Stephen Garcia
Description: Stephen Garcia is a Professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. His research focuses on the psychology of competition which draws on aspects of organizational behavior, social psychology and cognitive science. In this episode we talk about all things competition, from the utility of fear as a motivator to the differences in competition among genders. Professor Garcia also explains how group size and ranking can impact competition and the implications that has for college students and performance outcomes.
Website:
Publications:
Ranks and Rivals: A Theory of Competition
Show Notes:
[0:04] Introduction to Professor Stephen Garcia
[2:25] Dissertation and Early Collaborations
[3:41] Motivators: Love vs. Fear
[6:53] Understanding Competition
[10:58] The Nature of Rivalry
[13:32] The Impact of Rankings
[16:04] Age and Competition
[19:19] Rankings and Performance
[21:16] Fear vs. Love in Status
[25:52] The Role of Group Size
[27:57] Competition in Work Structures
[31:12] Startups vs. Corporations
[33:47] Consulting and Competition Research
[37:34] Teaching Negotiation
[42:06] Gender Differences in Negotiation
[45:22] Gender and Competition Prefrences
[46:43] Implications for Work Environments
[49:06] Status Signaling in Business
[51:30] Presenting Information Effectively
[1:00:21] Navigating Competition in Academics
Unedited AI Generated Transcript:
Brent
[0:01]Welcome, Professor Stephen Garcia. Thank you for coming on today.
[0:04]
Introduction to Professor Stephen Garcia
Stephen
[0:05]Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Keller
[0:07]We'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about your story. What got you interested in psychology and competition, and how you ended up at UC Davis?
Stephen
[0:15]So, I was probably, I was working on my dissertation, and I had an opportunity to go to the program on negotiation at Harvard Law School, where I met another fellow there, research fellow, Avi Shalom Tor. And in my discussions with Avi Shalom Tor about my dissertation, it seemed like we were, that I was actually studying the psychology of competition, and I didn't really realize it at that point. But Avi Shalom is from a law and economics perspective, and he saw my social comparison work as being relevant to the study of the psychology of competition. And so that began many years collaboration with Avi Shalom Tor on this topic.
Keller
[1:05]What was the original topic of the dissertation or the original, I guess, like working title before you had the realization of competition?
Stephen
[1:12]Yeah. So, I mean, the dissertation was about how when you're trying to resolve a group dispute between two different groups. It might be the case that, for example, if you're deciding the type of music to be played at the high school prom. So one option might be techno music. The other option, at least back in the day, would have been alternative music. And so one possible solution would be, you know, just flip a coin, heads for techno, tails for alternative. And so when we would ask participants, you know, can you flip a coin? They would say, sure, no problem. But in another condition, we had one ethnic group wanted techno music and another ethnic group wanted alternative music. Can you flip a coin? And our research participants were saying, no, not really. Because what happened is when social categories like ethnic background was overlaid onto the preferences, it was no longer just a preference dispute. It was about whose preference dispute would prevail, not which preference would prevail.
[2:25]
Dissertation and Early Collaborations
Stephen
[2:20]And so in that situation, people became averse to these winner-take-all solutions. And so that was basically the dissertation. And again, And looping it back, Tavi Shalom tour, you know, just talking to him about that, you know, it was like, you know, he had this law and economics perspective and saw competition in that work right away.
Brent
[2:41]That's super interesting. So before we dive like deeper in to your work specifically, we want to ask a bit of like a fun intro question. What do you think is a better motivator, love or fear?
Stephen
[2:53]Oh, well, I mean, certainly love is more compelling in the long run. I think also just riding the wave of love in terms of motivation, it's a lot more fun to ride. I mean, it's just more positive, more joyful, so many positive attributes. Whereas, you know, if you live in fear, then fear is just like, it's just kind of like a hell hole. I mean, it's always, you're always yoked to these hellish feelings. And so I think in the long term, definitely love is the way to go. Even when love hurts, so to speak, it's, you don't have the yoke of that hell with you that comes with fear.
Brent
[3:37]Do you think fear has a place in driving really good results though?
[3:41]
Motivators: Love vs. Fear
Stephen
[3:42]Oh, I think in the short term, sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it could be helpful. I mean, even for procrastinators, people who, you know, might work on a paper, you know, at the very last minute, pull an all-nighter or whatever. I mean, it's that fear that's actually helping them to get it done. And certainly, you know, different benchmarks or like, you know, having to meet quarterly goals or monthly goals, whatever it might be, the fear of the end of the month, the fear of the end of the quarter, that's going to get every people, you know, everybody in line to, you know, try to meet those goals. So definitely fear has a place, but maybe just more in the short term rather than in the long term.
Brent
[4:21]Yeah. Have you looked at Adam Grant's work on procrastination?
Stephen
[4:24]Uh i have not.
Brent
[4:26]Okay yeah it was just basically saying like procrastination kind of done strategically allows you to think about things in the background but then once a little bit more stress gets introduced you can then perform and because you've had it in the back of your mind for a while you'll have a little bit more creative ideas to then implement when the time comes but yeah yeah.
Stephen
[4:47]No that that's interesting it also kind of reminds me a little bit of like uh And Dan Ariel in his book, Predictably Irrational, talks about a study where participants were given or students were given the opportunity to complete all their assignments, like, I don't know, three assignments by the end of the term, or they had forced intervals where they were required to turn in their assignments. And so what they found was I think people performed better, but if they actually were given these forced intervals to turn in their assignments rather than give them the opportunity to procrastinate. And there, I think the interesting insight is that these guardrails, the structure, the stricture, which people will say that they do not want, actually helps them get things done and they perform better and they probably feel better consequently. So, it's kind of an ironic effect. You know, people don't want structure, but actually structure can actually help you.
Brent
[5:50]Definitely. Yeah.
