People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate’s favor by doing good deeds proactively. 

We propose that in social interactions, appreciation depends on the helper’s instrumentality: The more motivated one is to accomplish a goal and the more one perceives a potential helper as able to facilitate that goal, the more appreciation one will feel for that helper. Three experiments support this instrumentality-boost hypothesis by showing that beneficiaries feel more appreciation for their helpers while they are receiving help toward an ongoing task than after that task has been completed or after the helper has been deemed no longer instrumental. 

This research investigated the reciprocal relationship between mental models of conflict and various forms of dysfunctional social relations in organizations, including experiences of task and relationship conflicts, interpersonal hostility, workplace ostracism, and abusive supervision.

E-signatures are one of the fastest growing global practices because of their convenience. Much less is known, however, about whether people perceive e-signatures to be symbolically equivalent to traditional hand signatures.

Steven Blader received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (1994) and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from New York University (2002). His research identifies the organizational conditions that motivate employee performance by addressing employees’ social and relational concerns in the workplace. His work focuses on understanding how employees assess their social and relational standing in their work organizations, and the influence of those judgments on their behavior at work.

Rebecca Hetey, Ph.D., is Associate Director of Criminal Justice Partnerships and Research Scientist at SPARQ. She is an expert on race and the criminal justice system and focuses on strategies to improve police-community relations.

Eli Finkel is a professor in the psychology department and in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He earned has BA (1997) in psychology from Northwestern and his PhD (2001) in social/quantitative psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the Northwestern faculty in 2003.

Anuj K. Shah studies the psychology that arises from facing resource scarcity. In one line of work, he studies how being short on money and time affects decision-making. In another line of work, he studies how behavioral science can help shape interventions to reduce crime and violence.

People cherish and embrace the symbolic value that their unique handwritten signature holds. Technological advances, however, have led organizations to reject traditional handwritten signatures in favor of the efficiency and convenience of e-signatures. 

As a result of prevalent pressure to inhibit prejudice, racial minorities may wonder whether White people’s nonprejudiced behavior is primarily motivated by personal commitments to egalitarianism (i.e., internal motivation) or superficial efforts to appear nonprejudiced (i.e., external motivation). The present work investigated whether minority group members chronically suspicious of White people’s motives (i.e., those who believe White people are more externally than internally motivated), are more accurate than those who are less suspicious in detecting the motives behind White individuals’ pleasant behavior toward minorities.