This paper examines how people price the resale of durable goods in systematically biased ways. We show across four studies that the anchoring effect of durable goods’ prior sales prices on subsequent valuations is discontinuous at psychologically salient round number reference points (e.g., $10,000 increments) because these numbers create qualitative differences in how people perceive values below them versus values at/above them. Resellers set disproportionately larger subsequent prices when previous prices move from just below round number thresholds (e.g., $349,000) to those at or just above these thresholds (e.g., $351,000). The findings show that buyers who pay a price just below a round number, therefore, may sacrifice money because they receive disproportionately less when reselling the good. Market forces only partially attenuate this pricing bias, but valuator experience seems to play a moderating role. Archival data show that home buyers who previously paid just under a $10,000 reference point subsequently listed their homes for about 1.8% (over $3,700) less on average than did buyers selling comparable homes who previously paid at or above a round number threshold. This drop is observable controlling for home characteristics and the general relationship between previous and current prices. Three experimental studies looking at housing and used car markets replicate these findings, highlight the mechanism, and increase confidence in causality. Market mechanisms and the negotiation process attenuate discontinuities by about 30%, but lower initial listing prices persist to final sales prices. We find additional weak evidence suggesting that valuator experience may attenuate intergenerational pricing bias. Conflict of Interest: This manuscript was submitted, revised, and accepted prior to the nomination and appointment of Lamar Pierce as Editor-in-Chief. Funding: This project was supported by the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business Behavioral Laboratory. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1632 .

Victims of many types of transgressions may delay voicing accusations of wrongdoing. Across seven studies and a within-paper meta-analysis, we examine whether these victims pay a social cost and, if so, how they can reduce it. We find that people perceive victims who delay (vs. do not delay) voicing accusations to have less psychological standing to accuse their transgressors. People therefore perceive such victims as lacking in integrity-based trustworthiness and, often, in benevolence-based trustworthiness as well. People consequently report greater intentions to avoid such victims, trust them less in an economic game with money at stake, and are less willing to hire them. The findings collectively highlight the difficulty that victims face in moving from silence to voice. We further draw on the triangle model of excuses (e.g., Schlenker, 1997) to identify attributions that attenuate the social cost of victims’ delayed accusations.

Buyers typically strive to negotiate low prices for durable goods. Psychologically-salient round number reference points (e.g., $10,000) influence these purchasing decisions. However, existing research does not capture how these historical reference points influence the anchoring effect of previous sales prices on future valuations. We argue that the anchoring effect of prior sales prices on subsequent prices is discontinuous at round numbers, such that it matters disproportionately whether a previous sales price reached a round-number threshold. Buyers paying a price just below a round number may sacrifice money because they receive disproportionately less when reselling the good. We further argue that while market forces are unlikely to attenuate this effect, highly-experienced professional intermediaries may. Using data on over 13,000 repeat real estate transactions, we find that home buyers who previously paid just under a $10,000 reference point subsequently list and sell their homes for about 1.3 percent (over $2000) less on average than do buyers selling comparable homes who previously paid at or above a round number threshold. This drop is observable controlling for home characteristics and the general relationship between previous and current prices. Buyers who cross a $10,000 threshold by paying $1000 more therefore would earn a return of 215%. An experiment with 1010 participants replicates these findings and increases confidence in causality. Market mechanisms, the negotiation process, and organizational support provided to intermediaries does not correct substantively for these discontinuities: Lower initial listing prices persist to final sales prices. However, using a highly-experienced agent attenuates intergenerational pricing bias.