Keller
[5:51]I think a lot of people might have slightly different definitions of competition. How would you describe competition?
Stephen
[5:56]Yeah. So, I mean, I think competition is, I mean, certainly anytime you have a zero sum game or where the structure of a tournament is designed to select a winner based on different incentives, et cetera. But I think what's unique about the psychology of competition is it's very subjective. It's about your own subjective feeling, your own subjective attitude, your own subjective perception. I mean, it may be that there is no competition going on, except for the competition in your mind that you see vis-a-vis another person who may be completely unaware of the fact that there is this implicit competition that you're competing in. And I think it's that realm that the psychology of competition really delves into. It gets into the mind, into the subjective construal of the situation.
[6:53]
Understanding Competition
Brent
[6:54]And then how do you think some of those like competitiveness aspects, whether it's made up by the person or it's the structure of the environment, how does that negatively impact their ability to compete?
Stephen
[7:09]I mean i i think in terms of like things that are bad about competition um it could uh hurt situations where people are trying to maximize joint gains so if you're trying to maximize joint gains and you feel competitive towards someone else then uh what's going to happen is you're not going to maximize joint gains especially you know if the joint gains could benefit the broader organization or some broader initiative um you know i i think that's something that's a deleterious effect. And yeah, trying to think here. Also, I think, you know, just in terms of like, it can be negative when people focus on the short term instead of the long term, and they might not even anticipate, for example, if they do take competition too seriously, they might not even recognize sort of the negative aftertaste or the negative milieu that might happen after you take, you know, a competition too seriously. Not only might you feel bad about your own perception and behavior, but regardless of whether you won or lost, especially if you won sometimes, you might have actually lost because of the negativity that went into, let's say, just winning that competition.
Brent
[8:34]Yeah do you think a better framework for people might be less competition internally and focusing more externally so if you're on a sports team you might be competing for top minutes but that could also harm the overall organization then the team doesn't win and therefore it does harm everyone more or in a business setting you might be fighting for that promotion and then that doesn't end up helping anybody nearly to the extent that working together, having a collaborative mindset could help the overall organization win. And therefore your bosses want to promote you after that.
Stephen
[9:11]I think focusing on some externalities can actually help the competitive process make it more healthy. One way is just to focus on, let's say, the goals and not necessarily the other person, like trying to get ahead. But if you do tend to focus on the other person, that could be helpful, especially from a social comparison perspective. Because when we compare and we see others are doing well, or they might supplant us, or maybe they're onto us in terms of doing better, then in that case, we can actually benefit from that motivation.
Stephen
[9:49]And I think that would be fine because healthy competition, even healthy rivalry can lead to personal self-improvement. I think where it goes bad is where even in those situations, you take it too seriously. You assume that that is all there is in your life and you have to do better than that or the person or else. And that's where it's not healthy. Because we do know in other situations where we have rivalry, for example, in sports, I mean, you know, part of good sportsmanship is having that good game, that good spirit of rivalry while at the same time, you know, being gracious victors, being gracious losers or whatever, and just enjoying the esprit de corps that you have with your teammates over, you know, a game that transpired, regardless of whether you won the game or you did not. And so, again, I think it's, it's not the case that these comparisons or these rivalries are bad. It's just to try to keep them in their proper place in your
[10:58]
The Nature of Rivalry
Stephen
[10:54]headspace and to release them after the competition.
Brent
[10:59]Yeah, that's definitely something I relate to, because growing up playing ice hockey, at the end of like games you would shake hands say good game and like during the game you're literally beating each other up but then in the nhl after playoffs it's every every single time there's a handshake line and typically that goes pretty well there's been a few cases it doesn't.
Keller
[11:19]And then in your original example, you mentioned you might be like walking down the street and someone might like have the idea that they're in competition with you, but you might not know you're in that competitive game. Have you looked into like what factors might make someone like listen to that competitive voice more, like take on more of that perspective in their day to day as opposed to like a regular person, I guess?
Stephen
[11:39]Yeah. So, I mean, I think definitely one window into that would be through like personality research. So if you are high in trait competitiveness, so your personality is just a highly competitive personality, we've done research showing that you're more likely to perceive a non-competitive event as being a competitive one. And so you can see different personality types, competitive personality types manifest in different situations. One example that I kind of go to is oftentimes when you stay in a high-rise luxury hotel, it's kind of the idea that the higher the floor, the better the view and the better room that you have. And so sometimes I kind of feel that when I go into the elevator, I might push, okay, I'm on floor number 24, and then the other person after me pushes floor 25. I might think, you know what, you jackass. You think you're all better than me just because you're one floor above me, whatever. But for that other person, it just might be about taking the elevator to get to their floor. It's not about they're staying on a better floor than me, even though if I have a competitive personality, that may be how I construe that situation.
Brent
[13:01]Yeah. And then for people who are hyper set on getting the best possible results for them, even at the sacrifice of their mental health. Do you see an advantage of creating competition when there's not competition? Do you see an advantage of taking it kind of to that extreme if they're willing to know or if they're willing to admit that this is probably for a short term and it's probably going to be detrimental to my mental health?
[13:32]
The Impact of Rankings
Stephen
[13:33]So I, I, I think in, in those situations, especially if you think about highly competitive athletes you know.
Keller
[13:41]They definitely have to practice.
Stephen
[13:43]They definitely have to go through the competitive hurdles, I would think, time and time again, constantly to get to where they are. Other people, for example, in terms of their own career trajectories may tell you that they've had to, quote unquote, work their way to the top. And so I do think that some people, you know.
