Large CEO-employee pay gaps often elicit negative reactions, yet they have reached historic highs with limited resistance. How can this be explained? Developing a novel social comparison perspective, we propose that under specific circumstances pay inequality may yield positive reactions. We argue that perceived similarity with a CEO enhances acceptance of CEO pay, a process driven by elevated inspiration. We tested this prediction in four studies: a large international archival survey, a pre-registered survey of U.S. employees, and two pre-registered experiments. In the archival survey, we demonstrate that perceived similarity to CEOs, when measured indirectly, reduced support for income-inequality-reduction policies, and this effect appears-to-emerge across cultures. Converging experimental evidence reveals that employees who perceived greater similarity to their CEOs are more accepting of high CEO pay, due to feeling more inspired. These findings help elucidate why extreme pay disparities are often accepted, even though they may reinforce broader societal inequality.

High-rise construction increasingly dominates the contemporary urban landscape. We show that the physical built environment is linked to lay theories about social power. In five experiments (N = 1,091), we comprehensively test the bi-directional causal link between floor location in high-rises and perceived social power. First, using immersive virtual reality (VR) experience of floor location within a physical urban environment (Experiment 1) and traditional experimental designs (Experiments 2–3), we demonstrate that information about a person’s floor location affects perceptions regarding that individual’s social power. Second, we find that information about a person’s social power influences inferences about that individual’s location on higher floors (Experiment 4) and encourages greater monetary outlays for the higher locations of powerful employees (Experiment 5). These findings carry important implications for social hierarchies and inequality, individual choices and policy implications in the urban environment, and the use of VR in environmental perception and cognition research.

While a positive view of calling has been ubiquitous since its introduction into the literature over two decades ago, research remains unsettled about the extent to which it contributes to various aspects of the good life: an optimal way of living well via worthwhile endeavors. Further, scholars have identified two conceptual types of calling, marked by internal versus external foci; yet their differential impact on outcomes indicative of the good life, such as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being (characterized by the experience of purpose and meaning versus pleasure and happiness, respectively), is unknown. Through a meta-analysis of 201 studies, we provide the first systematic review focused on these two fundamental theoretical issues in the calling literature: how strongly related callings are to outcomes in the domains of work and life and which type of calling (internally or externally focused) more strongly predicts these outcomes, if either. We find that callings more strongly relate to outcomes indicative of the good life than recently argued. We further find that callings are more strongly linked to work than to life outcomes and to eudaimonic than to hedonic outcomes. The two types of calling converge in being associated with many similar outcomes, but they show some divergence: internally focused callings are more positively related to hedonic outcomes and less positively related to eudaimonic outcomes, relative to externally focused callings. This finding supports a view of callings as hierarchically structured, with a higher-order calling factor composed of two correlated yet distinct lower-order calling types. Integrating our meta-analytic findings with relevant literatures, we propose a theoretical model that addresses psychological and social need fulfillment through which different types of callings contribute to the good life.

Taking a follower's perspective on leadership and contributing to the new research stream on behaviors conducive to its emergence, we examined how distinct types of instrumental (task focused) helping-autonomy- versus dependency-helping-affected recipients' support for their helpers' leadership. Based on the literature on employees' needs for autonomy and mastery, combined with the empowering nature of autonomy-helping, we reasoned that autonomy- (vs. dependency-) helping typically signals greater benevolence toward recipients, enhancing their support for their helpers' leadership. Our findings were generalized across various samples (of U.S. and Israeli employees), manipulations, and research settings: simulations (Studies 1 and 2b), workplace role-play scenario (Study 2a), and recollections of helping events in the workplace (Study 3). We found that autonomy- (vs. dependency-) helping increased recipients' support for their helpers' leadership by heightening perceptions of helpers' benevolence-based (rather than ability-based) trustworthiness (Studies 1 and 3). We also showed time pressure to be a boundary condition under which the advantage of autonomy-helping disappeared (Studies 2a and 2b)-with dependency-helping then inducing comparable levels of perceived benevolence and thus similar support for the helper's potential leadership. Overall, we shed light on the development of informal leadership by uncovering how recipients interpret and respond to the two help types. Practically, this analysis opens the door to new ways for aspiring managers to enhance support for their leadership from potential followers, available even to those unlikely to be appointed to formal leadership positions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

All jobs, managerial or entry-level, inevitably require unpleasant tasks. Traditional research on power's corrupting tendencies might suggest that powerholders, given their reduced constraints and greater self-focus, would put minimal effort into undesirable work. Yet drawing on theorizing and evidence regarding power as wielded in organizations, we posit that structural power will instead yield feelings of task responsibility, fostering increased engagement with unpleasant tasks. In two correlational field studies, employees' structural power predicted responsibility for and, in turn, engagement with, a real-life work task. This indirect effect was stronger for unpleasant than pleasant tasks. In two experiments using a vivid virtual team context, a team-leader role increased participants' felt responsibility for and, in turn, their engagement with, an unpleasant task. These findings illuminate the tendency of workplace power to promote the pursuit of shared goals and therefore engagement in tasks that are important for organizations, yet undesirable to complete.

