals accumulate new wealth is first through the receipt of credit, yet the process of obtaining credit is potentially fraught with bias.  Researchers have examined various lending processes and have consistently documented group-level disparities in funding outcomes.  New forms of credit markets have been developed with the partial intent of mitigating these inequities.  They allow peers to finance each other without having to go through conventional lending institutions whose members may, perhaps inadvertently, use discriminatory underwriting methods.  Known as peer-to-peer lending markets, these online forums allow individuals to publicly display their lending requests and credit information in the hopes of finding lenders who will finance them.  In these markets, much as in more traditional lending scenarios, borrowers tend to display their personal information, which reveals many indicators on which bias and discrimination may be based.  In this project, I examine one type of indicator by assessing the extent to which status and trustworthiness systematically bias funding decisions while controlling for classic measures of creditworthiness.  I expect that lenders use status as an indicator of creditworthiness, in that they will entrust their resources to higher status individuals whom they assume have the competence to use the funds faithfully and repay the loan.

To assess implicit bias and discrimination in lending practices, participants evaluated a series of systematically varied loan applications using two different methodologies.  Both studies reveal that assessments of status and trustworthiness strongly influence all types of funding decisions.  Additionally, the results demonstrate the importance of examining the effects of status indicators, such as gender, race/ethnicity, and education, in consort as the combinations of these characteristics yield striking results.  For instance, while white males are highly advantaged in terms of their loan outcomes overall, they are strongly penalized for demonstrating a lack of educational development.  The intersections of race and gender also show that African American males continue to be highly disadvantaged in a wide variety of lending decisions, while the funding that African American females receive is similar to that of white males.  Overall, these results suggest that status indicators influence assessments of creditworthiness in complex ways, but, more generally, status and trustworthiness appear to be a source of systematic bias in lending. 

This study addresses one potential path through which preexisting status divisions and social inequalities perpetuate themselves by demonstrating that those who are advantaged by their characteristics in all levels of the socio-economic hierarchy will have their economic and social circumstances enhanced by virtue of their status distinctions, while lower status individuals will not be so privileged and may even be harmed.  By examining the decision-making processes behind lending, this project also helps illuminate how implicit bias and assessments of competence that vary by status groups may affect funding decisions in traditional credit markets more broadly.  Obtaining credit allows many individuals to eventually generate new wealth.  Yet, wealth accumulation is one of the predominant disparities of our time, thereby making the examination of the mechanisms underlying the receipt of credit so important.

Researcher:  Dean Eckles, PhD Candidate ‘13, Communications

In this study we investigated how people's perceptions of what their attitudes are based on and their beliefs about what their attitudes ought to be based affect the certainty of those attitudes. In somewhat more technical language, we investigated the interactive effects of preferred and perceived attitude bases on attitude certainty. Participants evaluated a number of consumer products which were presented with the (ostensible) evaluations of these products by others (peer opinions). Of course, since little other product information was available, these peer opinions affected participants' attitudes towards the products. Likewise, participants who said that one ought not to use such majority opinions in determining one's own attitude were less influenced by these peer opinions. Following this initial product evaluation, participants were given random feedback about whether their attitudes were based on the consensus information. When participants were told they likely based their attitude on consensus information but also think one ought not to do so, their attitude certainty was reduced following the feedback.

This study was a first investigation into such metacognition -- thinking about one's own thinking process -- in persuasion.   This work is part of a larger investigation into individual differences in persuasion. Our previous work has demonstrated large individual differences in how people respond to particular influence strategies. This research helps to explain why some of these observed differences exist. We hope to help push psychological research towards better accounting for variation among people. Applications include commerce, political communication, coaching, and behavior-change support.

Researcher:  Gaurav Sood, PhD Candidate ‘11, Political Science