Stephen
[14:05]Are maybe chronically competitive or chronically try to do well and succeed overachievers, for example, is just a generic term to describe many in that, that bucket. But, but yeah, I mean, and at the same time, I do think that there are negative consequences. So one of the things that I think about compared, let's say, you know, my generation or, you know, people even younger versus older generations, it's like, there's a lot of mobility. So when I was going to college, I mean, you know, we went to college all over the place or right after college, we could move across countries. It's like no big deal. And in doing that, you know, many times, you know, we're trying to maximize status, trying to do the best that we can get the best opportunity. Maybe it's, you know, the highest paying job, whatever it might be. And so we have that fluidity, that flexibility to move our geography, to move out of our home communities into, you know, these other realms. And I sometimes wonder and compare that with older generations who tended to stay put in their own community, so to speak, and didn't necessarily, you know, travel the country or travel the world just to maximize some value, some status or whatever it might be.
Stephen
[15:31]And what kind of lives are... We creating in terms of pursuing these opportunities that are taking us away from different kinds of communities that we're connected to? And is it worth it in the end? And at the end, especially later on in life, it's like, okay, what social network have you created in the pursuit of the status or the opportunity that you were looking for? And for some people, it may not be as good as when, you know,
[16:04]
Age and Competition
Stephen
[16:02]if they would have like stayed closer to home. Obviously, I'm not suggesting people should all, you know, stay in the same neighborhood, not go anywhere. But it is, I think the bigger story to be aware of is that we self-select into different environments. We self-select into different situations and our decisions can be a series of self-selecting. And I guess the question that people should probably ponder is, what are you ultimately self-selecting into in terms of like community, your potential for social contacts, family contacts, et cetera. And I don't think, at least when I was growing up, no one ever talked about kind of be mindful of the environments in which you're self-selecting into.
Brent
[16:48]Yeah.
Keller
[16:49]So it's very heavily related to age, I'd imagine, because when you're young, you need a lot of help, you need a lot of support. Oh, definitely.
Stephen
[16:56]Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, you know, and when you're younger, you definitely have, it's beneficial to, I think, have multiple experiences and go to different places, etc., travel the world, whatever. Um but and it might just be part of the you know aging process as you get older you become you might realize that many of the pursuits that you had when you were younger, no longer apply because the trajectory is is different i mean i'm you know i suppose now you know i mean as i'm getting older i mean for example i mean i'm i'm thinking more about like retirement i mean okay what's retirement going to look like i'm you know i mean it's it's it's even like, well, I mean, I don't think about like deathbed or anything like that, but I mean, you know, there is sort of this issue of like, okay, you know, like what, what, what do I want when I, when I, when I pass away, where am I going to be buried or if, am I going to be buried or what? And those kinds of things. So the whole, the whole thing, you know, kind of changes, but yeah.
Brent
[18:00]No, definitely a lot to ponder on that. Going back to a bit of competition though, So how have you seen rankings impact people's competitiveness?
Stephen
[18:12]Yes. I mean, I, well, I mean, we've done a lot of work on rankings and one of the interesting things about rankings is that they're so pervasive, even if they are not like, you know, apparent. So for example, if you shout to a group of, you know, children, you know, first one to the tree is the coolest person in the world.
Stephen
[18:33]The children run to the tree. Or if you say last one, there's a rotten egg. Again, the children will run. But what's interesting in these childhood games is that competition is not uniformly distributed amongst the racing children. In the first case, it's those who are closest to the tree that are going to be tugging and pulling at each other compared to those who are behind. And in the latter situation, it's the would-be rotten eggs who are pulling at each other compared to those who are further ahead. And so I think all rankings do is basically systematically distance people from the standard. How far away are they from the tree, so to speak, or how far away are they from
[19:19]
Rankings and Performance
Stephen
[19:17]the last place being the rotten egg? And so, we have formal rankings, which can sort of put people on that continuum. And we do find, of course, that people who are highly ranked are more competitive with each other than those who are intermediately ranked.
Stephen
[19:37]And we do find that people who are close to the end or in the last place position, that's also a point of competition. And so, I mean, I do think that you see this play out in many different realms. I mean, we didn't study world or geopolitical processes or anything, but you can sort of think about like, you know, vying for, you know, the number one country position in the world or something like that, or, um, you can see that, you know, perhaps amongst, uh, well-known rivals, you know, in, in a particular field, um, um.
Stephen
[20:14]I mean, I even think that there were some competitive dynamics. There's also competitive dynamics when you might have a solo status or have a solo identity, and then you're more competitive. So there's this one paper, I don't recall the researchers right now, but they studied the queen bee effect. And that shows that, you know, let's say females who are highly ranked in the organization might be more competitive toward other females who are trying to climb the ladder, or I would say probably more proximate to them. Um, and, and I think that also, um, you know, plays out in, in many different areas, uh, as well. So, um, I don't know, you know, whatever your own backgrounds are, maybe there's, there's someone like you that you might be competitive with back home. And so, um, if you share that kind of similarity and you're at commensurate
[21:16]
Fear vs. Love in Status
Stephen
[21:12]institutions, whatever, you might feel, uh, that, you know, the same way.
Brent
[21:16]Do you think that comes more from a place of fear of losing the position or a love of being on top?
Stephen
[21:25]I would say that it's probably more fear-driven, although the goal is to, I suppose, to be number one. But certainly there is that fear in losing your status or the fear that if you're not number one, that you're going to be supplanted by someone else. One thing that we have found is that when people are highly ranked and they work together and they could actually improve their position. So if you're ranked number seven, the other person's ranked number six, you will enter, you would be willing to collaborate with them if you could both advance to like number four and number three, for example. So just getting ahead on that continuum is beneficial to both parties so that even if you're highly ranked you're still use you'll still be open to cooperation if you can improve.