In recent years, there has been a large body of research examining why employees engage in unethical behavior. Scholars have made substantial progress in terms of understanding the antecedents and processes associated with unethicality. Yet, there remains an important opportunity to more systematically investigate the consequences of unethical behavior from a variety of perspectives. For observers of unethical behavior, there may be a variety of negative consequences as well as potentially unanticipated positive consequences. These effects might occur through the specific morally-relevant emotions, such as anger or vicarious shame, experienced by the observers of unethicality and their subsequent behavioral responses. Additionally, the motives of the transgressor may play an important role in shaping the reactions of others. Observers may also react differently to victims of unethical behavior based on whether the victims decide to forgive the perpetrator. Finally, to pursue ethicality in the workplace, an employee’s own ethical focus on a given day may influence how they feel and whether or not they rise to the occasion when presented with an opportunity to do the right thing. The purpose of this symposium is to deepen scholars’ understanding of the consequences of unethicality via multiple perspectives and methodologies. Are there Benefits or Detriments (or Both) to Observing Coworker Cheating Behavior? Presenter: Marie S. Mitchell; U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Presenter: Shubha Sharma; U. of Georgia Presenter: Mo Chen; School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology Presenter: Mingyun Huai; Tongji U. How does Observing a Member's Unethical Behavior Influence Your Group Behavior? Intention Matters Presenter: Young Won Rhee; U. of Washington Presenter: Elizabeth Eve Umphress; U. of Washington Understanding Why Employees Cover Up Unethical Behaviors Presenter: Jenny Hejia Wang; U. of Guelph Presenter: Laurie Barclay; U. of Guelph To Forgive or to Show Integrity? Forgiveness Decreases Integrity but Increases Benevolence Presenter: Rebecca Schaumberg; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Scott Wiltermuth; USC Presenter: Gabrielle Adams; U. of Virginia Compliant not Courageous? Paradoxical Ethical Consequences of Focusing on Values versus Compliance Presenter: Grace Ching Chi Ho; Arizona State U. Presenter: David Welsh; Arizona State U. Presenter: Michael Baer; Arizona State U. Presenter: John Bush; U. of Central Florida

Seven studies (N = 2,677) illustrate that victims face a tradeoff between being perceived as benevolent or as having high integrity when deciding whether to forgive transgressors. Participants judged forgiving victims to be lower in integrity than non-forgiving victims but higher in benevolence. This finding emerged regardless of whether the victim was an individual or an institution, endured small or great harm, or denounced the transgression as wrong. We theorized that forgiveness reduces victims’ integrity because it signals a prioritization of interpersonal concerns over affirming a core moral value. As predicted, forgiving victims suffered little loss to their integrity when they forgave a non-moral transgression or when an institution punished the transgressor. We find these perceptions produce downstream reputational consequences for victims, affecting how people think victims will perform different work-related tasks. Overall, these findings challenge common wisdom about the forgiveness-morality relationship and highlight a critical dilemma that victims face.

The way people work in teams is changing. The changes are affecting what work teams look like and how those teams function. In years past people worked for the same organizations for many years, perhaps even their whole careers (see Sullivan, 1999 for review). Because their colleagues also stayed in the same organizations for many years, they were likely to work on teams that had relatively stable memberships. This has changed. People now switch employers more frequently and they change roles within organizations more often (Miles & Snow, 1996; Rousseau & Wade-Benzoni, 1995). They are also more likely to work as independent contractors rather than as employees of the company and seek to develop a “boundaryless career” defined as “a sequence of job opportunities that go beyond the boundaries of a single employment setting” (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1996, p. 116).

Buyers often strive to negotiate low prices for durable goods, such as vehicles, homes, appliances, or art. Psychologically-salient round number reference points (e.g., $10,000) influence these purchasing decisions. However, existing research does not capture how these round-number reference points from the past influence the anchoring effect of previous sales prices on future resale valuations. We argue that the anchoring effect of prior sales prices on subsequent prices of durable goods is discontinuous at round numbers, such that it matters disproportionately whether a previous sales price reached a round-number threshold. Buyers paying a price just below a round number may sacrifice money because they receive disproportionately less when reselling the good. We use data on over 13,000 repeat residential real estate transactions and an approach similar to a regression discontinuity design to find that real estate buyers who previously paid an amount just under a $10,000 reference point subsequently list and sell their homes for about 1.3 percent (over $2000) less on average than do buyers selling comparable homes who previously paid at or above this threshold. This drop is in addition to the expected price based on home characteristics and the general relationship between previous and current sales prices. A laboratory experiment with 1010 participants increases confidence in causality. We also find that market mechanisms and the negotiation process do not correct for these discontinuities: Lower initial listing prices carry through to final sales prices. However, we find strong evidence suggesting that using a highly-experienced agent attenuates these effects.

