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Research

Published Papers

The policy-people gap: Decision makers choose policies that favor different applicants than they select when making individual decisions (paper; data, materials, and supplement)

Munguia Gomez, D.M. & Levine, E. E. (2022, Academy of Management Journal)

This work documents a contemporary organizational problem – a gap between selection policies and individual selection decisions – and suggests one intervention to address it. In college admissions and workplace hiring contexts, we find that decision makers are more likely to favor disadvantaged applicants over applicants with objectively higher achievements when choosing between selection policies than choosing between individual applicants. We document this policy-people gap among admissions officers, working professionals, and lay people, using both within-subject and between-subject designs, and across a range of stimuli. We find that the gap is driven in part by shifting standards of fairness across the two types of decisions. When choosing between individuals, compared to choosing between policies, decision makers are more likely to prioritize what is fair to individuals (a microjustice standard of fairness) over what is fair in the aggregate (a macrojustice standard of fairness). As a result, an intervention that has decision makers prioritize the same standard of fairness across the decisions mitigates the policy-people gap. This research helps us understand why decision makers’ choices so frequently violate espoused organizational policies and suggests one way to increase the representation of disadvantaged groups in organizations.

2019 Best Conference Paper (Student as First Author), International Association for Conflict Management

2019 Best Paper, Academy of Management Conference Conflict Management Division
Select Coverage: HR Magazine | Chicago Booth Review | GATE Research Brief | Unleash


Too reluctant to reach out: Receiving social support is more positive than expressers expect (paper; data and materials; supplement)

Dungan, J. A., Munguia Gomez, D.M., & Epley, N. (2022, Psychological Science)

Receiving social support is critical for wellbeing, but concerns about a recipient’s reaction could make people reluctant to express it. Our studies indicate that people’s expectations about how their support will be received predict their likelihood of expressing it (Study 1, N = 100 online adults), but these expectations are systematically miscalibrated. Participants who sent messages of support to others they knew (Study 2, N = 120 students), or who expressed support to a new acquaintance in person (Study 3, N = 50 adult pairs), consistently underestimated how positively their recipients would respond. A systematic perspective gap between expressers and recipients may explain miscalibrated expectations, such that expressers focus on how competent their support seems while recipients focus on the warmth it conveys (Study 4, N = 300 adults). Miscalibrated concerns about how to express support most competently may make people overly reluctant to reach out to someone in need.

Select Coverage: NYTimes OpEdAPS | Psychology Today


“I’m just being honest.” When and why honesty enables help versus harm (paper; data and materials)

Levine, E. E., & Munguia Gomez, D. M. (2021, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

Although honesty is typically conceptualized as a virtue, it often conflicts with other equally important moral values, such as avoiding interpersonal harm. In the present research, we explore when and why honesty enables helpful versus harmful behavior. Across 5 incentive-compatible experiments in the context of advice-giving and economic games, we document four central results. First, honesty enables selfish harm: people are more likely to engage in and justify selfish behavior when selfishness is associated with honesty than when it is not. Second, people are selectively honest: people are more likely to be honest when honesty is associated with selfishness than when honesty is associated with altruism. Third, these effects are more consistent with genuine, rather than motivated, preferences for honesty. Fourth, even when individuals have no selfish incentive to be honest, honesty can lead to interpersonal harm because people avoid information about how their honest behavior affects others. This research unearths new insights on the mechanisms underlying moral choice, and consequently, the contexts in which moral principles are a force of good versus a force of evil.

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Everyday dilemmas: New directions on the judgment and resolution of benevolence-integrity dilemmas (paper)

Moore, A. K., Munguia Gomez, D. M., & Levine, E. E. (2019, Social and Personality Psychology Compass)

Many everyday dilemmas reflect a conflict between two moral motivations: the desire to adhere to universal principles (integrity) and the desire to improve the welfare of specific individuals in need (benevolence). In this article, we bridge research on moral judgment and trust to introduce a framework that establishes three central distinctions between benevolence and integrity: (1) the degree to which they rely on impartiality, (2) the degree to which they are tied to emotion versus reason, and (3) the degree to which they can be evaluated in isolation. We use this framework to explain existing findings and generate novel predictions about the resolution and judgment of benevolence–integrity dilemmas. Though ethical dilemmas have long been a focus of moral psychology research, recent research has relied on dramatic dilemmas that involve conflicts of utilitarianism and deontology and has failed to represent the ordinary, yet psychologically taxing dilemmas that we frequently face in everyday life. The present article fills this gap, thereby deepening our understanding of moral judgment and decision making and providing practical insights on how decision makers resolve moral conflict.

 

Other Dissertation Work

How information about applicants’ socioeconomic circumstances changes their evaluation

Munguia Gomez, D.M., Levine, E. E., & Phillips, L. T.

(Manuscript in preparation)

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Opportunity luck: Luck that builds merit

Munguia Gomez, D.M. & Levine, E. E.

(Data collection ongoing)