Keller
[22:25]Is there a way that having rankings could like actually hurt the actual performance like i'm trying to think about school and like if getting to a 4.0 is the actual performance metric we care about but the students that know that they're in a certain ranking of the class size they know they're not going to hit that they might not really be and they might know the average they might not be incentivized to work towards the best possible outcome because there's comfort in knowing there's a lot of other people in that same boat or to get to the actual like output would be too difficult is there a way of changing the structure of providing those rankings where it focuses more so on the metric and not your position.
Stephen
[23:07]Um, I mean, another way that you might be able to get greater competition and more motivation is if you have a smaller unit, so smaller groups versus a larger lecture hall, or if you can make things more centered around a smaller number of people, because one of the other things that we find is that, uh, as the number of competitors increases, the motivation to compete decreases.
Stephen
[23:35]And so, and we've shown this in many ways, for example, so we looked at SAT test scores and we did this analysis showing that on average, the more people that show up to take the SAT at a particular state's venue, the lower the average score is for that session. And so in this case, I would say that, I mean, if it's a big lecture hall, you know, there might be more, people might be more motivated to do well if they're in a smaller cohort. I mean, and it would have to be something that would just have something more than just having breakout discussions or having different discussions, but something a little bit more meaningful in terms of identifying who their cohort would be. And under that situation, you should see motivation improve. So that would be a lever that you can sort of pull to go against whatever ordinal rank they might have that would be in the intermediate zone.
Brent
[24:38]Have you looked at, so it's for the GMAT to get into business school? I think you can take that online now too. So if people are taking that online alone versus in a very small group setting versus a large group setting, have you seen any differences in outcomes on being alone in motivation versus like small settings? Because I know you just talked about the large versus small.
Stephen
[25:03]You know what? That's a good question. So we just focus primarily on in this work, which we call the N effect. We just compared motivation in small groups versus larger groups there's this other research on social facilitation research which shows that if you are alone but then working amongst a few others then there's going to be an increase but the way that they showed this was more with with an easy task so for example if you're at the you know gym lifting weights by yourself you just might be going slowly, whatever, but then a few people come in, then you're going to be lifting at a faster pace. And so it's on these easy tasks that social facilitation has shown that people do better when they're amongst a few versus alone.
[25:52]
The Role of Group Size
Stephen
[25:53]In this case, it might be a little bit tricky. I don't know the answer, but it might be ironic that you might actually perform a little better if you do take it with a few other people rather than by yourself.
Keller
[26:06]Yeah, that makes sense. And then going back to the class size example, I get that if you have a smaller cohort, it'll make competition theoretically a little bit better because you'll have more personification of I guess your competitors. But would it still be beneficial to know your ranking within that small class size? If you were a teacher and you had a small class of six people, would you tell the students where they're ranked?
Stephen
[26:33]Um, I don't, I don't know if, I don't know if the ranking would have as much meaning in a smaller, in a smaller group, but I mean, that that's an interesting question. One of the things that we find just, um, kind of related to that issue, it's a little bit different, but people like, if you're a third party, like a teacher or someone, and you're assigning grades, you're going to feel more pressure to pay the more pressure to give those students like all an A or in the A range than if you had a larger class, all else being equal. So people prefer when they're allocating to a small group, they like equality versus when it's a larger group. It's OK. They're more willing to tolerate inequality. We could give some C's, B's, A's, whatever. It doesn't matter. But in a small group, it's like you really feel more pressure. Or maybe just A's and A minuses, and that's it. So in that case, I think there could be an aversion to assigning ranks in such a small number, you know, when there's only six people in the group. But that's an interesting question. We have not looked at that.
Brent
[27:47]And then say you're, you are a professor, so you can organize your classroom to a decent extent.
[27:57]
Competition in Work Structures
Brent
[27:55]What if you're like a business as well? What management structure, team structure would you implement to both achieve high results via like decent competition, but also maintaining like good team dynamics and like mental health within the population.
Stephen
[28:13]Yeah. So I think a lot of these levers for competitiveness, such as, you know, rankings, especially if you're highly ranked or smaller groups, I think that's beneficial when, when people are working on autonomous tasks. So where they're not interdependent, where you don't need two people to exchange know-how for the benefit of the organization. So a lot of these might be in sales. So for example, sales would be a situation where if you have non-overlapping jurisdictions, but many different sales agents, then in that case, it's okay to probably rank them or to create these small bands of cohorts in which they compete, whatever, because that will give them energy and propel them on their task. But again, it gets a little more tricky when you're working with people who are, you know, like have an interdependent task where they have to share information because some people may not share all they know because they don't want the other person to get credit for what they know. And so, in those situations, I suppose if you're designing a structure, sure, you could have the ranking based on, I don't know, some kind of product or contribution, but you should also have measures on like cooperation, agreeableness, willingness to share, et cetera, and ranking people on those positive items as well in these interdependent situations.
Brent
[29:42]Yeah. And then…, I feel like that would be relatively harder to implement, especially in like a business setting. So would you probably say scrap the rankings for collaborative work and just focus on small team sizes where you could give the group credit when it's due?
Stephen
[29:59]Yeah. So, I mean, I, you know, I, I think they also have these 360 degree evaluations. And so in those situations, you still might be able to give feedback without ranking them per se. Yeah, but I'm not, I'm personally, I'm not a fan of like forced ranking. So there's a book called Forced Ranking and I'm not a fan of forced ranking just more generally, but if you are going to rank people, then definitely make sure that they're working independently on autonomous tasks.
Brent
[30:31]Yeah.
Keller
[30:31]And with the way that you structure, it doesn't have to be necessarily ranking, but like the fostering of that competition, would that change if you were to have a startup versus is a massive corporation or would the startup just be like a microcosm of the of a small group within the organization.
Stephen
[30:46]Yeah i think the whole dynamic is different when it's a startup because it's basically about survival and trying to get uh everything to fly and um and it's definitely a flatter structure so you know you wouldn't necessarily think that there's much status difference between the CEO of the startup and the secretary or administrative assistant?
