Publications by authors named "Laura J Kray"

Across four studies ( = 816 U.S. adults), we uncovered a gender stereotype about dual pathways to social hierarchy: Men were associated with power, and women were associated with status.

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Across four studies ( = 1544), we examined the relationship between individuals' gender role mindsets, or beliefs about the malleability versus fixedness of traditional gender roles, and work-family conflict. We found that undergraduate women (but not men) business students holding a fixed, compared to growth, gender role mindset anticipated more work-family conflict. Next, we manipulated gender role mindset and demonstrated a causal link between women's growth mindsets (relative to fixed mindsets and control conditions) and reduced work-family conflict.

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Lies often go undetected, and we know little about the psychological and relational consequences of successfully deceiving others. While the evidence to date indicates that undetected dishonesty induces positive affect in independent decision contexts, we propose that it may elicit guilt and undermine satisfaction in negotiations despite facilitating better deals for deceivers. Across four studies, we find support for a , whereby dishonesty triggers guilt and lessens negotiators' satisfaction with the bargaining experience.

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Question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions following research talks provide key opportunities for the audience to engage in scientific discourse. Gender inequities persist in academia, where women are underrepresented as faculty and their contributions are less valued than men's. In the present research, we tested how this gender difference translates to face-to-face Q&A-session participation and its psychological correlates.

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We review the evidence linking gender to dishonesty and conclude that men are often more dishonest than women, especially in competitive settings where lies advance self-interest. However, gender differences in dishonesty are often small and mutable across situations. We propose that attending to self-regulatory constructs such as moral identity might help researchers move beyond the evolutionary-cultural debates over the origin of gender differences toward identifying factors that promote honesty from both genders.

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Despite increased awareness of the lack of gender equity in academia and a growing number of initiatives to address issues of diversity, change is slow, and inequalities remain. A major source of inequity is gender bias, which has a substantial negative impact on the careers, work-life balance, and mental health of underrepresented groups in science. Here, we argue that gender bias is not a single problem but manifests as a collection of distinct issues that impact researchers' lives.

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Three studies examine how organizational mindsetwhether a company is perceived to view talent as fixed or malleable-functions as a core belief that predicts organizational culture and employees' trust and commitment. In Study 1, company mission statements were coded for mindset language and paired with Glassdoor culture data. Workers perceived a more negative culture at fixed (vs.

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Four studies (n = 1199) tested support for the idea that implicit theories about the fixedness versus malleability of gender roles (entity vs. incremental theories) predict differences in the degree of gender system justification, that is, support for the status quo in relations between women and men in society. Relative to an incremental theory, the holding of an entity theory correlated with more system-justifying attitudes and self-perceptions (Study 1) for men and women alike.

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The current research examines how power affects performance in pressure-filled contexts. We present low-power-threat and high-power-lift effects, whereby performance in high-stakes situations suffers or is enhanced depending on one's power; that is, the power inherent to a situational role can produce effects similar to stereotype threat and lift. Three negotiations experiments demonstrate that role-based power affects outcomes but only when the negotiation is diagnostic of ability and, therefore, pressure-filled.

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The authors examined feminine charm, an impression management technique available to women that combines friendliness with flirtation. They asked whether feminine charm resolves the impression management dilemma facing women who simultaneously pursue task (i.e.

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Four studies examined the relationship between counterfactual origins--thoughts about how the beginning of organizations, countries, and social connections might have turned out differently--and increased feelings of commitment to those institutions and connections. Study 1 found that counterfactually reflecting on the origins of one's country increases patriotism. Study 2 extended this finding to organizational commitment and examined the mediating role of poignancy.

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Four experiments explored whether 2 uniquely human characteristics-counterfactual thinking (imagining alternatives to the past) and the fundamental drive to create meaning in life-are causally related. Rather than implying a random quality to life, the authors hypothesized and found that counterfactual thinking heightens the meaningfulness of key life experiences. Reflecting on alternative pathways to pivotal turning points even produced greater meaning than directly reflecting on the meaning of the event itself.

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The authors argue that implicit negotiation beliefs, which speak to the expected malleability of negotiating ability, affect performance in dyadic negotiations. They expected negotiators who believe negotiating attributes are malleable (incremental theorists) to outperform negotiators who believe negotiating attributes are fixed (entity theorists). In Study 1, they gathered evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the implicit negotiation belief construct.

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In the present research, the authors hypothesized that additive counterfactual thinking mind-sets, activated by adding new antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote an expansive processing style that broadens conceptual attention and facilitates performance on creative generation tasks, whereas subtractive counter-factual thinking mind-sets, activated by removing antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote a relational processing style that enhances tendencies to consider relationships and associations and facilitates performance on analytical problem-solving tasks. A reanalysis of a published data set suggested that the counterfactual mind-set primes previously used in the literature tend to evoke subtractive counterfactuals. Studies 1 and 2 then demonstrated that subtractive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on analytical problem-solving tasks relative to additive counterfactual mind-sets, whereas Studies 3 and 4 found that additive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on creative generation tasks relative to subtractive counterfactual mind-sets.

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By comparing reality to what might have been, counterfactuals promote a relational processing style characterized by a tendency to consider relationships and associations among a set of stimuli. As such, counterfactual mind-sets were expected to improve performance on tasks involving the consideration of relationships and associations but to impair performance on tasks requiring novel ideas that are uninfluenced by salient associations. The authors conducted several experiments to test this hypothesis.

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Negotiators often have different expectations about the future. A contingent agreement, or a bet that makes the ultimate outcome dependent on some future event, builds on negotiators' differences. The authors argue that a problem-solving approach, in which negotiators thoroughly explore options to build on their differences, is most likely to construct contingent agreements.

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Two experiments explored the hypothesis that the impact of activating gender stereotypes on negotiated agreements in mixed-gender negotiations depends on the manner in which the stereo-type is activated (explicitly vs. implicitly) and the content of the stereotype (linking negotiation performance to stereotypically male vs. stereotypically female traits).

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