Francesca Gino
Biographic Data
| ID | 147075 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francesca Gino |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francesca |
| FAMILY NAME | Gino |
| SIGNATURE | GINO F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9794-482X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 409 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Authentic First Impressions Relate to Interpersonal, Social, and Entrepreneurial Success
This article examines how verbal authenticity influences person perception. Our work combines human judgments and natural language processing to suggest verbal authenticity is a positive predictor of interpersonal interest (Study 1: 294 dyadic conversations), engagement with speeches (Study 2: 2,655 TED talks), entrepreneurial success (Study 3: 478 Shark Tank pitches), and social media engagements (Studies 4a–c; N = 387,039 Tweets). We find that …
“Just letting you know … ” Underestimating others’ desire for constructive feedback
People sometimes avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix others' problems. For example, only 2.6% of individuals in a pilot field study provided feedback to a survey administrator who had food or lipstick on their face. Five experiments (N = 1,984) identify a possible reason for the lack of feedback: People underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback. Initial experiments demonstrated this underestimatio…
When alterations are violations: Moral outrage and punishment in response to (even minor) alterations to rituals
From Catholics performing the sign of the cross since the 4th century to Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance since the 1890s, group rituals (i.e., predefined sequences of symbolic actions) have strikingly consistent features over time. Seven studies (N = 4,213) document the sacrosanct nature of rituals: Because group rituals symbolize sacred group values, even minor alterations to them provoke moral outrage and punishment. In Pilot Studie…
How trust and distrust shape perception and memory
Trust is a key ingredient in decision making, as it allows us to rely on the information we receive. Although trust is usually viewed as a positive element of decision making, we suggest that its effects on memory are costly rather than beneficial. Across nine studies using three different manipulations of trust and distrust and three different memory paradigms, we find that trust reduces memory performance as compared with distrust. In Study 1, …
I Own, So I Help Out: How Psychological Ownership Increases Prosocial Behavior
This article explores the consequences of psychological ownership going beyond the specific relationship with the possession to guide behavior in unrelated situations. Across seven studies, we find that psychological ownership leads to a boost in self-esteem, which encourages individuals to be more altruistic. In addition, we show that the effect of psychological ownership on prosocial behavior is not driven by self-efficacy, perceived power, rec…
The Deception Spiral: Corporate Obfuscation Leads to Perceptions of Immorality and Cheating Behavior
In four studies, we evaluated how corporate misconduct relates to language patterns, perceptions of immorality, and unethical behavior. First, we analyzed nearly 190 codes of conduct from S&P 500 manufacturing companies and observed that corporations with ethics infractions had more linguistically obfuscated codes than corporations without ethics infractions. Next, we tested perceptions of a company based on values statements modified by obfuscat…
Why connect? Moral consequences of networking with a promotion or prevention focus
Networks are a key source of social capital for achieving goals in professional and personal settings. Yet, despite the clear benefits of having an extensive network, individuals often shy away from the opportunity to create new connections because engaging in instrumental networking can make them feel morally impure. In this article, we explore how the motives people have when engaging in networking impact these feelings and, as result, change h…
Tell it like it is: When politically incorrect language promotes authenticity
). Experiment 5 tests why political incorrectness can boost authenticity, demonstrating that it makes communicators seem less strategic. Finally, Experiment 6 examines the use of political language in a meaningful field context: perceived persuasion in real political debates. Debaters instructed to be politically correct (vs. politically incorrect) were judged by their uninstructed conversation partners to be easier to persuade during the convers…
A counterfeit competence: After threat, cheating boosts one's self-image
Handshaking promotes deal-making by signaling cooperative intent
We examine how a simple handshake-a gesture that often occurs at the outset of social interactions-can influence deal-making. Because handshakes are social rituals, they are imbued with meaning beyond their physical features. We propose that during mixed-motive interactions, a handshake is viewed as a signal of cooperative intent, increasing people's cooperative behavior and affecting deal-making outcomes. In Studies 1a and 1b, pairs who chose to…
It helps to ask: The cumulative benefits of asking follow-up questions