[31:12]
Startups vs. Corporations
Brent
[31:12]Yeah. So do you think maybe startup stages, it's more focused on competing externally? We have to survive in this environment. And then maybe once you get to a large corporation, you're more like, okay, this district is outperforming that district and maybe ranking districts. So the teams together in per district can compete against each other. I think that could be a, probably a better metric.
Stephen
[31:35]Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, and I think that's a better use of, of, you know, using these kind of the rivalry that the ranking would entail. And yeah, that's more positive for sure.
[31:47]
Consulting and Competition Research
Keller
[31:47]Now, are there any businesses that you know of that do a really good job of fostering competition without being self-destructive? Any good stories of like management structure?
Stephen
[31:56]Um i i mean off offhand i don't know uh great examples so my own background i mean i'm a social psychologist and i study sort of the basics of of of competition and competitiveness and one of my weaknesses is an extensive familiarity with all the businesses out there so that said there's other organizational behavior scholars who would better be able to answer that question and point to specific organizations.
Brent
[32:35]Yeah. Have you ever been contacted by businesses to help them or consulting groups and that type of thing?
Stephen
[32:41]Have I ever? Are you kidding me? No way, man. No, not really. No. I mean, if anything, I mean, I teach negotiation and so I've been, you know, contacted or I've been asked to teach in, in kind of an apply applied settings on the topic of negotiation. But, um, in terms of competition and competitiveness, no. And I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not sure, you know, I'm not sure why. I mean, it's, it's. A lot of people might think of competition more at the strategic level, like, you know, at the organizational level, and perhaps less so at the individual level. So, when it's about the organizational level, it's really not about the psychology per se, but more sociological factors, whereas, you know, what I study is more about individuals within the organization.
Brent
[33:36]That makes sense.
Keller
[33:37]And with negotiation, to me, when I think of negotiation, I just think of one-on-one talks, one-on-one conversations.
[33:47]
Negotiation Dynamics
Keller
[33:44]Like you're saying, the difference between the group psychology versus individual. Is there a situation where you would have a group psychology dynamic with a negotiation?
Brent
[33:53]Maybe an M&A deal?
Stephen
[33:54]Um, yeah, I mean, certainly there, there are psychological factors, uh, even in like, you know, mergers and acquisitions or even like sponsoring some kind of, of, you know, venture, for example. I know back in the day, Joel Pledonely wrote this book called Status Signals, and he talks about when they would launch a new enterprise and you had these different investment banks involved, there was something called a tombstone, who were the key sponsors versus the subsidiary sponsors. And so if one of the investment banks wasn't sort of comfortable with the way they were presented on the tombstone, they would back out. And so obviously that's a psychological effect of those decision makers on behalf of the investment bank. So a lot of these, the psychology can manifest even at that level because you still have these decisions.
Stephen
[35:04]Kind of like status signals that can go on that people are aware of. And it's not just organizational per se, but people are sensitive to them. And so, yeah. And the way that I touch status signals too, by the way, is it's more at the individual level. So one of the studies or a series of studies that we've done, it's called the status signals paradox. And it's the idea that when people are looking to make new friends, they think that signaling status is going to be helpful, that it's going to help them make new friends. So if you graduate from college, your mom and dad or whatever are going to buy you a new car, it could be a Honda or BMW, which one would you choose to meet new friends? Most people would probably pick the BMW. But when we ask participants, like in the neighborhood, oh, a recent college grad had moved into town and they pulled up in a Honda or a BMW, people would rather meet the Honda driver, not the BMW driver. And so in that case, you know, it's kind of like people think that status will help them attract friends, but it's actually keeping them at bay.
Brent
[36:20]I want to go back to the negotiation and that stuff, and then before getting more into the status signaling. And on that, you said tombstones. For the listeners, I'm pretty sure that's just when a deal closes within an investment bank. They literally make a plaque, and it's printed on there. So that's a very interesting note that people get upset about how they're placed on this plaque. But um what do you like teach in the negotiation stuff and how do you best negotiate whether it's is it more like in a personal like negotiating negotiating for a raise or what type of negotiations are you looking at more yeah.
Stephen
[37:01]So i mean it's just kind of the the basics of negotiation which are which can manifest in many different realms i mean certainly business or you know conflict resolution, whatever it might be. And I think the basic idea in negotiation teaching would be to show that it's not just about positions that people have. So for example, one common example is if you have an orange,
[37:34]
Teaching Negotiation
Stephen
[37:29]and it might be the case that two children, let's say, want the orange. And so one possibility would be to just cut the orange in half. Half for one kid half for the other. But if you actually ask why, like ask the why question, why do you want the orange? It might be the case that one of the children wants the rind and then the other child wants the fruit center. So in that situation, you could see how just looking at it from a positional perspective, like positional bargaining, cutting the orange in half is completely suboptimal because there's compatible underlying interests, you know, in the sense that you have the, you know, one person gets the orange, the other person gets the rind. And so I think...
Stephen
[38:16]There are things about transforming positions into interest. That's kind of like one of the things about negotiation that we teach. Another is, what do you do in a multi-issue negotiation? And it's basically the idea that when there's multiple issues in a negotiation, people sometimes might think that the priority of their issues is symmetrical to the priority of the other person's issues. But more often than not, that's not the case. And when it's not the case, what you should do is you should give them what they want for their high priority issue in return for compensation on your high priority issue. And so in that sense, you could really, you know, expand the pie, so to speak. And so it's a collaborative value maximization negotiation that we tend to teach. And I would say this is probably true with the places that we get our materials from. So the Dispute Resolution Research Center at Kellogg or the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. It's kind of with that idea in mind. It's more kind of like a maximize joint gains perspective.
