This record contains the underlying research data for the publication "The Regret Elements S... more This record contains the underlying research data for the publication "The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the emotional and cognitive components of regret" and the full-text is available from: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5121Regret is one of the most common emotions, but researchers generally measure it in an ad-hoc, unvalidated fashion. Three studies outline the construction and validation of the Regret Elements Scale (RES), which distinguishes between an affective component of regret, associated with maladaptive affective outcomes, and a cognitive component of regret, associated with functional preparatory outcomes. The present research demonstrates the RES's relationship with distress (Study 1), appraisals of emotions (Study 2), and existing measures of regret (Study 3). We further demonstrate the RES's ability to differentiate regret from other negative emotions (Study 2) and related traits (Study 3). The scale provides both a new theor...
Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoi... more Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoid short-term outcome regret (regret associated with counterfactual outcome comparisons) leads to reduced learning and greater long-term regret over continuing poor decisions. In a series of laboratory experiments involving repeated choices among uncertain monetary prospects, participants primed with outcome regret tended to decline feedback, learned the task slowly or not at all, and performed poorly. This pattern was reversed when decision makers were primed with self-blame regret (regret over an unjustified decision). Further, in a final experiment in which task learning was unnecessary, feedback was more often rejected in the self-blame regret condition than in the outcome regret condition. We discuss the findings in terms of a distinction between two regret components, one associated with outcome evaluation, the other with the justifiability of the decision process used in making the choice.
Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and su... more Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and subjective feelings of ownership, tacitly assuming that the two correspond closely. The present research suggests that this assumption might be usefully reexamined. In two experiments on the endowment effect we examine the role of subjective ownership by independently manipulating factual ownership (i.e., what participants were told about ownership) and physical possession of an object. This allowed us to disentangle the effects of these two factors, which are typically confounded. We found a significant effect of possession, but not of factual ownership, on monetary valuation of the object. Moreover, this effect was mediated by participants’ feelings of ownership, which were enhanced by the physical possession of the object. Thus, the endowment effect did not rely on factual ownership per se but was the result of subjective feelings of ownership induced by possession of the object. It is ...
Breach of the psychological contract between organization and employee often evokes employee host... more Breach of the psychological contract between organization and employee often evokes employee hostility, which in turn can instigate deviant behaviors. We examine whether employee mindfulness attenuates these reactions to psychological contract breach. Specifically, we develop and test a two-stage moderated mediation model in which employee mindfulness moderates the mediational path from psychological contract breach via hostility to deviance by attenuating both emotional and behavioral reactions. Findings across four studies (with 872 employee participants) both measuring and manipulating breach and mindfulness demonstrate substantial support for the proposed model. Further analyses including alternative moderators, mediators, and dependent variables provide evidence for discriminatory and incremental validity. We discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020
Abstract Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular practice and in parallel scholarly resear... more Abstract Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular practice and in parallel scholarly research has grown considerably. However, the study of mindfulness at work remains limited and motivates this special issue on “Mindfulness at Work: Pushing Theoretical and Empirical Boundaries.” In this introduction to the special issue we offer a brief initial grounding in the literature on mindfulness at work and in organizations. We then turn attention to how the six articles in this special issue advance this nascent field. We use both as a point of departure for considering the benefits and limits of mindfulness in organizations as well as the contextual (e.g., leadership) moderators and boundary conditions on mindfulness. We also detail the emerging evidence on both the general cognitive and workplace-specific mechanisms through which mindfulness operates. We offer directions for future research that highlight both the interplay of individual mindfulness and interpersonal relations and organizing, as well as means of increasing mindfulness beyond traditional meditative practice. Finally, we conclude with a brief outlook to a promising future ahead for this growing field that we believe has the potential to substantially reduce suffering and increase flourishing at workplaces throughout the world.
