Professor, Management of Organizations, Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values
Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley
Schroeder, J., & Epley, N. (2015). The sound of intellect: Speech reveals a thoughtful mind, increasing a job candidate’s appeal. Psychological Science, 26, 877-891. [SAGE Journals Link]
Short Summary: This paper finds that people evaluate job candidates’ mental capacities more highly when they hear their “elevator pitches” than when they read them, and are more interested in hiring them (4 experiments).
Featured as Editor’s Choice in Science, 348, p. 877.
Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1980-1999. [APA PsycNet Link]
Short Summary: This paper finds that people prefer to sit in solitude in public settings (on buses, trains, cabs, and in waiting rooms) than to talk to a stranger, but when randomly assigned to talk to a stranger in these same settings, report greater happiness and no less productivity compared with sitting in silence or doing what they want (10 experiments).
Rios, K., Markman, K.D., Schroeder, J., & Dyczewski, E.A. (2014). A (creative) portrait of the uncertain individual: Self-uncertainty and individualism enhance creative generation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 1050-1062. [SAGE Journals Link]
Short Summary: This paper finds that self-uncertainty, relative to uncertainty in general, increases creative generation among individualists (5 studies).
Waytz, A., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Overlooking others: Dehumanization by commission and omission. Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 21, 1-16. [APA PsycNet Link]
Short Summary: This paper distinguishes between two forms of dehumanization, dehumanization by commission (actively and overtly representing others as subhuman) and dehumanization by omission (more passively overlooking others’ mental capacities).
Waytz, A., Schroeder, J., & Epley, N. (2014). The lesser minds problem. In Bain, P., Vaes, J., & Leyens, J. P. (Eds.) Humanness and Dehumanization (pp. 49-67). New York, NY: Psychology Press. [APA PsycNet Link]
Short Summary: A common psychological bias is assuming others have less active and sophisticated mind than we do. This paper identifies three forms of this “Lesser Minds Problem” and its consequences.
Epley, N., Schroeder, J., & Waytz, A. (2013). Motivated mind perception: Treating pets as people and people as animals. In Gervais, S. (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 60, pp 127–152). Springer: New York. [Springer Link]
Short Summary: This paper proposes that anthropomorphism is guided by two primary motives, the need to explain behavior and the need to connect with others.