Brent
[39:34]Do you think that's becoming more popular in business? Because I could also see situations where people want to keep the most valuable position or a thing that they want close to their chest so then they can't be exploited for that. Do you think people are getting better at openly communicating and saying, hey, these are my most important things. What are yours? How can we meet in the middle somehow?
Stephen
[39:58]I'm not so sure that maybe people are getting better at that, but I think a lot of people are even ignorant of these possibilities. I think even just in terms of conflict resolution more generally, I think one of the reasons why- Oh, gosh, maybe one of the reasons why there might be some kind of violence or people pulling out a weapon is they don't know about conflict resolution. We don't have to fight this out. We don't need to put on – I don't know if you guys have brass knuckles, but we don't need to put on the brass knuckles to duke it out. You could actually have this conversation centered around conflict resolution to actually make this path forward. And yeah, so I don't think a lot of people are aware of that. One idea that sort of struck me back in the day, and I think this is actually being done, I don't remember where exactly, but even in prisons, like teaching conflict resolution or negotiation and conflict resolution, I think would be very beneficial just because there is, another way to deal with conflict resolution.
Keller
[41:19]And in situations where you're trying to enter a negotiation, but let's say the other party isn't aware at that point, like a student going to professor, you want to get your grade raised or you're an employee and you want to get an actual raise. Do you have any advice on how to best enter that when you might not know, like how to position yourself when you might not know how the other person's trying to position themselves to best like enter in at a leveling playing field.
Stephen
[41:42]Yeah yeah so i mean i i think one of the things in that situation and in many situations is just recognizing the opportunity to negotiate so some people might not even go back to their professor and ask them for a regrade or or to look over their paper before they turn it in whatever it might be um,
[42:06]
Gender Differences in Negotiation
Stephen
[42:02]And so just recognizing the opportunity to negotiate, I think, is really a big deal. In fact, there's been research, for example, by Linda Babcock showing that there's this gender divide, and I think it still persists today. I think she wrote the book maybe 10 years ago. I mean, I don't know if things have changed in 10 years, but it's the idea that women are less likely to pursue negotiation. So even when, according to her research at the time, even when women would get an offer, they would be less likely to negotiate back. And so they would leave money on the table, whereas the men didn't necessarily have that problem. And so I do think that, again, recognizing for the opportunity to negotiate is an important one.
Keller
[42:55]And is there anything else you can tell us about the difference between men and women in the competition sphere and the negotiation sphere? Yeah.
Stephen
[43:01]So one of my former students, Catherine Hanick, and I have done some research looking at competitive preferences in gender. Now, just in general, there's already research showing that women tend to shy away from competition. So if you can enter a competition to get a higher payoff in an experiment versus doing an experiment where you get kind of like pay-as-you-go, a piece rate payoff.
Stephen
[43:35]Women gravitate toward the piece rate instead of the competition. And so that's already been established. And one of the things that Catherine Hanick and I have looked into is how competition size is also a variable that cleaves along gender. And so more specifically, we find that women actually prefer to enter smaller competitions, whereas men prefer to enter larger competitions. And so one of the reasons why is that women feel more comfortable in smaller settings, in smaller competitions, and in much larger ones. Now, this is just a general effect. It doesn't mean that all men and women behave in this way. This is just a general pattern. But what's problematic about this pattern is that it's probably the case that in larger competitions, that's probably where you have higher rewards more generally. And so, you know.
Stephen
[44:37]Women might be limiting themselves to larger rewards by having a preference for a smaller competition. And then we also find too, for example, that in terms of performance, so what I just described is about more competition entry, which competition, you know, would you enter if you're, you know, female versus male, whatever. But even when you're in the competition, we find that men and women perform more similarly in smaller competitions than in larger ones. So you're more likely to see a disparity in performance if it's a large competition,
[45:22]
Gender and Competition Preferences
Stephen
[45:16]then you would see a disparity in performance if it's a smaller competition between men and women.
Brent
[45:22]And that was from the marathon races?
Stephen
[45:25]So we looked at, yes, so we did look at some marathon data as part of a series of studies that we did in one paper. Yeah, so we did show that the finishing times were for men and women, the average was closer in a smaller competition than in a larger competition.
Brent
[45:45]That's super interesting. And then...
Keller
[45:48]If you're going to translate the group size to workplaces, does that show like on a broad scale, like let's say in the US, women choose to work for smaller companies or smaller divisions of units? How does that translate into thinking about the work?
Stephen
[46:05]I think more generally, and we didn't look at too many organizations, but the idea would be that women might gravitate towards smaller environments, whether it be an office environment or the size of the organization. That's what we're sort of positing. I think we did at one point, though I don't recall, I think we looked at, you know, applications to, you know, colleges based on the size of the colleges.
[46:43]
Implications for Work Environments
Stephen
[46:37]And so smaller colleges, I think, tended to get more female applicants than larger colleges. Um so yeah so the idea here is like you know again we take a very basic social psychological approach and then we we sort of posit that this is how it would work in the real world and in some cases as with this marathon data we we sort of instantiate that we show that to be so in marathons uh but we haven't done it for like numerous organizations but that's what we would predict.
Brent
[47:11]Yeah. And then I think it's pretty well established that women tend to do better in school than men do. Do you think that plays a role in the way those settings are structured?
Stephen
[47:24]You know, I'm not familiar with that finding. I have not thought about that much. I mean, but there could be other factors, other sociological factors that are coming into play and why that might be so.
Brent
[47:43]Yeah. And then have you looked at the gender differences between status signaling?
Stephen
[47:51]We have not yet looked at status signaling and gender, although I do believe that there is, I think there are some interesting ideas about that in terms of sometimes being, And I don't recall to the specifics, but there have been sort of impression management differences between men and women. I just don't remember the effects right now.
Brent
[48:24]Yeah, no worries.
