According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in five US national survey studies. We found that (a) low-income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government; (b) low-income Latinos were more likely to trust in US government officials and to believe that 'the government is run for the benefit of all' than were high-income Latinos; (c) low-income respondents were more likely than high-income respondents to believe that large differences in pay are necessary to foster motivation and effort; (d) Southerners in the USA were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North; (e) low-income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary; and (f) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one's own economic situation. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the dissonance-based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Implications for theories of system justification, cognitive dissonance, and social change are also discussed.

Drawing on social identity theory and social-cognitive theory, we hypothesize that organizational identification predicts unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) through the mediation of moral disengagement. We further propose that competitive interorganizational relations enhance the hypothesized relationships. Three studies conducted in China and the United States using both survey and vignette methodologies provided convergent support for our model. Study 1 revealed that higher organizational identifiers engaged in more UPB, and that this effect was mediated by moral disengagement. Study 2 found that organizational identification once again predicted UPB through the mediation of moral disengagement, and that the mediation relationship was stronger when employees perceived a higher level of industry competition. Finally, Study 3 replicated the above findings using a vignette experiment to provide stronger evidence of causality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Despite the importance of self-awareness for managerial success, many organizational members hold overly optimistic views of their expertise and performance-a phenomenon particularly prevalent among those least skilled in a given domain. We examined whether this same pattern extends to appraisals of emotional intelligence (EI), a critical managerial competency. We also examined why this overoptimism tends to survive explicit feedback about performance. Across 3 studies involving professional students, we found that the least skilled had limited insight into deficits in their performance. Moreover, when given concrete feedback, low performers disparaged either the accuracy or the relevance of that feedback, depending on how expediently they could do so. Consequently, they expressed more reluctance than top performers to pursue various paths to self-improvement, including purchasing a book on EI or paying for professional coaching. Paradoxically, it was top performers who indicated a stronger desire to improve their EI following feedback.

We investigate the rest-frame UV morphologies of a large sample of Lyman-α emitters (LAEs) from z ∼ 2 to z ∼ 6, selected in a uniform way with 16 different narrow-and medium-bands over the full COSMOS field. We use 3045 LAEs with HST coverage in a stacking analysis and find that they have M UV ∼ −20, below M * UV at these redshifts. We also focus our analysis on a subsample of 780 individual galaxies with i AB < 25 for which GALFIT converges for 429 of them. The individual median size (r e ∼ 1 kpc), ellipticities (slightly elongated with (b/a) ∼ 0.45), Sérsic index (disk-like with n 2) and light concentration (comparable to that of disk or irregular galaxies, with C ∼ 2.7) of LAEs show mild evolution from z ∼ 2 to z ∼ 6. LAEs with the highest rest-frame equivalent widths (EW) are the smallest/most compact (r e ∼ 0.8 kpc, compared to r e ∼ 1.5 kpc for the lower EW LAEs). When stacking our samples in bins of fixed Lyα luminosity and Lyα EW we find evidence for redshift evolution in n and C, but not in galaxy sizes. The evolution seems to be stronger for LAEs with 25 < EW < 100Å. When compared to other SFGs, LAEs are found to be smaller at all redshifts. The difference between the two populations changes with redshift, from a factor of ∼ 1 at z 5 to SFGs being a factor of ∼ 2 − 4 larger than LAEs for z 2. This means that at the highest redshifts, where typical sizes approach those of LAEs, the fraction of galaxies showing Lyα in emission (and with a high Lyα escape fraction) should be much higher, consistent with observations.

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This research examines the interactive effects of status and perceived time delay on acceptance of partner knowledge contributions within a distributive collaboration work environment. Results across 2 studies suggest that within distributed collaboration, time delays attributed to low-status partners had a significantly more harmful effect on influence acceptance than time delay attributed to high-status partners. This was so, despite the fact that partners' actual behavior was held constant across experimental conditions. In addition, results indicate that judgments of partner competence significantly mediated the interactive effects of perceived time delay and partner status on acceptance of partner influence.