Heuristics are often viewed as inferior to "rational" strategies that exhaustively search and pro... more Heuristics are often viewed as inferior to "rational" strategies that exhaustively search and process information. Introducing the theoretical perspective of ecological rationality, we challenge this view and argue that, under conditions of uncertainty common to managerial decision making, managers can actually make better decisions using fast-and-frugal heuristics. Within the context of personnel selection, we show that a heuristic called D-inference can more accurately predict which of two job applicants would perform better in the future than can logistic regression, a prototypical rational strategy. Using data from 236 applicants at an airline company, we demonstrate, in Study 1, that, despite searching less than half of the cues, D-inference leads to more accurate selection decisions than logistic regression. After this existence proof, we examine, in Study 2, the ecological conditions under which the heuristic predicts more accurately than logistic regression using 1,728 simulated task environments. Finally, in Study 3, we show in an experiment that participants adapted their strategies to the characteristics of a task-and increasingly so the greater their previous experience in selection decisions. The aim of this article is to propose ecological rationality as an alternative to current views about the nature of heuristics in managerial decisions.
Despite much research on leader authenticity, its antecedents remain poorly understood. We develo... more Despite much research on leader authenticity, its antecedents remain poorly understood. We develop a self-regulatory model of leader authenticity. The model explains how both mindful self-regulated attention and political skill, as well as their interaction, are important for leaders to be authentic, and ultimately effective. Mindful self-regulated attention—a core dimension of mindfulness defined as sustained attention centered on the present moment—helps leaders stay connected to their core self amid the busyness of their (work) lives, allowing leaders to feel authentic. And, particularly in combination with political skill—a social effectiveness construct—it helps leaders interact with their employees in a way that is experienced as authentic and effective. In an experimental study (Study 1), we found that leaders who mindfully self-regulate their attention feel more authentic. In a two-wave multi-source field study (Study 2), we found that leader self-regulated attention was pos...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2017
Employees' performance provides the basis for many personnel decisions, and to make these decisio... more Employees' performance provides the basis for many personnel decisions, and to make these decisions, managers often need to integrate information from different performance-related cues. We asked college students and experienced managers to make a series of performancebased personnel decisions and tested how well weighting-and-adding, compensatory logistic regression and lexicographic, noncompensatory fast-and-frugal trees (FFTs) could describe participants' decision processes regarding both choices and reaction times. Results show that a significant proportion of the participants (i.e., nearly half of the college students and more than two-thirds of the experienced managers) applied FFTs to make such decisions, and that the majority of them adopted key features of FFTs adaptively in response to a manipulation of the required distributions of positive (bonus) or negative (termination) decisions. Overall, the process-oriented approach applied in our study provides insights on not only what cues managers use for performance-based personnel decisions, but also how they use these cues.
The role of mindfulness in the workplace has emerged as a legitimate and growing area of organiza... more The role of mindfulness in the workplace has emerged as a legitimate and growing area of organizational scholarship. The present research examined the role of employee emotional exhaustion in mediating the relationship of mindfulness with turnover intentions and task performance. Drawing on theory and empirical research on both organizational behavior and mindfulness, we predicted that more mindful employees would show lower turnover intentions and higher task performance and that these relationships would be mediated by emotional exhaustion. We tested these hypotheses in two field studies in an Indian context. Study 1 was a field study of call center employees of a multinational organization, an industry in which turnover rates are very high. This study found that mindfulness was associated with lower turnover intentions and less emotional exhaustion, and that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between mindfulness and turnover intentions. Study 2 replicated these results in a sample of employees based in major Indian cities and drawn from different industries. In addition, it showed that mindfulness was positively related to supervisor-rated task performance, with emotional exhaustion again playing a mediating role. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings, as well as future research directions.
The present research sought to examine the impact of narcissism, prediction accuracy, and should ... more The present research sought to examine the impact of narcissism, prediction accuracy, and should counterfactual thinking—which includes thoughts such as “I should have done something different”—on hindsight bias (the tendency to exaggerate in hindsight what one knew in foresight) and perceived learning. To test these effects, we conducted four studies (total n = 727). First, in Study 1 we examined a moderated mediation model, in which should counterfactual thinking mediates the relation between narcissism and hindsight bias, and this mediation is moderated by prediction accuracy such that the relationship is negative when predictions are accurate and positive when predictions are inaccurate after accurate predictions. Second, in Study 2 we examined a moderated sequential mediation model, in which the relation between narcissism and perceived learning is sequentially mediated through should counterfactual thinking and hindsight bias, and importantly, this sequential mediation is mode...
