Understanding Ourselves and Organizational Leadership: Theory, Instrument Development, and Empirical Investigations of Self-Awareness

What is self-awareness? Is self-awareness always helpful? Studies of self-awareness have implications for a wide variety of topics in organizational behavior. Yet, this research has been scattered, resulting in gaps, siloed insights, a lack of clear and consistent conceptualization, and the confounding of causes and effects with self-awareness itself. In this dissertation, I present a collection of papers that have been assembled to increase our understanding of not only the nature of the construct of self-awareness itself, but of also its consequences. I first review and synthesize a set of discrepant findings across organizational behavior and psychological literatures to distinguish, summarize, and assess research on self-awareness as process and content (Chapter 1). I then propose that the content of self-awareness manifests through three distinct focal targets of awareness: internal, external, and social (Chapter 2) and develop a measure of self-awareness grounded in this distinction (Chapter 3). I use this theoretical framework to investigate the downsides of self-awareness by proposing that overly high levels of self-awareness may have detrimental interpersonal consequences for leaders (Chapter 4). I close my dissertation with an evaluation of implications of my findings for future research (Chapter 5). </p

Nothing to Worry About: Why Liberals Underestimate Dominant Leaders and Act Complacently

Political campaigns that lead to endorsement or victory for dominant-authoritarian candidates such as the Brexit vote or the 2016 US Presidential election are typically plagued with disbelief and bewilderment among liberals primarily because they don’t support or expect such outcomes. Beyond party affiliation, we offer a psychologically grounded explanation contending the prevalence of a systematic bias among liberals. We propose that liberals in comparison to conservatives’ dislike dominant-authoritarian leaders and this aversion leads liberals to underestimate the success of such leaders. Such underestimation leads to more sinister ramifications among liberals, making them more complacent, overconfident, and less inclined to vote for their favored candidate. We do not find any such difference among liberals and conservatives when the leader is associated with prestige or egalitarian values. We test our hypotheses across seven studies (two pre-registered, one in SI), including large-scale field data, six experimental studies with varied contexts, and a combined sample of more than 215,000 observations from 93 countries and spanning the past three decades. Additionally, we find the bias to be robust across both subjective and behavioral measures, different contexts, and even when objective odds favor the dominant leader. In doing so, our work helps explain low voter turnout among liberals compared to conservatives in the 2016 US election and why underestimating the success of such leaders may lead liberals to act complacently and not vote thereby paradoxically increasing the success likelihood of dominant-authoritarian leaders

Nothing to Worry About: Why Liberals Underestimate Dominant Leaders and Act Complacently

Political campaigns that lead to endorsement or victory for dominant-authoritarian candidates such as the Brexit vote or the 2016 US Presidential election are typically plagued with disbelief and bewilderment among liberals primarily because they don’t support or expect such outcomes. Beyond party affiliation, we offer a psychologically grounded explanation contending the prevalence of a systematic bias among liberals. We propose that liberals in comparison to conservatives’ dislike dominant-authoritarian leaders and this aversion leads liberals to underestimate the success of such leaders. Such underestimation leads to more sinister ramifications among liberals, making them more complacent, overconfident, and less inclined to vote for their favored candidate. We do not find any such difference among liberals and conservatives when the leader is associated with prestige or egalitarian values. We test our hypotheses across seven studies (two pre-registered, one in SI), including large-scale field data, six experimental studies with varied contexts, and a combined sample of more than 215,000 observations from 93 countries and spanning the past three decades. Additionally, we find the bias to be robust across both subjective and behavioral measures, different contexts, and even when objective odds favor the dominant leader. In doing so, our work helps explain low voter turnout among liberals compared to conservatives in the 2016 US election and why underestimating the success of such leaders may lead liberals to act complacently and not vote thereby paradoxically increasing the success likelihood of dominant-authoritarian leaders.</p

Selfishness Project

Examining Selfishness and an array of inconsiderate attitudes and behavior

Self-Awareness Measure

This project proposes a new measure of self-awareness

Selfishness Project II

Examining Selfishness and an array of inconsiderate attitudes and behavior