From job candidates to entrepreneurs, people often face an inherent tension between the need to share personal accomplishments and the need to avoid appearing arrogant. We propose that humorbragging-incorporating self-enhancing humor into self-promoting communications-can signal warmth and competence simultaneously, leading to instrumental benefits. Four studies explored humorbragging as a potential solution to the self-promotion paradox. Study 1 demonstrated that a humorbragging (vs. self-promoting) resume attracted more hiring interest from recruiters. Study 2 showed that perceived warmth and competence mediate the positive effect of humorbragging on hiring intentions. Study 3 found that humorbragging entrepreneurs achieved greater success securing funding compared to entrepreneurs who used other kinds of humor. Finally, Studies 4a to 4c established that the positive effect of humorbragging on hiring intentions is unique to self-enhancing humor. Overall, the current research establishes the instrumental benefits of humorbragging and explains why and when it functions as an effective impression management strategy.

Competition is prevalent in organizations. For example, people often compete against their colleagues for status and recognition in the workplace or for opportunities for advancement. Workers also compete against others to get hired into organizations in the first place. It is thus both practically and theoretically important to understand the interpersonal consequences of competition–broadly construed–in organizations. We present five empirical papers that examine understudied or poorly understood areas of research related to organizational competition and provide novel insights into the consequences of competition on important organizational outcomes such as hiring, group decision making, organizational fit perceptions, and negotiation outcomes. The first paper draws on theories from the realm of the psychological consequences of competition and optimal distinctiveness to shed light on instances when workers are more likely to join groups in which their salient identities will be underrepresented. The second paper significantly extends rivalry theory by integrating it with other theories of motivation and performance and uncovers two key moderators of the effects of rivalry on performance. The third paper examines how feelings of (in)authenticity shape the experiences and behaviors of individuals following a status gain. The fourth paper draws on theories of regulatory focus and attribution to examine the impact that being an alternate choice has on newcomer socialization behaviors and outcomes, such as feedback seeking and performance. The fifth paper expands upon the conflict expression theoretical framework, evidencing why status claims may backfire and how challengers can manage the defender’s perceptions of the status negotiation. Together, we hope the papers in this symposium provide important insights into the consequences of competition in organizations and provide actionable insights for managers, while also spurring future research by academics. Organizational Competition: A Catalyst for Workplace Diversity and Desires for Uniqueness Presenter: Samantha Nicole Smith; Harvard Business School Presenter: Edward Chang; Harvard Business School Presenter: Erika Kirgios; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Katherine Milkman; U. of Pennsylvania The Role of Identity Authenticity in Shaping Group-Oriented Behaviors Following Status Gains Presenter: Sarah Doyle; U. of Arizona Presenter: Sijun Kim; Texas A&M U., Mays Business School Presenter: Hee Young Kim; Rider U. How Individual Skill and Risk of Status Loss Moderate the Effects of Rivalry on Performance Presenter: Tom Grad; Copenhagen Business School Presenter: Christoph Riedl; Northeastern U. Presenter: Gavin J. Kilduff; New York U. Alternate Choice Aftermath: Implications for Newcomer Socialization Presenter: Samir Nurmohamed; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Zoe Schwingel-Sauer; Ross School of Business, U. of Michigan Respect Affirmation: A Strategy for Claiming Status in Status Negotiation Presenter: Jieun Pai; U. of Virginia Presenter: Corinne Bendersky; U. of California, Los Angeles

Power, defined as individuals’ asymmetric control over valuable resources, is a central reality of organizational life. Decades of power research have offered us plenty of insights into how the powerful think, feel, and behave. However, researchers contend that this emphasis on high power may have resulted in an insufficient understanding of low-power individuals, and that taking a static view of power may have hampered the development of the literature. To help move the literature forward, our symposium contains two papers that focus explicitly on the effects of low power, one paper that investigates the causes of increasing power, and one paper that examines the effects of power fluctuations. Taken together, these papers extend our understanding and generate new research directions for how the power literature can move forward. How do Low-Power Individuals Compete? An Investigation of Covert Competition Presenter: Yufei Zhong; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Huisi Li; Georgia Institute of Technology The Power to Leverage Your Power: How Social Power Affects the Use of Negotiation-Specific Power Presenter: Alice J. Lee; Columbia Business School Presenter: Nicholas Hays; Michigan State U. Presenter: Huisi Li; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Adam Galinsky; Columbia Business School The Distortionary Power of Naysaying: Naysaying and Negativity Inflate Decision Makers’ Confidence Presenter: Jieun Pai; U. of Virginia Presenter: Eileen Chou; U. of Virginia The Energizing Effect of Daily Power Fluctuations Presenter: Hae-Lyeng Rose Kim; Robert H. Smith School of Business, U. of Maryland Presenter: Trevor Foulk; Robert H. Smith School of Business, U. of Maryland Presenter: Michael Schaerer; Singapore Management U. Presenter: Jake Gale; U. of Florida Presenter: Eric Anicich; U. of Southern California