This record contains the underlying research data for the publication "The Regret Elements S... more This record contains the underlying research data for the publication "The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the emotional and cognitive components of regret" and the full-text is available from: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5121Regret is one of the most common emotions, but researchers generally measure it in an ad-hoc, unvalidated fashion. Three studies outline the construction and validation of the Regret Elements Scale (RES), which distinguishes between an affective component of regret, associated with maladaptive affective outcomes, and a cognitive component of regret, associated with functional preparatory outcomes. The present research demonstrates the RES's relationship with distress (Study 1), appraisals of emotions (Study 2), and existing measures of regret (Study 3). We further demonstrate the RES's ability to differentiate regret from other negative emotions (Study 2) and related traits (Study 3). The scale provides both a new theor...
Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoi... more Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoid short-term outcome regret (regret associated with counterfactual outcome comparisons) leads to reduced learning and greater long-term regret over continuing poor decisions. In a series of laboratory experiments involving repeated choices among uncertain monetary prospects, participants primed with outcome regret tended to decline feedback, learned the task slowly or not at all, and performed poorly. This pattern was reversed when decision makers were primed with self-blame regret (regret over an unjustified decision). Further, in a final experiment in which task learning was unnecessary, feedback was more often rejected in the self-blame regret condition than in the outcome regret condition. We discuss the findings in terms of a distinction between two regret components, one associated with outcome evaluation, the other with the justifiability of the decision process used in making the choice.
Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and su... more Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and subjective feelings of ownership, tacitly assuming that the two correspond closely. The present research suggests that this assumption might be usefully reexamined. In two experiments on the endowment effect we examine the role of subjective ownership by independently manipulating factual ownership (i.e., what participants were told about ownership) and physical possession of an object. This allowed us to disentangle the effects of these two factors, which are typically confounded. We found a significant effect of possession, but not of factual ownership, on monetary valuation of the object. Moreover, this effect was mediated by participants’ feelings of ownership, which were enhanced by the physical possession of the object. Thus, the endowment effect did not rely on factual ownership per se but was the result of subjective feelings of ownership induced by possession of the object. It is ...
Breach of the psychological contract between organization and employee often evokes employee host... more Breach of the psychological contract between organization and employee often evokes employee hostility, which in turn can instigate deviant behaviors. We examine whether employee mindfulness attenuates these reactions to psychological contract breach. Specifically, we develop and test a two-stage moderated mediation model in which employee mindfulness moderates the mediational path from psychological contract breach via hostility to deviance by attenuating both emotional and behavioral reactions. Findings across four studies (with 872 employee participants) both measuring and manipulating breach and mindfulness demonstrate substantial support for the proposed model. Further analyses including alternative moderators, mediators, and dependent variables provide evidence for discriminatory and incremental validity. We discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020
Abstract Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular practice and in parallel scholarly resear... more Abstract Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular practice and in parallel scholarly research has grown considerably. However, the study of mindfulness at work remains limited and motivates this special issue on “Mindfulness at Work: Pushing Theoretical and Empirical Boundaries.” In this introduction to the special issue we offer a brief initial grounding in the literature on mindfulness at work and in organizations. We then turn attention to how the six articles in this special issue advance this nascent field. We use both as a point of departure for considering the benefits and limits of mindfulness in organizations as well as the contextual (e.g., leadership) moderators and boundary conditions on mindfulness. We also detail the emerging evidence on both the general cognitive and workplace-specific mechanisms through which mindfulness operates. We offer directions for future research that highlight both the interplay of individual mindfulness and interpersonal relations and organizing, as well as means of increasing mindfulness beyond traditional meditative practice. Finally, we conclude with a brief outlook to a promising future ahead for this growing field that we believe has the potential to substantially reduce suffering and increase flourishing at workplaces throughout the world.
