Gavin J. Kilduff

The Pursuit of Status in Social Groups

Status differences are ubiquitous and highly consequential. Yet with regard to human social groups, basic questions persist about how status differences develop. In particular, little is known about the processes by which individuals pursue status in social groups. That is, how do individuals compete and jockey for status with their peers? The current paper reviews recent research that helps fill this gap in our knowledge. Specifically, studies of a variety of face-to-face groups show that individuals pursue status by enhancing the apparent value they provide to their group. Individuals compete for status not by bullying and intimidating others, as some theorists have proposed, but by behaving in ways that suggest high levels of competence, generosity, and commitment to the group.

From Glue to Gasoline How Competition Turns Perspective Takers Unethical

Perspective taking is often the glue that binds people together. However, we propose that in competitive contexts, perspective taking is akin to adding gasoline to a fire: It inflames already-aroused competitive impulses and leads people to protect themselves from the potentially insidious actions of their competitors. Overall, we suggest that perspective taking functions as a relational amplifier. In cooperative contexts, it creates the foundation for prosocial impulses, but in competitive contexts, it triggers hypercompetition, leading people to prophylactically engage in unethical behavior to prevent themselves from being exploited. The experiments reported here establish that perspective taking interacts with the relational context—cooperative or competitive—to predict unethical behavior, from using insidious negotiation tactics to materially deceiving one’s partner to cheating on an anagram task. In the context of competition, perspective taking can pervert the age-old axiom “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” into “do unto others as you think they will try to do unto you.”

Driven to Win Rivalry, Motivation, and Performance

This article investigates the phenomenon of interindividual rivalry and its consequences for motivation and task performance. Two studies of adults from the general population found that rivalry, as compared to nonrival competition, was associated with increased motivation and performance, controlling for tangible stakes, dislike, and other factors. Then, a large-scale archival study of long-distance running found that runners ran faster in races featuring their rivals, which were identified through empirical observation of demographics and prior race interactions. This research extends existing theory on competition and motivation and represents a first exploration into the consequences of rivalry between individuals.

Hierarchy and Its Discontents: Status Disagreement Leads to Withdrawal of Contribution and Lower Group Performance

Research on status and group productivity has highlighted that status hierarchies tend to emerge quickly and encourage contributions to group efforts by rewarding contributors with enhanced status. This and other status research has tended to assume that status hierarchies are agreed-upon among group members. Here, we build on recent work on status conflict in investigating the prevalence and consequences of situations in which group members hold differing perceptions of the status ordering—that is, of who ranks where—which we call status disagreement. Across two studies of interacting groups, we examined several different types of status disagreement and found that disagreements in which two group members both viewed themselves as higher in status than the other, or upward disagreements, were uniquely harmful for groups. These types of disagreements led the involved members to reduce their contributions to the group, substantially decreasing group performance. However, other forms of dyadic status disagr...

The Long Shadow of Rivalry: Rivalry Motivates Performance Today and Tomorrow:

Research has established that competing head to head against a rival boosts motivation and performance. The present research investigated whether rivalry can affect performance over time and in contests without rivals. We examined the long-term effects of rivalry through archival analyses of postseason performance in multiple high-stakes sports contexts: National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Men’s Basketball and the major U.S. professional sports leagues: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL). Econometric analyses revealed that postseason performance of a focal team’s rival in year N predicted that focal team’s postseason performance in year N + 1. Follow-up analyses suggested that the performance boost was especially pronounced when one’s rival won the previous tournament. These results establish that rivalry has a long shadow: A rival team’s success exerts such a powerful motivational force that it drives performance outside of direct competition with one’s rival and even after a significant delay.

The Paradox of Agency: Feeling Powerful Reduces Brokerage Opportunity Recognition yet Increases Willingness to Broker

Research suggests positions of brokerage in organizational networks provide many benefits, but studies tend to assume everyone is equally able to perceive and willing to act on brokerage opportunities. Here we challenge these assumptions in a direct investigation of whether people can perceive brokerage opportunities and are willing to broker. We propose that the psychological experience of power diminishes individuals’ ability to perceive opportunities to broker between people who are not directly connected in their networks, yet enhances their willingness to broker. In Study 1, we find that employees in a marketing and media agency who had a high sense of power were likely to see fewer brokerage opportunities in their advice networks. In Study 2, we provide causal evidence for this claim in an experiment where the psychological experience of power is manipulated. Those who felt powerful, relative to those who felt little power, tended to see fewer brokerage opportunities than actually existed, yet were more willing to broker, irrespective of whether there was a brokerage opportunity present. Collectively, these findings present a paradox of agency: Individuals who experience power are likely to underperceive the very brokerage opportunities for which their sense of agency is suited.