On the Robustness of Outcome Bias: No Constraint by Prior Culpability

Mazzocco, Philip J.; Alicke, Mark D.; Davis, Teresa L.

doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2602&3_3

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Likewise, our result is consistent with a large literature on retrospective voting that finds voters reward/punish politicians based on outcomes over which politicians have no control (Healy et al, 2010;Gasper and Reeves, 2011). It is also consistent with a large literature in psychology on outcome bias (Baron and Hershey, 1988;Marshall and Mowen, 1993;Mazzocco et al, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Principal-Agent Settings with Random Shocks

Rubin

Sheremeta

2012

SSRN Journal

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Using a gift exchange experiment, we show that the ability of reciprocity to overcome incentive problems inherent in principal-agent settings is greatly reduced when the agent's effort is distorted by random shocks and transmitted imperfectly to the principal. Specifically, we find that gift exchange contracts without shocks encourage effort and wages well above standard predictions. However, the introduction of random shocks reduces wages and effort, regardless of whether the shocks can be observed by the principal. Moreover, the introduction of shocks significantly reduces the probability of fulfilling the contract by the agent, the payoff of the principal, and total welfare. Therefore, our findings demonstrate that random shocks place an important bound on the ability of gift exchange to overcome principal-agent problems.JEL Classifications: C72, C91, D63, D81, H50

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Principal-Agent Settings with Random Shocks

Rubin

Sheremeta

2012

SSRN Journal

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“…Analogous findings have been obtained in studies in which the actor's general character (Alicke & Zell, 2009;Nadler, 2012) or the outcomes that occurred (Alicke & Davis, 1989;Alicke & Rose, 2012;Alicke et al, 2011;Mazzocco & Alicke, 2004) were varied. According to the culpable control model of blame (CCM; Alicke, 1992Alicke, , 2000Alicke, , 2008Alicke et al, 2011), spontaneous positive or negative evaluations of an event evoke a blame-validation mode of processing and judgment.…”

Section: Evaluative Tonesupporting

confidence: 64%

“…These include the following: the important distinction between a CEO who is indifferent toward helping the environment and one who is indifferent toward harming it, the difference between acting on the certainty of bringing about helpful outcomes as opposed to harmful ones, and the fact that simply effecting positive outcomes leads to more favorable evaluations than effecting negative ones (Alicke & Davis, 1989;Alicke, Davis, & Pezzo, 1994;Alicke et al, 2011;Baron & Hershey, 1988;Mazzocco & Alicke, 2004). To unpack these factors, one would need a prohibitively large experimental design, and even this would not solve the inherent asymmetries in what it means, for example, to not care about helping versus harming the environment.…”

Section: Focal and Peripheral Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Alicke

Mandel

Hilton

et al. 2015

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Understanding the causes of human behavior is essential for advancing one's interests and for coordinating social relations. The scientific study of how people arrive at such understandings or explanations has unfolded in four distinguishable epochs in psychology, each characterized by a different metaphor that researchers have used to represent how people think as they attribute causality and blame to other individuals. The first epoch was guided by an "intuitive scientist" metaphor, which emphasized whether observers perceived behavior to be caused by the unique tendencies of the actor or by common reactions to the requirements of the situation. This metaphor was displaced in the second epoch by an "intuitive lawyer" depiction that focused on the need to hold people responsible for their misdeeds. The third epoch was dominated by theories of counterfactual thinking, which conveyed a "person as reconstructor" approach that emphasized the antecedents and consequences of imagining alternatives to events, especially harmful ones. With the current upsurge in moral psychology, the fourth epoch emphasizes the moralevaluative aspect of causal judgment, reflected in a "person as moralist" metaphor. By tracing the progression from the person-environment distinction in early attribution theories to present concerns with moral judgment, our goal is to clarify how causal constructs have been used, how they relate to one another, and what unique attributional problems each addresses.

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“…People do not leverage the ambiguity of traits or future actions to give others the same benefit of the doubt they give themselves (Dunning et al, 1989(Dunning et al, , 1991Helzer & Dunning, 2012;Kruger & Gilovich, 2004); observers weight the outcomes of others' actions more than their intentions (Mazzocco, Alicke, & Davis, 2004;Sezer, Zhang, Gino, & Bazerman, 2016). Managers and human resource professionals would likely not indicate that a given candidate had satisfied quite so many attribute or future action qualifications as a candidate herself would argue, because the motivation to justify the candidate's deservingness is lacking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivated reasoning during recruitment.

Kappes¹,

Balcetis²,

Cremer³

2018

Journal of Applied Psychology

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This research shows how job postings can lead job candidates to see themselves as particularly deserving of hiring and high salary. We propose that these entitlement beliefs entail both personal motivations to see oneself as deserving and the ability to justify those motivated judgments. Accordingly, we predict that people feel more deserving when qualifications for a job are vague and thus amenable to motivated reasoning, whereby people use information selectively to reach a desired conclusion. We tested this hypothesis with a two-phase experiment (N = 892) using materials drawn from real online job postings. In the first phase of the experiment, participants believed themselves to be more deserving of hiring and deserving of higher pay after reading postings composed of vaguer types of qualifications. In the second phase, yoked observers believed that participants were less entitled overall, but did not selectively discount endorsement of vaguer qualifications, suggesting they were unaware of this effect. A follow-up pre-registered experiment (N = 905) using postings with mixed qualification types replicated the effect of including more vague qualifications on participants' entitlement beliefs. Entitlement beliefs are widely seen as problematic for recruitment and retention, and these results suggest that reducing the inclusion of vague qualifications in job postings would dampen the emergence of these beliefs in applicants, albeit at the cost of decreasing application rates and lowering applicants' confidence.Keywords: Entitlement; deservingness; motivated reasoning; recruitment practice; selection 3 Motivated Reasoning during RecruitmentTo build a strong workforce, companies must recruit and retain qualified employees.Researchers note that these tasks are difficult given increasing concerns about entitlement beliefs; workers see themselves as deserving unrealistically high pay or other resources (Harvey & Dasborough, 2015;Jordan, Ramsay, & Westerlaken, 2016;Twenge, 2006). Such concerns have also garnered attention in the popular press. As a post in The New York Times "You're the Boss" blog noted, "The notion that some employees seem to think they are owed something just for showing up is a difficult pill to swallow…" (Mueller, 2012). These beliefs would be consistent with the legal understanding of entitlement, whereby outcomes are prescribed by formal or normative rights and are not contingent on one's actions. However, they are not consistent with typical hiring and compensation practices, usually featuring outcomes contingent on contributions and achievements. Employees' entitlement beliefs thus pose major problems for managers (Fisk, 2010) and warrant investigation of the sources of these beliefs.Although discussions of entitlement beliefs often center on millennials (Bisceglia, 2014;Twenge, 2006), some managers report equal or greater problems with entitlement beliefs in older employees (Mueller, 2012). Indeed, data suggest that millennials' sense of entitlement may not differ substantially ...

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On the Robustness of Outcome Bias: No Constraint by Prior Culpability

Cited by 64 publications

References 30 publications

Principal-Agent Settings with Random Shocks

Principal-Agent Settings with Random Shocks

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Motivated reasoning during recruitment.

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