IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hrv/hksfac/34721613.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Perceiving Others’ Feelings: The Importance of Personality and Social Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Sherman, Gary D.
  • Lerner, Jennifer
  • Renshon, Jonathan
  • Ma-Kellams, Christine
  • Joel, Samantha

Abstract

Recent research has explored the relationship between social hierarchy and empathic accuracy— the ability to accurately infer others’ mental states. In the current research, we tested the hypothesis that, regardless of one’s personal level of status and power, simply believing that social inequality is natural and morally acceptable (e.g., endorsement of social dominance orientation, or SDO), would be negatively associated with empathic accuracy. In a sample of managers, a group for whom empathic accuracy is a valuable skill, empathic accuracy was lower for those who possessed structural power and also for those who endorsed social dominance, regardless of their structural power. Moreover, men were less empathically accurate than women, a relationship statistically mediated by men’s higher SDO and greater structural power. These findings suggest that for empathic abilities, it matters just as much what you think about social hierarchies as it does where you stand within them.

Suggested Citation

  • Sherman, Gary D. & Lerner, Jennifer & Renshon, Jonathan & Ma-Kellams, Christine & Joel, Samantha, 2015. "Perceiving Others’ Feelings: The Importance of Personality and Social Structure," Scholarly Articles 34721613, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:hrv:hksfac:34721613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/34721613/4.Perceiving-Others-Feelings.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/34721613/4.Perceiving-Others-Feelings.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sujin Lee & Wendi L. Adair & Seong-Jee Seo, 2013. "Cultural Perspective Taking in Cross-Cultural Negotiation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 389-405, May.
    2. Margaret A. Neale & Max H. Bazerman, 1983. "The Role of Perspective-Taking Ability in Negotiating under Different Forms of Arbitration," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 36(3), pages 378-388, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer S., 2016. "Trust Your Gut or Think Carefully? Examining Whether an Intuitive versus a Systematic Mode of Thought Produces Greater Empathic Accuracy," Working Paper Series 16-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer, 2016. "Trust your gut or think carefully? Examining whether an intuitive, versus a systematic, mode of thought produces greater empathic accuracy," Scholarly Articles 37093806, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brett, Jeanne & Thompson, Leigh, 2016. "Negotiation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 68-79.
    2. Ilya R. P. Cuypers & Youtha Cuypers & Xavier Martin, 2017. "When the target may know better: Effects of experience and information asymmetries on value from mergers and acquisitions," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 609-625, March.
    3. Alan Speight & Dennis Thomas, 1997. "Arbitrator Decision‐Making in the Transfer Market: an Empirical Analysis," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 44(2), pages 198-215, May.
    4. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    5. Ma, Anyi & Yang, Yu & Savani, Krishna, 2019. "“Take it or leave it!” A choice mindset leads to greater persistence and better outcomes in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-12.
    6. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer, 2016. "Trust your gut or think carefully? Examining whether an intuitive, versus a systematic, mode of thought produces greater empathic accuracy," Scholarly Articles 37093806, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    7. Rocio Ramo de Villarreal, 2001. "Presidential Leadership and Decision-Making in Policy Reforms. The First 150 Days of Vicente Fox," CID Working Papers 75A, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    8. Mafael, Alexander & Gottschalk, Sabrina A. & Kreis, Henning, 2016. "Examining Biased Assimilation of Brand-related Online Reviews," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 91-106.
    9. Fietkau, Hans-Joachim, 1991. "Entwicklung ökologischer Verantwortung in Mediationsverfahren," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 89-102.
    10. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer S., 2016. "Trust Your Gut or Think Carefully? Examining Whether an Intuitive versus a Systematic Mode of Thought Produces Greater Empathic Accuracy," Working Paper Series 16-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    11. Zhang, Zhi-Xue & Liu, Leigh Anne & Ma, Li, 2021. "Negotiation beliefs: Comparing Americans and the Chinese," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(5).
    12. Pamsy P. Hui & Warren C. K. Chiu & Elvy Pang & John Coombes & Doreen Y. P. Tse, 2022. "Seeing Through and Breaking Through: The Role of Perspective Taking in the Relationship Between Creativity and Moral Reasoning," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 57-69, September.
    13. Phookan, Himadree & Sharma, Revti Raman, 2021. "Subsidiary power, cultural intelligence and interpersonal knowledge transfer between subsidiaries within the multinational enterprise," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(4).
    14. Derek Cabrera & Laura Cabrera & Erin Powers, 2015. "A Unifying Theory of Systems Thinking with Psychosocial Applications," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(5), pages 534-545, September.
    15. Don A. Moore & John M. Oesch & Charlene Zietsma, 2007. "What Competition? Myopic Self-Focus in Market-Entry Decisions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 440-454, June.
    16. Tabea Franziska Hirth-Goebel & Barbara E. Weißenberger, 2019. "Management accountants and ethical dilemmas: How to promote ethical intention?," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 287-322, October.
    17. Liu, Yipeng & Almor, Tamar, 2016. "How culture influences the way entrepreneurs deal with uncertainty in inter-organizational relationships: The case of returnee versus local entrepreneurs in China," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 4-14.
    18. Sujin Lee & Wendi L. Adair & Seong-Jee Seo, 2013. "Cultural Perspective Taking in Cross-Cultural Negotiation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 389-405, May.
    19. Blunden, Hayley & Logg, Jennifer M. & Brooks, Alison Wood & John, Leslie K. & Gino, Francesca, 2019. "Seeker beware: The interpersonal costs of ignoring advice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 83-100.
    20. Leonard Greenhalgh & Roderick Gilkey, 1997. "Clinical Assessment Methods in Negotiation Research: The Study of Narcissism and Negotiator Effectiveness," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 289-316, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hrv:hksfac:34721613. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Office for Scholarly Communication (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.