In a recent article published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP; Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, & Gino, 2017), we reported the results of 2 experiments involving "getting acquainted" conversations among strangers and an observational field study of heterosexual speed daters. In all 3 studies, we found that asking more questions in conversation, especially follow-up questions (that indicate responsiveness to a partner), increa…
Budging beliefs, nudging behaviour
Nudges have become a popular tool for behaviour change; but, some interventions fail to replicate, even when the identical, previously successful intervention is used. One cause of this problem is that people default to using some of or all of the previously-successful existing nudges for any problem—the “kitchen sink” approach. We argue that the success of an intervention depends on understanding people’s current behaviour and beliefs to ensure …
Religious shoppers spend less money
Enacting rituals to improve self-control
Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in 6 experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritu…
Humblebragging: A distinct—and ineffective—self-presentation strategy
Self-presentation is a fundamental aspect of social life, with myriad critical outcomes dependent on others' impressions. We identify and offer the first empirical investigation of a prevalent, yet understudied, self-presentation strategy: humblebragging. Across 9 studies, including a week-long diary study and a field experiment, we identify humblebragging-bragging masked by a complaint or humility-as a common, conceptually distinct, and ineffect…
The dark side of going abroad: How broad foreign experiences increase immoral behavior
Because of the unprecedented pace of globalization, foreign experiences are increasingly common and valued. Past research has focused on the benefits of foreign experiences, including enhanced creativity and reduced intergroup bias. In contrast, the present work uncovers a potential dark side of foreign experiences: increased immoral behavior. We propose that broad foreign experiences (i.e., experiences in multiple foreign countries) foster not o…
It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking
Conversation is a fundamental human experience that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, relationships, and modes of communication. In the current research, we isolate the role of an understudied conversational behavior: question-asking. Across 3 studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking: people who ask more questions, p…
Artful paltering: The risks and rewards of using truthful statements to mislead others
Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across 2 pilot studies and 6 experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant information) and lying by commission (the active use of false statements). Our findings reveal that paltering is common in negotiations and that many negotiators prefer to palter than to lie b…
Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically
Research yields ample evidence that individual's behavior often reflects an apparent concern for moral considerations. A natural way to interpret evidence of such motives using an economic framework is to add an argument to the utility function such that agents obtain utility both from outcomes that yield only personal benefits and from acting kindly, honestly, or according to some other notion of "right." Indeed, such interpretations can account…
Self-Serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral
Unethical behavior by “ordinary” people poses significant societal and personal challenges. We present a novel framework centered on the role of self-serving justification to build upon and advance the rapidly expanding research on intentional unethical behavior of people who value their morality highly. We propose that self-serving justifications emerging before and after people engage in intentional ethical violations mitigate the threat to the…
The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity
This research examines how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. A series of studies demonstrates that people confer hi…
Self-serving altruism? The lure of unethical actions that benefit others
Ethically adrift: How others pull our moral compass from true North, and how we can fix it
I'll have one of each: How separating rewards into (meaningless) categories increases motivation
We propose that separating rewards into categories can increase motivation, even when those categories are meaningless. Across six experiments, people were more motivated to obtain one reward from one category and another reward from another category than they were to obtain two rewards from a pool that included all items from either reward category. As a result, they worked longer when potential rewards for their work were separated into meaning…
The cheater’s high: The unexpected affective benefits of unethical behavior
Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this article, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a "cheater's high." Across 6 studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior (Studies 1a and 1b), individuals who cheat on…
The dark side of creativity: Original thinkers can be more dishonest
Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals' ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional…
Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty
The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity
This research examines how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. A series of studies demonstrates that people confer hi…
