Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemA Question of Ethics: Navigating Ethical Failure in the Banking and Financial Services Industry(Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, 2016)Since the global financial crisis (GFC), financial institutions and practitioners in Australia, New Zealand and Asia have come under scrutiny for a range of ethical transgressions leading to industry scandal, as have their more well-known counterparts in the United States and United Kingdom. Some scandals were caused by people who – driven by greed and the demands of a complex, fast-paced industry – chose to behave unethically. However, evidence from social psychology points to an alternative explanation: a good deal of unethical behaviour is also unconscious. In A Question of Ethics, we draw on themes and findings from various industry scandals to examine contributing factors at the structural, social and individual levels that influence ethical conduct, and how these may be distorted by what social psychologists refer to as cognitive biases. We present data from a six-country survey of banking and financial services industry practitioners, which explores attitudes towards questionable practices and seeks views about the potential for ethical improvement.
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ItemImplicit and explicit Motivated Self-Perception as hypothesis-driven self-construal(Pergamon Press Ltd., 2017-10-01)Motivated Self-Perception (MSP) facilitates the positive perception of the self via the endorsement of desirable characteristics, selective recall of autobiographical memories, and performance of desirable behaviour. Peters and Gawronski (2011) proposed a model of MSP as “hypothesis-driven” self-construal integrating implicit and explicit self-concepts, motivation, and autobiographical memory. The current study provides the first complete test of this model. One hundred and twenty-seven participants read a summary of a fictional study before completing measures of motivation, personality self-ratings, autobiographical memory, and implicit self-personality associations. Explicit self-concept, autobiographical memory, and the implicit self-personality association were affected by the manipulation, consistent with predictions. Results also revealed that implicit self-personality associations were predicted by motivation and autobiographical memory, providing evidence for the proposed model of MSP, and further evidence for the interconnectedness of implicit and explicit self-constructs. Finally, these results are interpreted as evidence for the effect of MSP-based self-enhancement across all levels of the self.
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ItemHarmful Workplace Experiences and Women's Occupational Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2016-03-01)We report a meta-analytic review of studies examining the relations among harmful workplace experiences and women’s occupational well-being. Based on previous research, a classification of harmful workplace experiences affecting women is proposed and then used in the analysis of 88 studies with 93 independent samples, containing 73,877 working women. We compare the associations of different harmful workplace experiences and job stressors with women’s work attitudes and health. Random-effects meta-analysis and path analysis showed that more intense yet less frequent harmful experiences (e.g., sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention) and less intense but more frequent harmful experiences (e.g., sexist organizational climate and gender harassment) had similar negative effects on women’s well-being. Harmful workplace experiences were independent from and as negative as job stressors in their impact on women’s occupational well-being. The power imbalance between the target and the perpetrator appeared as a potential factor to explain the type and impact of harmful workplace experiences affecting women’s occupational well-being. In the discussion, we identify several gaps in the literature, suggest directions for future research, and suggest organizational policy changes and interventions that could be effective at reducing the incidence of harmful workplace experiences. Additional online materials for this article are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQ's website at http://pwq.sagepub.com/supplemental.
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ItemEvaluation Bias and Backlash: Dimensions, Predictors and Implications for Organisations(Melbourne Business, 2012)
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ItemEconomic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2011-10)People's self-perception biases often lead them to see themselves as better than the average person (a phenomenon known as self-enhancement). This bias varies across cultures, and variations are typically explained using cultural variables, such as individualism versus collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences among societies--specifically, relative levels of economic inequality--play an important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for self-enhancement was found in 15 diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more income inequality, and income inequality predicted cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement better than did individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macrosocial differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to microsocial processes of perceiving the self.