Heuristics are often viewed as inferior to "rational" strategies that exhaustively search and pro... more Heuristics are often viewed as inferior to "rational" strategies that exhaustively search and process information. Introducing the theoretical perspective of ecological rationality, we challenge this view and argue that, under conditions of uncertainty common to managerial decision making, managers can actually make better decisions using fast-and-frugal heuristics. Within the context of personnel selection, we show that a heuristic called D-inference can more accurately predict which of two job applicants would perform better in the future than can logistic regression, a prototypical rational strategy. Using data from 236 applicants at an airline company, we demonstrate, in Study 1, that, despite searching less than half of the cues, D-inference leads to more accurate selection decisions than logistic regression. After this existence proof, we examine, in Study 2, the ecological conditions under which the heuristic predicts more accurately than logistic regression using 1,728 simulated task environments. Finally, in Study 3, we show in an experiment that participants adapted their strategies to the characteristics of a task-and increasingly so the greater their previous experience in selection decisions. The aim of this article is to propose ecological rationality as an alternative to current views about the nature of heuristics in managerial decisions.
Despite much research on leader authenticity, its antecedents remain poorly understood. We develo... more Despite much research on leader authenticity, its antecedents remain poorly understood. We develop a self-regulatory model of leader authenticity. The model explains how both mindful self-regulated attention and political skill, as well as their interaction, are important for leaders to be authentic, and ultimately effective. Mindful self-regulated attention—a core dimension of mindfulness defined as sustained attention centered on the present moment—helps leaders stay connected to their core self amid the busyness of their (work) lives, allowing leaders to feel authentic. And, particularly in combination with political skill—a social effectiveness construct—it helps leaders interact with their employees in a way that is experienced as authentic and effective. In an experimental study (Study 1), we found that leaders who mindfully self-regulate their attention feel more authentic. In a two-wave multi-source field study (Study 2), we found that leader self-regulated attention was pos...
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2017
Employees' performance provides the basis for many personnel decisions, and to make these decisio... more Employees' performance provides the basis for many personnel decisions, and to make these decisions, managers often need to integrate information from different performance-related cues. We asked college students and experienced managers to make a series of performancebased personnel decisions and tested how well weighting-and-adding, compensatory logistic regression and lexicographic, noncompensatory fast-and-frugal trees (FFTs) could describe participants' decision processes regarding both choices and reaction times. Results show that a significant proportion of the participants (i.e., nearly half of the college students and more than two-thirds of the experienced managers) applied FFTs to make such decisions, and that the majority of them adopted key features of FFTs adaptively in response to a manipulation of the required distributions of positive (bonus) or negative (termination) decisions. Overall, the process-oriented approach applied in our study provides insights on not only what cues managers use for performance-based personnel decisions, but also how they use these cues.
The role of mindfulness in the workplace has emerged as a legitimate and growing area of organiza... more The role of mindfulness in the workplace has emerged as a legitimate and growing area of organizational scholarship. The present research examined the role of employee emotional exhaustion in mediating the relationship of mindfulness with turnover intentions and task performance. Drawing on theory and empirical research on both organizational behavior and mindfulness, we predicted that more mindful employees would show lower turnover intentions and higher task performance and that these relationships would be mediated by emotional exhaustion. We tested these hypotheses in two field studies in an Indian context. Study 1 was a field study of call center employees of a multinational organization, an industry in which turnover rates are very high. This study found that mindfulness was associated with lower turnover intentions and less emotional exhaustion, and that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between mindfulness and turnover intentions. Study 2 replicated these results in a sample of employees based in major Indian cities and drawn from different industries. In addition, it showed that mindfulness was positively related to supervisor-rated task performance, with emotional exhaustion again playing a mediating role. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings, as well as future research directions.
The present research sought to examine the impact of narcissism, prediction accuracy, and should ... more The present research sought to examine the impact of narcissism, prediction accuracy, and should counterfactual thinking—which includes thoughts such as “I should have done something different”—on hindsight bias (the tendency to exaggerate in hindsight what one knew in foresight) and perceived learning. To test these effects, we conducted four studies (total n = 727). First, in Study 1 we examined a moderated mediation model, in which should counterfactual thinking mediates the relation between narcissism and hindsight bias, and this mediation is moderated by prediction accuracy such that the relationship is negative when predictions are accurate and positive when predictions are inaccurate after accurate predictions. Second, in Study 2 we examined a moderated sequential mediation model, in which the relation between narcissism and perceived learning is sequentially mediated through should counterfactual thinking and hindsight bias, and importantly, this sequential mediation is mode...
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