A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior
Although research has established that receiving expressions of gratitude increases prosocial behavior, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that mediate this effect. We propose that gratitude expressions can enhance prosocial behavior through both agentic and communal mechanisms, such that when helpers are thanked for their efforts, they experience stronger feelings of self-efficacy and social worth, which motivate them to engage i…
When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior
Effects of task difficulty on use of advice
Although prior studies have found that people generally underweight advice from others, such discounting of advice is not universal. Two studies examined the impact of task difficulty on the use of advice. In both studies, the strategy participants used to weigh advice varied with task difficulty even when it should not have. In particular, the results show that people tend to overweight advice on difficult tasks and underweight advice on easy ta…
Anxiety, advice, and the ability to discern: Feeling anxious motivates individuals to seek and use advice
Across 8 experiments, the influence of anxiety on advice seeking and advice taking is described. Anxious individuals are found to be more likely to seek and rely on advice than are those in a neutral emotional state (Experiment 1), but this pattern of results does not generalize to other negatively valenced emotions (Experiment 2). The relationships between anxiety and advice seeking and anxiety and advice taking are mediated by self-confidence; …
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty
Early research and teaching on ethics focused either on a moral development perspective or on philosophical approaches and used a normative approach by focusing on the question of how people should act when resolving ethical dilemmas. In this article, we briefly describe the traditional approach to ethics and then present a (biased) review of the behavioral approach to ethics. We define behavioral ethics as the study of systematic and predictable…
Humblebragging: A distinct—and ineffective—self-presentation strategy
Self-presentation is a fundamental aspect of social life, with myriad critical outcomes dependent on others' impressions. We identify and offer the first empirical investigation of a prevalent, yet understudied, self-presentation strategy: humblebragging. Across 9 studies, including a week-long diary study and a field experiment, we identify humblebragging-bragging masked by a complaint or humility-as a common, conceptually distinct, and ineffect…
Tell it like it is: When politically incorrect language promotes authenticity
). Experiment 5 tests why political incorrectness can boost authenticity, demonstrating that it makes communicators seem less strategic. Finally, Experiment 6 examines the use of political language in a meaningful field context: perceived persuasion in real political debates. Debaters instructed to be politically correct (vs. politically incorrect) were judged by their uninstructed conversation partners to be easier to persuade during the convers…
The cheater’s high: The unexpected affective benefits of unethical behavior
Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this article, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a "cheater's high." Across 6 studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior (Studies 1a and 1b), individuals who cheat on…
Give them what they want: The benefits of explicitness in gift exchange
Contagion or restitution? When bad apples can motivate ethical behavior
The dark side of going abroad: How broad foreign experiences increase immoral behavior
Because of the unprecedented pace of globalization, foreign experiences are increasingly common and valued. Past research has focused on the benefits of foreign experiences, including enhanced creativity and reduced intergroup bias. In contrast, the present work uncovers a potential dark side of foreign experiences: increased immoral behavior. We propose that broad foreign experiences (i.e., experiences in multiple foreign countries) foster not o…
It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking
Conversation is a fundamental human experience that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, relationships, and modes of communication. In the current research, we isolate the role of an understudied conversational behavior: question-asking. Across 3 studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking: people who ask more questions, p…
I Own, So I Help Out: How Psychological Ownership Increases Prosocial Behavior
This article explores the consequences of psychological ownership going beyond the specific relationship with the possession to guide behavior in unrelated situations. Across seven studies, we find that psychological ownership leads to a boost in self-esteem, which encourages individuals to be more altruistic. In addition, we show that the effect of psychological ownership on prosocial behavior is not driven by self-efficacy, perceived power, rec…
Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically
Research yields ample evidence that individual's behavior often reflects an apparent concern for moral considerations. A natural way to interpret evidence of such motives using an economic framework is to add an argument to the utility function such that agents obtain utility both from outcomes that yield only personal benefits and from acting kindly, honestly, or according to some other notion of "right." Indeed, such interpretations can account…