Although the literature provides widespread evidence for the effect of power on action, a systematic understanding of why low power individuals are less prone to action is still lacking. We focus on proactive behavior as a particular form of action and propose a relational underpinning of the link between low power and reduced proactive behavior through the framework of attachment theory. We predict that the experience of low power will increase attachment anxiety, and that this increase in attachment anxiety will reduce proactive behavior. We test the proposed theory in a series of four pre-registered experiments and one quasi-experimental field study. In Study 1, 2, and 3, we test the mediating role of attachment anxiety on the relationship between low power and proactivity. In Study 4 and 5, we test theoretically driven attachment security interventions to mitigate the link between low power and reduced proactivity. We demonstrate that attachment security interventions help low power individuals to be more proactive in an organizational field quasi-experiment (Study 4) and in an experiment (Study 5). Overall, we find support for attachment anxiety as an important factor in the experience of low power individuals which inhibits proactive behavior; we further offer a powerful intervention grounded in attachment theory to ameliorate this effect.

When people willingly volunteer their time, how does the salience of the opportunity costs of their time influence their experience of the activity? Study 1 uses the American Time Use Survey Well-Being module to examine whether the subjective experience of happiness while volunteering is influenced by how people are paid and the opportunity costs of their time spent volunteering. Among hourly paid workers for whom there is a salient heuristic for the opportunity costs of time, we found that higher opportunity costs of time as indicated by income and duration of the activity were associated with diminished happiness experienced during volunteering. No differences across income and duration emerged among non-hourly workers for whom there was not a salient heuristic for the opportunity costs of time. Using a student population who all volunteered for the same charity activity, Study 2 tested whether making the opportunity costs salient caused less happiness to be reported from the activity than those in the control condition. These studies contribute to our understanding of the psychological consequences of thinking about time in terms of money and how it may influence the hedonic experience of activities people choose to undertake in the applied context of volunteering.

Building on research showing that organizational practices that highlight the monetary value of time can affect decisions about time use, we examined how income and the economic evaluation of time jointly predict decisions about socializing with others who can be instrumentally useful to people (e.g., colleagues). Using a multimethod approach of surveys and experiments, we found that income was a stronger predictor of both the economic value placed upon socializing with colleagues outside of work as well as the propensity to engage in such activities. When the economic value of time was high, individuals weighed the instrumental value of networking more heavily in their decision making about how to allocate time. These findings illustrate how organizational pay practices and the salience of income can influence decisions about daily social interactions outside of work.

Social hierarchy is a fundamental and pervasive part of organizational functioning. Given the profound importance of hierarchies in groups and organizations, a number of influential theoretical and empirical papers have been published in recent years. However, potentially rich topics at the cutting edge of theory are as of yet under-explored, leaving theoretical gaps in the hierarchy literature that our symposium begins to address. In this symposium, four papers will highlight the existing gap in the literature by exploring the psychological experience of holding high status (compared to holding high power or low status), the reduced group identification of individuals in the middle of the hierarchy, the paranoia experienced by powerless individuals, and the motivation and effort to maintain one’s current status. Together, the papers complement each other to explore the full spectrum of hierarchy – top, middle, low, and directionality. The Interdependence-Efficacy Theory of Status: Understanding the Psychological Experience of Status Presenter: Nicholas Hays; Michigan State U. Presenter: Alice J. Lee; Columbia Business School Presenter: Steven Blader; New York U. Presenter: Adam Galinsky; Columbia U. Middle Group Identity: A Curvilinear Relationship between Group Status and Member Identification Presenter: Sora Jun; U. of Texas at Dallas Presenter: Brian Lowery; Stanford U. Powerless and Paranoid: The Effects of Powerlessness on Paranoia and Hostile Behaviors Presenter: Michael Schaerer; Singapore Management U. Presenter: Trevor Foulk; U. of Maryland Presenter: Christilene Du Plessis; Singapore Management U. Presenter: Min-Hsuan Tu; U. of Florida Presenter: Satish Krishnan; Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode Striving for the Status Quo: Stasis-Striving, Inauthenticity, and Psychological Distress in High-Achievement Contexts Presenter: Jieun Pai; U. of California, Los Angeles Presenter: Eric Anicich; U. of Southern California Presenter: Jennifer Ann Whitson; U. of California, Los Angeles