Keller
[48:25]And with the status signaling, you mentioned with friendship, it might be detrimental if you were signaling your very high status. It might not make you less approachable. Are there situations in business where it might be beneficial to status signal or if you're trying to sell a product? Are there different times that it would make sense to try to have a status that you're signaling?
Stephen
[48:42]Yeah. So in this status signals paradox, we did include a condition where it was more about building business connections. And in that case, it really didn't hurt to signal status. It didn't help that much, but it didn't hurt. Whereas if you were looking for friends and then you signal status,
[49:06]
Status Signaling in Business
Stephen
[49:02]that could hurt your ability to find new friends. But um but in another realm we did also look at status signaling in terms of buying and selling online so if you're like you know have a little i don't know ebay store whatever um that if you're signaling status maybe you have a bunch of like um i'm making this up but like louis vuitton and uh what other kind of flashy stuff that you would have um you know fancy cars mercedes bmw whatever, that those kind of signals can be off-putting to would-be buyers because it might undermine the credibility, your own credibility, your own trustworthiness if you're signaling these luxury statuses when you're buying and selling something online. So a buyer might prefer to, again, buy from someone who is driving around in a Toyota than buy something from someone who's driving around in a BMW. There's something a little bit.
Stephen
[50:10]They just trust the Toyota driver a little bit more than the BMW driver. So it could hurt in those situations, those one-off transactions, such as an online marketplace.
Keller
[50:22]Is that a value of trust that you measure, or was it just preference? Would you buy or would you sell to this person more likely?
Stephen
[50:30]So we did an incentivized decision-making experiment where the choices that they made and then who their ultimate buyers were in this experiment determined how much payoff they would get. And so they did make a general choice. And in terms of the supporting measures, we just used, like, I don't recall the questions exactly, but it would be something like, you know, how much do you trust this individual? Or do you think that this person signaling whatever status is more trustworthy? Or those kinds of questions to sort of back up our analyses to kind of get at this mechanism.
Brent
[51:18]Yeah. And then kind of transition to the next topic on presenting yourself or presenting like good, bad information.
[51:30]
Presenting Information Effectively
Brent
[51:25]How would you suggest people going about good news first, bad news first, those types of things?
Stephen
[51:30]Um so so yeah so one of the ways uh that we looked at um presenting information is is through something called the presenter's paradox and so basically what we focused on was how you know oftentimes when we're trying to create an impression we obviously have something very strong very sterling very positive but more often than not we also we also have something that's a little bit mediocre. It's good, but it's not great. And so the question is, is it beneficial to also include this mildly favorable information, this stuff which is good, it's just not that great. And so what we find is that when people are presenting themselves.
Stephen
[52:17]They tend to include both the highly favorable, which is obvious, but they also include the mildly favorable. But that turns, that actually is not beneficial from the, from the person that they're presenting to. And so let me, let me give you an example. So for example, if you're, I don't know, you manage a hotel and maybe you have like a, you know, a five-star restaurant. So, and then you also have a three-star pool. And so the question is, you know, do you just advertise the five-star restaurant at your hotel, or do you put five-star restaurant and then three-star pool? And so what we find is most people, when they're presenting information, they will put.
Stephen
[53:00]Well, the five-star restaurant, and of course, I'm going to put the three-star pool because it's still a three-star pool. But what's happening is when we ask evaluators, oh, look at this ad for a hotel. And in one condition, they see the five-star restaurant alone. And in a separate condition, another set of participants sees the five-star restaurant with the three-star pool. And what we find is that people are more impressed with just the five-star restaurant alone than those participants who saw both the five-star and the three-star pool. And so in that condition, what's happening is they're averaging. And so what happens in terms of the presenting, in presenting, we use an adding rule. We think that more is better, that mildly favorable information is good to include, and so we include it. What we don't anticipate is that evaluators are actually averaging. They only see one iteration of this. And so they're going to average. And so the average of a five-star pool is still a five-star pool. But when you have the average, I mean, the five-star restaurant is still a five-star restaurant. But when you have the five-star restaurant alongside the three-star pool, that's going to be pulled down because people are averaging when they're forming their impression in that situation.
Brent
[54:19]Do you think the useful takeaways for people applying to jobs or grad school or college in that?
Stephen
[54:25]Definitely. So in terms of like, if you're, you know, like whatever kind of award you might have, I mean, you know, if you have, oh gosh, I mean, if you did, if you got like number one for something, you know, I don't know what it could be, but.
Stephen
[54:42]If it's something really strong, you definitely want to put that. But if it's something that's mildly favorable, you might want to drop it. So, for example, if you have work experience and maybe you were an intern at Goldman Sachs or something like that, and then you also worked at McDonald's, you might want to drop McDonald's off and just keep the Goldman Sachs information there. Um also if you have uh maybe a publication if you're you know young and and if you're a college student and you got you know maybe a publication in a in a real psychology journal versus you also have one from like an undergraduate you know little symposium kind of journal you might want to drop that in your resume because the journal alone that's a legit field-based journal is going to be more impressive to the evaluating potential faculty that you would be working with in grad school. Or something if you got a wonderful, you're going to get a bachelor's degree from Davis, you go to a great school for graduate school, and then maybe you also got the key to the city of Pawpaw, Michigan.
Stephen
[56:09]I mean, you might not want to put the fact that you got the key to the Pawpaw, Michigan, the city of Pawpaw, Michigan, on your resume next to that. If you're going to put this mildly favorable stuff, you have to bracket it off as sort of like creating another category. And this also applies, by the way, to like arguments in a paper. So for example, you know, a paper that you have that may have.