What makes people ascend the organizational hierarchy? Is being true to the inner-self an effective strategy to achieve and maintain power? Given the importance of organizational hierarchy in work-life, we test whether targets' authenticity–the degree to which individuals connect with and act upon their true selves–leads perceivers to accord targets more power. Because authenticity is considered a virtue reflecting the moral inner-self, we further posit that the effect of authenticity on power affordance is due to its perceived morality. Extending previous research on the antecedents of power affordance, we propose authenticity as a novel path to organizational power benefiting even those with limited resources. Across four preregistered experiments (total N=1,648), we reveal that authenticity enhances power affordance (Experiments 1-4) and can even trump initially low power levels (Experiment 2). We further demonstrate, using both measurement-of-mediation (Experiment 2) and moderation-of-process (Experiment 3) designs, that perceived morality accounts for the effect of authenticity on power affordance. Finally, we test our predictions in a vivid virtual team context involving personal stakes (Experiment 4), and show the generalizability of the authenticity-power affordance effect. Overall, these findings provide insight into how authenticity can be used as a strategic means to attain workplace power.

Congratulations: You've finished your training, landed your first software job, and started your journey as a professional. Your growth, though, is just getting started. Some engineers carry around a specific dream, like solving a problem they loathe or helping a community they love. Absent that, or assuming good work at a software company is part of your vision, I'll offer you a placeholder goal: to solve the biggest problems your abilities allow, constantly challenging yourself and nurturing your technical and people skills. While other chapters discuss many of those skills in detail, this chapter will focus on the trajectory per se, including self-study and mentorship, while also discussing how companies evaluate performance.

This study provides the first comprehensive meta-analysis of the relationship between calling and its central constructs. This approach sheds light on what we know, as well as what we do not know, about calling’s relationships with a range of outcomes, antecedents, and correlates to outline an agenda for future research.

Much is known about stress and its resulting strain (i.e., negative outcomes such as burnout or impaired health), but not about how we perceive others' strain and what the outcomes of such strain perceptions are. We integrated the social-projection and stress-mindset literatures to investigate, for the first time, the effect of holding a stress-is-enhancing, versus a stress-is-debilitating, mindset on social judgments of a target's strain, on the perceiver's consequent perceptions of the target's promotability, and on his or her intention to voluntarily help the target. We argued that perceivers may project their own stress-mindsets onto others, resulting in egocentrically-biased judgments of the latter's strain. We conducted four experimental and correlational studies, among 971 fully-employed Americans and Israelis, using a novel stress-mindset manipulation. We predicted and found evidence that, independent of the effects of mood, individuals holding a stress-is-enhancing versus a stress-is-debilitating mindset were less likely to judge a target experiencing a heavy workload as suffering from burnout, somatic symptoms, or presenteeism (i.e., reduced productivity at work due to health problems). We also revealed two important downstream outcomes: whereas the lower strain judgments associated with a stress-is-enhancing mindset led to a higher estimate of the target's promotability, they also led to a lower likelihood of helping him. Taken together, our findings establish a causal link between stress-mindset and judgments of others' strain, thereby extending the novel notion of stress-mindset beyond intra-personal outcomes to inter-personal effects. Results provide a foundation for future work addressing the accuracy of judgment of others' stress experience.

The urban space of the twenty-first century is markedly dominated by high-rise construction. We explore how this extensive phenomenon relates to people’s lay theories of power. Drawing from socioecological psychology and seminal linguistic work on vertical metaphors of power, we test the bi-directional link between floor location and perceived power in five experiments. Experiments 1–3 demonstrate that information about a powerful (vs. powerless) individual leads to inferences about this individual’s greater preference of, willingness to pay for, and actual location on higher floors. Experiments 4–5 demonstrate that information about an individual’s higher (vs. lower) floor location leads to inferences about this individual’s greater power. We discuss the implications of our findings for power signaling in real-world settings, social polarization and inequality, and pricing of high floors.

Across five experiments (total N = 715), we propose that people can gain a subjective sense of power by being authentic—in other words, state authenticity breeds power. Supporting this, participants reported feeling more powerful when they visualized themselves behaving authentically versus inauthentically (Study 1), or recalled a time when they felt authentic versus inauthentic (Studies 2-4). Studies 3 and 4 revealed that authenticity (vs. inauthenticity) likely drives the authenticity-to-power effect. Finally, Study 5 showed that perceivers infer others’ power and make important downstream judgments (i.e., likelihood of being an effective negotiator and leader), based on others’ authenticity. Importantly, our findings could not be explained by positive affect or by preexisting power differences, and held across diverse situations (e.g., those absent of social pressure). Implications for state authenticity as a strategic means to attain power and for understanding its dynamic nature and effects are discussed.