In this research, we challenge the belief that positive signals of morality always increase job candidates' appeal to interviewers. In four experiments with both experienced and novice interviewers, we find that signals of the candidates' morality interact with the nature of the industry such that candidates who send signals of morality arelesslikely to be selected for jobs in a morally tainted industry, compared to neutral candidates. Moderated mediation analyses indicate that this effect is driven by a perceived lack of job fit (Experiments 1 and 2). Results of Experiment 3 indicate that this moderation effect is limited to candidates who signal morality-candidates applying for jobs in morally tainted industries who signal immorality do not enjoy a competitive advantage over moral or morally neutral candidates. Finally, the framing of the organization, that is, whether critical aspects of the organization are presented as more morally or economically oriented, within morally tainted industries helps mitigate the penalizing effects interviewers put on candidates who signal their morality-a moral frame eliminates this negative effect whereas an economic frame does not (Experiment 4). Together, these studies indicate that a job candidate's morality is a complicated and important quality that can profoundly affect his/her ratings of hireability.

Employees engaging in wrongs is an unfortunate workplace reality that can prove costly for organizations. Although research has shown that individuals respond destructively to such behavior, emerging work has shown that some turn the other cheek and react in a kindhearted manner (e.g., forgive, reconcile). The literature is still in its infancy; we do not have a full understanding of when and why people react in a kindhearted manner, and what the consequences are of these kindhearted reactions to organizations. This symposium addresses this research agenda by: (1) examining different antecedents of kindhearted reactions, such as features of the wrongdoing (e.g., seriousness, intentionality), individual factors of individuals engaging in the kindhearted reaction (e.g., perspective taking, narcissism), situational factors (e.g., climate, power), and different types of wrongdoing (e.g., abusive supervision, misconduct) that influence kindhearted reactions; (2) identifying different types of kindhearted reactions (e.g., coworker protective behavior, forgiveness, leniency); (3) highlighting behavioral strategies and psychological mechanisms (e.g., gossip, unfairness) that explain how kindhearted reactions influence outcomes; (4) exploring distal consequences of kindhearted reactions, such as emotions, perceptions, and behaviors; and (5) uncovering moderators (i.e., offender need, gender, mindfulness) that influence the impact of kindhearted reactions on downstream outcomes.

A single transgressor sometimes harms more than just 1 victim. We examine a previously undocumented social cost of forgiving following these multiple-victim transgressions. We find that nonforgiving victims believe that other victims who forgive the common transgressor make their decisions to withhold forgiveness appear ungenerous. Faced with this threat, nonforgiving victims report that other forgiving (vs. nonforgiving) victims have overclaimed their standing to forgive the common transgressor and consequently perceive these forgiving victims as demonstrating a lack of benevolence toward them. Nonforgiving victims also perceive forgiving victims to have relatively little integrity. We test these social costs of forgiving in the field and in the lab across 7 studies plus a meta-analysis of 5 of those studies. We also identify 1 route by which forgiving victims can attenuate the social costs they face: they can affirm other victims' decisions to withhold forgiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Management scholars have typically regarded the widespread instances of hypocrisy across business, religious, and political institutions to be motivated and strategic. We suggest, however, that hypocrisy may stem not only from people's motivation to interpret and utilize information in a self-serving manner but also from fundamental differences in people's access to that information itself. More specifically, we present a multi-stage theory of ethical accounting (TEA) that describes how this differential access to information, specifically about the self versus others, can create an interrelated series of cognitive distortions in how people account for the same unethical behavior. TEA posits that such distortions can allow people to believe they are being fair and consistent when appraising the morality of the self and others while actually being inconsistent in how they do so, and describes how this can ultimately make it harder to address not only hypocrisy but also unethical behavior more broadly in organizations.

The purpose of this symposium is to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the social and the moral, and how this relationship can better inform management theory and practice. Drawing from a myriad of traditions and methods, these presentations all seek to explicate how moral judgment and behavior relate to social and organizational phenomena. The presentations touch on topics as diverse as the role of cognitive social networks in moral behavior, how interview questions drive moral judgment, how perceptions of corporations compare to perceptions of other targets, and whether immoral actors can accurately judge how others will perceive their behavior. Cheater’s Hide and Seek: Strategic Cognitive Network Activation During Ethical Decision Making Presenter: Julia Lee; U. of Michigan Presenter: Tanya Menon; Ohio State U. Presenter: Dong-Kyun Im; Seoul National U. Evaluating Moral Character Traits Using Behavioral Interview Questions Presenter: Yeonjeong Kim; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Presenter: Taya R. Cohen; Carnegie Mellon U. - Tepper School of Business Presenter: A.T. Panter; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Corporate Insecthood Presenter: Nina Strohminger; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Matthew Jordan; Yale U. The Attribution of Immoral Actors’ Motives: Observer Accuracy and Actor Meta-Accuracy Presenter: Jeffrey Martin Lees; Harvard Business School Presenter: Liane Young; Boston College Presenter: Adam Waytz; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management

