Publications by authors named "Erika Kirgios"

People appreciate members of their in-group, and they cooperate with them-tendencies we refer to as in-group love. Being a member of a minority (vs. majority) is a common experience that varies both between groups in a context and within a group between contexts, but how does it affect in-group love? Across six studies, we examined when and why .

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Many organizations struggle to attract a demographically diverse workforce. How does adding a measurable goal to a public diversity commitment-for example, "We care about diversity" versus "We care about diversity and plan to hire at least one woman or racial minority for every White man we hire"-impact application rates from women and racial minorities? Extant psychological theory offers competing predictions about how historically marginalized applicants might respond to such goals. On one hand, measurable diversity goals may raise belongingness concerns among marginalized group members who are uncomfortable with being recruited and hired based on their demographics.

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Article Synopsis
  • Discrimination in evaluations contributes significantly to social inequality, yet there is limited knowledge about psychological interventions to combat biased assessments.
  • A research contest tested 30 interventions aimed at reducing discrimination based on physical attractiveness, revealing two effective strategies that reduced both decision noise and bias.
  • The findings highlight the need for concrete strategies that focus on relevant criteria in decision-making and emphasize the challenge of developing scalable interventions to effectively change discriminatory behaviors across various contexts.
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Article Synopsis
  • * A study involving 21 experiments showed that people tend to prefer options with numerical data over non-numeric ones when faced with tradeoff decisions, a phenomenon called "quantification fixation."
  • * This fixation can influence significant decisions, such as hiring and charitable donations, as people find numeric information easier to process than qualitative descriptions, impacting their preferences and choices.
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Receiving help can make or break a career, but women and racial/ethnic minorities do not always receive the support they seek. Across two audit experiments-one with politicians and another with students-as well as an online experiment (total n = 5,145), we test whether women and racial/ethnic minorities benefit from explicitly mentioning their demographic identity in requests for help, for example, by including statements like "As a Black woman…" in their communications. We propose that when a help seeker highlights their marginalized identity, it may activate prospective helpers' motivations to avoid prejudiced reactions and increase their willingness to provide support.

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Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens' decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time intervals. The lack of comparability of such individual investigations limits their potential to inform policy.

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Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving).

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