Budging beliefs, nudging behaviour
Nudges have become a popular tool for behaviour change; but, some interventions fail to replicate, even when the identical, previously successful intervention is used. One cause of this problem is that people default to using some of or all of the previously-successful existing nudges for any problem—the “kitchen sink” approach. We argue that the success of an intervention depends on understanding people’s current behaviour and beliefs to ensure …
Religious shoppers spend less money
Enacting rituals to improve self-control
Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in 6 experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritu…
Artful paltering: The risks and rewards of using truthful statements to mislead others
Paltering is the active use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression. Across 2 pilot studies and 6 experiments, we identify paltering as a distinct form of deception. Paltering differs from lying by omission (the passive omission of relevant information) and lying by commission (the active use of false statements). Our findings reveal that paltering is common in negotiations and that many negotiators prefer to palter than to lie b…
Memory lane and morality: How childhood memories promote prosocial behavior
Although research has established that autobiographical memory affects one's self-concept, little is known about how it affects moral behavior. We focus on a specific type of autobiographical memory: childhood memories. Drawing on research on memory and moral psychology, we propose that childhood memories elicit moral purity, which we define as a psychological state of feeling morally clean and innocent. In turn, heightened moral purity leads to …
Handshaking promotes deal-making by signaling cooperative intent
We examine how a simple handshake-a gesture that often occurs at the outset of social interactions-can influence deal-making. Because handshakes are social rituals, they are imbued with meaning beyond their physical features. We propose that during mixed-motive interactions, a handshake is viewed as a signal of cooperative intent, increasing people's cooperative behavior and affecting deal-making outcomes. In Studies 1a and 1b, pairs who chose to…
How trust and distrust shape perception and memory
Trust is a key ingredient in decision making, as it allows us to rely on the information we receive. Although trust is usually viewed as a positive element of decision making, we suggest that its effects on memory are costly rather than beneficial. Across nine studies using three different manipulations of trust and distrust and three different memory paradigms, we find that trust reduces memory performance as compared with distrust. In Study 1, …
Sweeping dishonesty under the rug: How unethical actions lead to forgetting of moral rules
Dishonest behavior can have various psychological outcomes. We examine whether one consequence could be the forgetting of moral rules. In 4 experiments, participants were given the opportunity to behave dishonestly, and thus earn undeserved money, by over-reporting their performance on an ability-based task. Before the task, they were exposed to moral rules (i.e., an honor code). Those who cheated were more likely to forget the moral rules after …
Effects of task difficulty on use of advice
Although prior studies have found that people generally underweight advice from others, such discounting of advice is not universal. Two studies examined the impact of task difficulty on the use of advice. In both studies, the strategy participants used to weigh advice varied with task difficulty even when it should not have. In particular, the results show that people tend to overweight advice on difficult tasks and underweight advice on easy ta…
Contagion and Differentiation in Unethical Behavior: The Effect of One Bad Apple on the Barrel
In a world where encounters with dishonesty are frequent, it is important to know if exposure to other people's unethical behavior can increase or decrease an individual's dishonesty. In Experiment 1 , our confederate cheated ostentatiously by finishing a task impossibly quickly and leaving the room with the maximum reward. In line with social-norms theory, participants' level of unethical behavior increased when the confederate was an in-group m…
The abundance effect: Unethical behavior in the presence of wealth
Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty
When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior
Contagion or restitution? When bad apples can motivate ethical behavior
Good Lamps Are the Best Police: Darkness Increases Dishonesty and Self-Interested Behavior
Darkness can conceal identity and encourage moral transgressions; it may also induce a psychological feeling of illusory anonymity that disinhibits dishonest and self-interested behavior regardless of actual anonymity. Three experiments provided empirical evidence supporting this prediction. In Experiment 1, participants in a room with slightly dimmed lighting cheated more and thus earned more undeserved money than those in a well-lit room. In Ex…
A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior
Although research has established that receiving expressions of gratitude increases prosocial behavior, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that mediate this effect. We propose that gratitude expressions can enhance prosocial behavior through both agentic and communal mechanisms, such that when helpers are thanked for their efforts, they experience stronger feelings of self-efficacy and social worth, which motivate them to engage i…