The dynamics that underlie social hierarchy among individuals represent some of the fastest growing research areas in management and related sciences (Fiske, 2010; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Rucker, Galinsky, & Magee, 2018), and with good reasons hierarchy is a fundamental element of social life and impacts a wide range of important individual outcomes. Two of the most prominent and fundamental hierarchical dimensions in the social sciences are status and power (Blader & Chen, 2012; Blau, 1964; Fiske, 2010; Kemper, 2006; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Weber, 1964). Although individuals’ power and status may co-vary, there are nevertheless meaningful distinctions between them: power is defined as asymmetric control over valued resources in relationships (Emerson 1962; Magee & Galinsky, 2008), whereas status is defined the degree of respect, esteem, and prestige that an individual holds in the eyes of others (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). The prevalence and significance of social hierarchy has prompted a considerable amount of research that links both status and power to various outcomes. However, most of the existing literature on status and power has focused on their individual-level and dyadic-level effects. Only recently, researchers have turned their attention to examining social hierarchy at the team level, studying topics such as status conflict (Bendersky & Hayes, 2012), status disagreement (Kilduff, Willer, & Anderson, 2016), status asymmetry (Tzabbar & Vestal, 2015), and power disparity (Tarakci, Greer, & Groenen, 2016). This symposium contributes to this emerging trend of studying status and power in teams and organizations. Together, the four empirical papers shed new light on effects of power and status at the team level. We anticipate that our symposium will stimulate new perspectives and raise important questions about social hierarchy as well as teams. We hope it will foster greater sophistication in future theorizing and empirical work on power and status. Getting Ahead by Tearing Others Down - When Are Status Challenges Effective Presenter: Jieun Pai; U. of California, Los Angeles Presenter: Jessica Alynn Kennedy; Vanderbilt U. Presenter: Corinne Bendersky; U. of California, Los Angeles When Does Status Differentiation Benefit Team - The Moderating Role of Power Differentiation Presenter: Huisi Li; Cornell U. Presenter: Xue Yang; Nanjing U. Presenter: Ya-ru Chen; Cornell U. The Impact of Power, Status, and Regulatory Focus on Team Performance Presenter: Nicholas Hays; Michigan State U. Presenter: Bradley Jamieson; Michigan State U. Presenter: Jo K. Oh; Michigan State U. Presenter: Andrew Yu; U. of Melbourne Presenter: John R. Hollenbeck; Michigan State U. The Effect of Norm Violation on Power Perception and Power Affordance Presenter: Min Zhang; U. of California, San Diego Presenter: Pamela K. Smith; U. of California, San Diego

Status conflicts, defined as disputes over people’s relative status positions in their group’s social hierarchy, are a common feature of groups and organizations. Despite their prevalence, there is still much about the process of status conflict that is not well understood. Here, we review the primary antecedents of status conflict, their impact on team functioning, and directions for future research.

We examine how pay practices, such as hourly payment, that promote an economic evaluation of time affect people’s choices about with whom to socialize off the job. Using multiple waves of the American Time Use Survey, Study 1a found people paid by the hour spent more time and a greater percentage of their total socializing outside of work in the presence of colleagues, with these effects occurring primarily for high earners for whom time was the most economically valuable. Study 1b eliminated some alternative explanations for this finding by showing that people reported experiencing less happiness while socializing with colleagues than when socializing with family or friends, with no differences observed in experienced happiness as a function of either the economic value of time or whether people were paid by the hour. In a large representative online sample, Study 2 conceptually replicated the findings of Study 1a. Hourly respondents and non-hourly participants experimentally prompted to economically evaluate their time by calculating their approximate hourly wage exhibited highly similar patterns in their intentions to socialize with colleagues outside of work. In addition to offering causal evidence for economic evaluation, mediation analyses indicated that it was through emphasizing professional usefulness over enjoyment in socializing decisions that explained these differences in intentions. The findings show how organizational practices promoting economic evaluation can affect people’s choice of with whom to spend time off the job, with potential implications for both happiness and career trajectories.

Despite an extensive history of research on status (the prestige, respect, and esteem that a party has in the eyes of others), the time is ripe for a new review of the status literature given a fairly recent trend to study the dynamic nature of status, that is, not just how individuals acquire status, but also how they maintain or lose it over time. Greater understanding of dynamic status processes better informs our predictions about individuals' behavior and group outcomes as a function of the kinds of status interactions that play out over time.

The approach/inhibition theory of power asserts that elevated power is associated with approach-related behaviors, whereas reduced power is associated with inhibition-related behaviors. Although the literature has shown profound evidence for the effect of power on approach-related behaviors, our knowledge of the mechanism underlying the powerlessness-inhibition link remains limited. Because power exists within social relationships, our research elucidates a relational underpinning of the link between powerlessness and inhibition–through the framework of attachment theory. We predicted that lack of power induces state attachment anxiety, and this increase in attachment anxiety further inhibits one’s actions. Data from five experiments provide support for our hypothesis using multiple manipulations and measures. Our results highlight that the link between powerlessness and inhibition is explained by a shift in state attachment anxiety (concern about interpersonal rejection), and not by state attachment avoidance (withdrawal from interpersonal closeness).

This study extends regulatory fit theory by exploring boundary conditions of the temporal fit/nonfit effect on subordinate creativity. We propose that fit (nonfit) between subordinates’ regulatory focus and the temporal distance of a leader-stipulated task enhances subordinate creativity under task-enjoyment (performance-concern) conditions. Data supported the nonfit hypothesis among promotion-focused subordinates: Subordinates who were more promotion-focused showed greater creativity after recalling a leader-stipulated, temporally near task when they concentrated on doing well rather than on enjoying the task. Prevention-focused subordinates showed no such patterns for creativity. Implications for managing employee creativity in the competitive, performance-pressured organizational and business environment are discussed.