Stephen
[56:35]Maybe six arguments, if you stick with the stronger arguments alone, that's going to be a better paper than if you integrate all the, even the three lesser arguments. If you have to include the three lesser, definitely mark it off, bracket it off. Like these are three lesser reasons. And the reason I say that is one other study that we've done is we looked at, um, like campaigns, the top 10 reasons to, let's say, quit smoking. And we got the reasons from, I don't remember if it's the National Institute of Health, perhaps, I think we got the 10 reasons. And so in one condition, we presented only like the two best from the top 10 reasons. And then we presented all 10 that was used, you know, by the whatever health agency. And so what we found was among smokers, you know, we found that they were more compelled by the one that listed the only two reasons to stop smoking than by the one that included all 10 reasons. Because in that case, you know, if you think about, you know, compelling reasons, you know, like, okay, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna pass away prematurely, you're gonna die earlier, you're gonna, you know, get cancer, whatever, like, that's pretty compelling.
Stephen
[57:46]But what happened with the other, if you go through all 10, I mean, it's like, by the 10th one, it's like, you know, your car's, your car's gonna smell bad. I mean, it's like, you know, that's not really so, you know, compelling. And so anyways, that just dilutes the whole mission of, at that time of trying to get people to stop smoking.
Brent
[58:07]Yeah.
Keller
[58:08]Are people generally good at predicting what their audience, like what kind of information their audience wants to receive? Because I'd imagine like we're always told, like when you're making a presentation in school, like think about your audience, but we often don't really know who that audience is or their preferences that they might have towards that information. Is there any like information or any ideas or advice you might have on, if you don't really know, it's not an interview, you can't look up this person and really understand their background, like how to best present information that is appealing to an audience that you might only have like one or two information points about.
Stephen
[58:42]I think in general, I would say less is more is a good way to go or to simplify rather than to get too complex. If you're talking to an audience, I just say that less is more in terms of what I was just talking with this presenter's paradox where you don't want to include mildly favorable information, less is more. But even in terms of like length, like less is more, like, I mean, I've never been to a talk where people complain that the talk ended early, you know, I mean, you know, but on the reverse, I mean, I've heard people complain like, good grief, when is this talk going to end, you know? So, I do think that less is more can be beneficial, you know, for most audiences. Yeah.
Brent
[59:35]And then I also like the point of like categorizing some of the achievements because I get, I feel like this would be more applicable within the same realm of say sports career, like internships include the highlight reel, but maybe adding maybe less favorable things in a different category to show depth is still advantageous. Would you take that like same?
Stephen
[1:00:01]Definitely yeah because it could add to your well-roundedness so even even like the having the key to the city of papa michigan i mean that that does you know have some value to it in terms of well you must be a nice person
[1:00:21]
Navigating Competition in Academics
Stephen
[1:00:15]if you got the key you know in such a small town you know so yeah definitely and.
Keller
[1:00:21]As we wrap up here do you have any advice to students on how to navigate competition in both their academic and professional lives.
Stephen
[1:00:28]Oh, in academic lives. I mean, one of the things that, I mean, I think that students could do is, I mean, sometimes, you know, I don't know if they publish, I mean, this might be cheating, but, you know, like sometimes, you know, you can take a discussion section with, you know, a person, you know, you might be able to choose or the instructor for a particular class. And one of the big factors in terms of grades might be who the actual instructor or the TA is in, in your, in your, of your section. And so that's, that could also be, you know, one big thing that one could pay attention to because some, you know, may grade differently than others. And so that, that could be, um, one, um, another is, uh, what's another one. Another is be mindful of what you actually really need in order to, uh, let's say satisfy a requirement. So I remember when a freshman year, um, I was thinking about being pre-med and so I was taking calculus with like the engineering calculus, but there was actually another track where, um.
Stephen
[1:01:40]Where, uh, you know, I could just, it wasn't as complicated, but it was sufficient for being pre-med. And my roommate at the time was, he was an engineer and he was saying like, why are you in this class why don't you just take you know the other the other section and i'm like wow okay because i was i was kind of struggling and and so i you know just moved into the other class and yeah i mean in the other class i got an a plus i mean it's like one of the highest scores, and so it was like you know yeah why was i in that uh i didn't have to be in that more difficult classes especially i mean i didn't even i thought it was going to be pre-med and i wasn't i'm not even a doctor, you know, so it doesn't even matter. So, but that would be one thing. The other thing, just to sort of countervail that kind of expediency point of, of, of maybe, you know, being mindful of.
Stephen
[1:02:32]What your grade is ultimately going to be. But also on the flip side, there's something called fixed versus growth mindset. And so people with fixed mindsets will only pick classes that they could do well and they don't want to be challenged, or they might have this tendency to believe that everything is fixed. And if they don't meet a certain threshold, it's all over. So, you know, This is work by Carol Dweck, and she mentions, for example, some person in New York was a famous entrepreneur.
Stephen
[1:03:04]Restaurant owner, and I believe they committed suicide because they didn't achieve something. And it was just so awful, but it exemplified this fixed mindset, this look at when you perceive failure as being failure and reflecting on you. But on the flip side, it's beneficial to have a growth mindset because, and again, this is Carol Dweck's work. It's the idea that, you know, you look at failure and challenge differently. So if you have a class and you know that one's going to be a little bit harder, you can take that to really challenge yourself to actually really improve. Or on the flip side, if you do experience failure, it's not a negative reflection of you and this is how you're going to be forevermore. It's going to be more that you can look at that as a challenge to just get up and try again. And like failure is not, failure doesn't have the last word. So if you have this growth mindset, it's much more beneficial than having this fixed mindset. And I think this growth versus fixed mindset also permeates, you know, beyond the classroom, but in other aspects of our lives.
Brent
[1:04:11]Yeah, I definitely think there's a lot you can take away from this today's conversation.
Keller
[1:04:15]Thank you.
Brent
[1:04:16]Thank you.
Stephen
[1:04:16] Thank you.