How do popular ideas about self-improvement shape perceptions of legitimacy and inequality?
Kim, J. Y., Campbell, T. H., Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. Understanding Contemporary Forms of Exploitation: Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers. (2020). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (preprint)
Attributing Passion to Employees Legitimizes Poor Employee Treatment. The pursuit of passion at work has become romanticized in recent years. Popular magazines, self-improvement books, and renowned business leaders often highlight passion as a key driver of career success. Although passion for one’s work can be enjoyable, and may lead to greater well-being, I hypothesized that some workplaces may use attributions of passion to justify exploitative managerial practices (e.g., extra work without pay, inappropriate assignments). In one project in this area, my collaborators and I conducted a series of experiments to explore the idea that passion may legitimize exploitation. We find that people judge identical instances of poor employee treatment as more legitimate when it is directed at a passionate (vs. non-passionate) employee, based on assumptions that passionate employees would freely volunteer for extra work and find work to be its own intangible reward.
Kim, J. Y., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Kay, A. C. Lean In Messages Increase Attributions of Women’s Responsibility for Gender Inequality. (2018). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (preprint) [Some of the research materials removed from the published article due to the copyright issues can be found in the preprint]
Effects of Lean In Messages on Perceptions of Gender Inequality. Women’s “empowerment” at work has recently attracted cultural attention as a solution to women’s underrepresentation in senior-level positions in the workplace. For instance, the bestselling book Lean In states that women can tackle gender inequality themselves by overcoming the “internal barriers” (e.g., lack of ambition and confidence) that prevent success. Although these messages target individual women’s empowerment, they also describe the strategies as a means to help all women. In contrast to most historical women’s movements, the empowerment approach to gender inequality predominantly focuses on the achievement of individuals rather than the group at large. One of my projects explores the consequences of this type of women’s empowerment messages. Specifically, I examine whether self-improvement messages intended to empower women might yield potentially harmful societal beliefs. In a series of experiments, my collaborators and I find that exposure to Lean In messages lead to views that women have greater responsibility for workplace gender inequality—both for the problem itself, and for its solution—and greater endorsement of solutions requiring women to change themselves (vs. requiring companies to change).