People hold different beliefs about the causal role of will in shaping future life outcomes. We examine how temporal distance from a predicted event influences such beliefs, or attributions to will. Laypersons conceptualize will as acting according to one's goals, being free from constraints. We reasoned that construal of a future event or action in terms of individual's superordinate goals (rather than in terms of concrete aspects of the situation) would be associated with enhanced attributions to will. Drawing from Construal Level Theory, we proposed that predictions about temporally distant events rely more on high-level aspects (e.g., superordinate goals) than low-level aspects (e.g., contextual factors) and thus will result in greater attributions to will compared to predictions about near events. We show that an increase in temporal distance enhances beliefs in the causal impact of will in shaping outcomes of the self (Study 1) and others (Study 3). We also show that the individual tendency to construe actions in terms of goals (as assessed by the Behavior Identification Form) is associated with greater attributions to will (Study 2). We conclude that construal of an event in terms of superordinate goals (due to the manipulation of psychological distance or to individual differences) enhances attributions to will.

Information people rely on when making self-predictions may be influenced by temporal distance and the self-enhancement motive. We proposed, drawing from Construal Level Theory, that temporally distant (vs. near) predictions reflect the "gist" self-attributes, rather than other attributes ("noise"). Based on the self-enhancement literature, positive (vs. negative) attributes will be perceived as the "gist." In three studies, we tested the hypothesis that positive attributes are more prominent in distant predictions. Distant (compared to near) predictions reflect the "gist" attributes, are more positive and confident (Study 1). Such predictions rely on positive (rather than negative) attributes (Study 2). Distant predictions reflect a greater better-than-average effect, better ratings on positive (and not-as-bad on negative) attributes in comparison to peers (Study 3). These tendencies hold true for individuals with varying levels of self-esteem (Studies 1, 3). The studies suggest that temporal distance and motivation to enhance the favorability of self-concept both influence prediction.

One approach to career pursuit encourages people to prioritize doing what they love and to pursue their passions, as exemplified by Steve Jobs’ statement that “the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.” A second approach prioritizes achieving outcomes such as salary and job security, as exemplified by Alison Green’s article in U.S. News & World Report: “‘Do what you love,’ for most people, is not a reliable way to find the right career – and can lead to anxiety, job-hopping and dissatisfaction…”

Pursuing happiness can paradoxically impair well-being. Here, the authors propose the potential downsides to pursuing happiness may be specific to individualistic cultures. In collectivistic (vs. individualistic) cultures, pursuing happiness may be more successful because happiness is viewed--and thus pursued--in relatively socially engaged ways. In 4 geographical regions that vary in level of collectivism (United States, Germany, Russia, East Asia), we assessed participants' well-being, motivation to pursue happiness, and to what extent they pursued happiness in socially engaged ways. Motivation to pursue happiness predicted lower well-being in the United States, did not predict well-being in Germany, and predicted higher well-being in Russia and in East Asia. These cultural differences in the link between motivation to pursue happiness and well-being were explained by cultural differences in the socially engaged pursuit of happiness. These findings suggest that culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness is linked with better or worse well-being, perhaps via how people pursue happiness.

While making early career decisions in which pursuing what one loves and earning a secure living are at odds with one another, when and why will the intrinsic considerations prevail over the extrinsic considerations? We posit that a key factor in resolving this dilemma in favor of the intrinsic side of the career is the sense of calling, a consuming, meaningful passion people experience toward the domain. We test the connection between early callings (in adolescence) and later career pursuit (in adulthood) and the mediating role of perceived and actual abilities (in young adulthood) in a career context in which the intrinsic and extrinsic sides of a career can clash: the path to become a professional musician. In an 11-year 5-wave longitudinal study of 450 amateur high school musicians progressing from adolescence to adulthood, we found that regardless of their actual musical ability, people with stronger early callings were likely to perceive their abilities more favorably, which led them to pursue music professionally. Our findings thus indicate an intriguing pattern in which the experience of stronger early callings led to greater perceived ability that was not reflected in greater actual ability. Perceived ability, rather than objective ability as assessed by awards won in music competitions, led to subsequent career pursuit. We discuss implications for theory and research on the nature and consequences of calling, as well as for career decision making, both in general and in challenging career contexts in particular.

We examine whether variations in men and women’s attributions of power to their negotiation counterpart underlie gender differences in negotiation outcomes. In four studies, we demonstrate that women attribute greater power to their counterpart compared to men, and that this difference accounts for men’s greater propensity to negotiate compared to women. We also identify moderators of this effect, such as feminine stereotype activation and explicit information about the counterpart’s power. Gender differences in attributions for power and propensity to negotiate were ameliorated when feminine stereotypes about negotiation were activated, and when the counterpart’s power, operationalized as a Best Alternative to the Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), was unambiguous, regardless of whether it was strong or weak. Furthermore, given that SES is an important antecedent to power, women performed better when their negotiation counterpart was of lower compared to higher Socio-Economic Status (SES, i.e., Arab vs. Jewish Israeli), and attributions for the counterpart’s power mediated this effect. Implications for research on gender, power and negotiation are discussed.