TY - JOUR
T1 - Don't hate me because I'm beautiful
T2 - Self-enhancing biases in threat appraisal
AU - Menon, Tanya
AU - Thompson, Leigh
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. We would like to thank our Associate Editor, our reviewers, Paul Goodman, Liz Ghini, and Reid Hastie for their helpful comments.
PY - 2007/9
Y1 - 2007/9
N2 - We compare people's intuitive judgments about how the self and others respond to threat. We propose that people hold a self-enhancing belief in "threat immunity," i.e., they see themselves as more secure than other people in the face of threat. In Study 1, people assumed that they threatened others more than others threatened them. In Study 2, people on project teams estimated that both they and their teammates provoked roughly equal levels of threat in others, although they experienced less threat than did other people. Study 3 experimentally manipulated threat perceptions in an interactive context and revealed that when people held self-enhancing threat appraisals, those with whom they interacted experienced lower satisfaction with the outcome and relationship. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that, as compared to people who affirmed themselves and thus focused on the self, people who affirmed another person displayed lower threat immunity. The self-enhancing nature of these threat appraisals reveals how competition and envy emerge in organizations-or at least, how people imagine they emerge.
AB - We compare people's intuitive judgments about how the self and others respond to threat. We propose that people hold a self-enhancing belief in "threat immunity," i.e., they see themselves as more secure than other people in the face of threat. In Study 1, people assumed that they threatened others more than others threatened them. In Study 2, people on project teams estimated that both they and their teammates provoked roughly equal levels of threat in others, although they experienced less threat than did other people. Study 3 experimentally manipulated threat perceptions in an interactive context and revealed that when people held self-enhancing threat appraisals, those with whom they interacted experienced lower satisfaction with the outcome and relationship. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that, as compared to people who affirmed themselves and thus focused on the self, people who affirmed another person displayed lower threat immunity. The self-enhancing nature of these threat appraisals reveals how competition and envy emerge in organizations-or at least, how people imagine they emerge.
KW - Affirmation
KW - Envy
KW - Self-enhancement
KW - Threat
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U2 - 10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.10.007
DO - 10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.10.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:34547919626
SN - 0749-5978
VL - 104
SP - 45
EP - 60
JO - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
JF - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
IS - 1
ER -