Paradoxical frames and creative sparks: Enhancing individual creativity through conflict and integration
Unable to resist temptation: How self-control depletion promotes unethical behavior
Dishonest Deed, Clear Conscience: When Cheating Leads to Moral Disengagement and Motivated Forgetting
People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one’s own di…
Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity
Extraversion predicts leadership emergence and effectiveness, but do groups perform more effectively under extraverted leadership? Drawing on dominance complementarity theory, we propose that although extraverted leadership enhances group performance when employees are passive, this effect reverses when employees are proactive, because extraverted leaders are less receptive to proactivity. In Study 1, pizza stores with leaders rated high (low) in…
Anxiety, advice, and the ability to discern: Feeling anxious motivates individuals to seek and use advice
Across 8 experiments, the influence of anxiety on advice seeking and advice taking is described. Anxious individuals are found to be more likely to seek and rely on advice than are those in a neutral emotional state (Experiment 1), but this pattern of results does not generalize to other negatively valenced emotions (Experiment 2). The relationships between anxiety and advice seeking and anxiety and advice taking are mediated by self-confidence; …
The dark side of creativity: Original thinkers can be more dishonest
Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals' ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional…
Give them what they want: The benefits of explicitness in gift exchange
Retracted: Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end
Many written forms required by businesses and governments rely on honest reporting. Proof of honest intent is typically provided through signature at the end of, e.g., tax returns or insurance policy forms. Still, people sometimes cheat to advance their financial self-interests—at great costs to society. We test an easy-to-implement method to discourage dishonesty: signing at the beginning rather than at the end of a self-report, thereby reversin…
Vicarious dishonesty: When psychological closeness creates distance from one’s moral compass
Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty
Early research and teaching on ethics focused either on a moral development perspective or on philosophical approaches and used a normative approach by focusing on the question of how people should act when resolving ethical dilemmas. In this article, we briefly describe the traditional approach to ethics and then present a (biased) review of the behavioral approach to ethics. We define behavioral ethics as the study of systematic and predictable…
Sweeping dishonesty under the rug: How unethical actions lead to forgetting of moral rules
Dishonest behavior can have various psychological outcomes. We examine whether one consequence could be the forgetting of moral rules. In 4 experiments, participants were given the opportunity to behave dishonestly, and thus earn undeserved money, by over-reporting their performance on an ability-based task. Before the task, they were exposed to moral rules (i.e., an honor code). Those who cheated were more likely to forget the moral rules after …
Memory lane and morality: How childhood memories promote prosocial behavior
Although research has established that autobiographical memory affects one's self-concept, little is known about how it affects moral behavior. We focus on a specific type of autobiographical memory: childhood memories. Drawing on research on memory and moral psychology, we propose that childhood memories elicit moral purity, which we define as a psychological state of feeling morally clean and innocent. In turn, heightened moral purity leads to …
Self-serving altruism? The lure of unethical actions that benefit others
Ethically adrift: How others pull our moral compass from true North, and how we can fix it
I'll have one of each: How separating rewards into (meaningless) categories increases motivation
We propose that separating rewards into categories can increase motivation, even when those categories are meaningless. Across six experiments, people were more motivated to obtain one reward from one category and another reward from another category than they were to obtain two rewards from a pool that included all items from either reward category. As a result, they worked longer when potential rewards for their work were separated into meaning…
The cheater’s high: The unexpected affective benefits of unethical behavior
Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this article, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a "cheater's high." Across 6 studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior (Studies 1a and 1b), individuals who cheat on…
The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity
This research examines how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. A series of studies demonstrates that people confer hi…
Psychology (43 works) · Social Psychology (43 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (23 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (17 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Ethics in Business and Education (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works)