The use of algorithms hold promise for overcoming human biases in decision making.Companies and governments are using algorithms to improve decision-making for hiring, medical treatments, and parole. Unfortunately, as with humans, some of these algorithms make persistently biased decisions, functionally discriminating people based on their race and gender.Media coverage suggests that people are morally outraged by algorithmic discrimination, but here we examine whether people are less outraged by algorithmic discrimination than by human discrimination. Six studies test this algorithmic outrage asymmetry hypothesis across diverse discrimination in hiring practices (sexism, ageism, racism) and across diverse participant groups (online samples, a quasi-representative sample, and a sample of tech workers). As predicted, people are less morally outraged by algorithmic discrimination. The studies further reveal that this algorithmic outrage asymmetry is driven by the reduced attribution of prejudicial motivation to machines. We also reveal a downstream consequence of algorithmic outrage asymmetrypeople are more likely to endorse racial stereotypes after algorithmic discrimination versus human discrimination. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results, including the potential weakening of collective action to address systemic discrimination.

Physical and emotional intimacy between humans and robots may become commonplace over the next decades, as technology improves at a rapid rate. This development provides new questions pertaining to how people perceive robots designed for different kinds of intimacy, both as companions and potentially as competitors. We performed a randomized experiment where participants read of either a robot that could only perform sexual acts, or only engage in non-sexual platonic love relationships. The results of the current study show that females have less positive views of robots, and especially of sex robots, compared to men. Contrary to the expectation rooted in evolutionary psychology, females expected to feel more jealousy if their partner got a sex robot, rather than a platonic love robot. The results further suggests that people project their own feelings about robots onto their partner, erroneously expecting their partner to react as they would to the thought of ones' partner having a robot.

Several political analysts, communication strategists, and academics have speculated that leaders who openly defy the norms of political correctness may gain a reputation for honesty and integrity, which may make them come across as more trustworthy. The present article reports the results from two randomized vignette-based experiments exploring the potential link between managers’ political incorrectness and perceived trustworthiness. The results offer no support for the notion that managers who make politically incorrect statements will come across as more trustworthy. On the contrary, the levels of perceived trustworthiness were found to be substantially lower for managers who express politically incorrect views, compared with those who express contrasting politically correct views.

Purpose This paper details an experimental study (n=197) that explores how different types of managerial change justifications affect employees’ reactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of managerial justification of a controversial decision in referential terms, ideological terms or a combination of the two. Design/methodology/approach A randomized controlled experiment was used applying case-based video clips to ensure vividness and realism in the experimental manipulation. Findings The results show that referential justification caused a drop in the perceived trustworthiness of management, such that it reduced employees’ perceptions of the manager’s integrity. The effect was most pronounced in participants having elevated levels of dispositional resistance to change. The drop in perceived integrity was indirectly associated with reduced intention to support the change together with adverse affective and cognitive reactions to change. Originality/value A robust test of different change justifications in a randomized, controlled setting, which also highlights the psychological mechanisms through which referential change justifications reduce follower trust. This result should help managers more readily understand the components of successful communication in organizational change.

The #MeToo movement spurred a handful of corresponding #HeToo cases, in which men voiced their experiences of sexual harassment by female aggressors. The general public seemed to respond differently to #HeToo cases compared to the #MeToo cases. As the #HeToo and #MeToo cases differed in morally relevant ways, a direct comparison of public reactions cannot comprehensively explore whether peoples’ evaluation of sexual harassment is influenced by the gender of the aggressor and victim. We performed two experiments (total N = 260), in which participants read a description of sexual harassment from a manager toward an employee. For half of the participants, the manager was referred to as a man, and the employee was described as a woman; for the other half, the manager was described as a woman, and the employee was referred to as a man. We expected participants to judge the case as significantly more harmful and repugnant when the aggressor was a man and the victim was a woman compared to the opposite scenario. However, our analyses revealed a pattern of gender differences. Female participants perceived the case as equally bad whether the aggressor was male or female. Male participants reacted equally strongly to the case of sexual harassment performed by a male aggressor. By contrast, male participants viewed the case as far less serious and warranting milder reactions when the aggressor was female and the victim was male. This suggests the trivialization of sexual harassment of male victims by female aggressors is largely driven by men.

In some jobs, the correlation between effort and output is almost zero. For instance, money managers are primarily paid for luck. Using a controlled lab experiment, we examined under which conditions workers are willing to put in effort even if the output (and thus their employer’s earnings) is determined by pure luck. We varied whether the employer could observe the workers’ effort, as well as whether the employer knows that earnings were determined by luck. We find that, workers believed that the employer will reward their effort even if their effort does not affect earnings. Consequently, workers work harder if the employer could observe their (unproductive) effort. Moreover, even when the employer only saw earnings and not effort, workers labored harder if the employer did not know that earnings were determined by luck.