Recent research (Wiltermuth, Tiedens, & Neale, 2015) has indicated that negotiators may use expressions of dominance and submissiveness to discover mutually-beneficial solutions and thereby create more joint value. We examined how the perceived relative power of negotiators who express dominance influences value claiming and value creation in negotiations. Negotiators with relatively little power benefitted by expressing dominance, as expressing dominance increased relatively low-power negotiators' abilities to claim value. In contrast, relatively powerful negotiators' expressions of dominance fueled value creation. Dyads in which only the relatively powerful negotiator expressed dominance created more value than did dyads in which neither, both, or only the relatively powerless negotiator expressed dominance. The coordination benefits attributable to dominance complementarity were therefore best achieved when there was congruence between a negotiator's perceived power and the power/status cues the negotiator sent through expressions of dominance.

Across six studies, people judged creative forms of unethical behavior to be less unethical than less creative forms of unethical behavior, particularly when the unethical behaviors imposed relatively little direct harm on victims. As a result of perceiving behaviors to be less unethical, people punished highly creative forms of unethical behavior less severely than they punished less-creative forms of unethical behavior. They were also more likely to emulate the behavior themselves. The findings contribute to theory by showing that perceptions of competence can positively color morality judgments, even when the competence displayed stems from committing an unethical act. The findings are the first to show that people are judged as morally better for performing bad deeds well as compared to performing bad deeds poorly. Moreover, the results illuminate how the characteristics of an unethical behavior can interact to influence the emulation and diffusion of that behavior. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Society generally encourages individuals to forgive their transgressors because forgiveness can yield many psychological, physiological, and social benefits (Exline & Baumeister, ). Nevertheless, victims face barriers to forgiving others, and other people face obstacles that prevent them from encouraging victims to forgive. We aim to provide insight into the various barriers that deter forgiveness by examining the role of the various parties involved—victims, transgressors, and uninvolved third parties—in creating barriers to forgiveness. We contend that beliefs held by these various parties significantly reduce the likelihood that victims will forgive their transgressors. By identifying how these beliefs impede forgiveness, we can begin to understand more fully why convincing victims to forgive is often a challenge. In our discussion, we also suggest ways by which victims, transgressors, and third parties can overcome these barriers to forgiveness.

Forgiveness plays an important role in the maintenance of interpersonal relationships. We argue that although victims who forgive relinquish their right to punish their transgressors and consequently sacrifice punishment-based power, forgiving transgressors increases how much power victims feel that they possess over their transgressors. Across five studies, those who forgave their transgressors reported having more power over their transgressors than did those who did not forgive their transgressors. Victims’ beliefs that forgiveness signaled that they had moved beyond the transgression and had taken control of the transgression’s resolution mediated the link between forgiveness and power. Furthermore, forgiveness did not reliably alter transgressors’ perceptions of how much power victims held over them. These findings contribute to the extant literature on forgiveness by identifying an unexplored benefit of forgiving one’s transgressor - a perceived sense of power over one’s transgressor.

We integrate self-efficacy theories of motivation and distraction theories of emotion regulation to propose that job demands boost the self-evaluation and performance of employees characterized by low self-esteem and high trait procrastination. We reason that job demands minimize these individuals’ negative self-directed affect. We find support for these predictions in three experiments that manipulated the physical (Study 1) and cognitive (Studies 2 & 3) demands of a task. These task demands boosted the self-evaluation (Studies 1 & 2) and performance (Study 3) of participants high in trait procrastination and participants’ low in self-esteem, but exerted no or a negative effect on these outcomes for participants low in trait procrastination or high in self-esteem. Moreover, whereas trait procrastination and low self-esteem were associated with greater negative self-evaluation and lower performance in low job demand contexts, they showed no relationship with these negative outcomes in high job demand contexts. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the influence of these traits and job demands on employee performance.