'shame broadcasts social norms_study2' (AsPredicted #52434)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 2 authors.
Pre-registered on 2020/11/17 - 12:56 PM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? The main question being asked is whether other people’s expressions of shame facilitate the learning of social norms compared to neutral emotion expressions or other emotion expressions (e.g., anxiety, sadness),
H1: Participants will see stronger injunctive norms in a company against a workplace behavior when an employee at the company feels shame in response to enacting the behavior compared to when:
H1a: the employee feels neutral/no emotion in response to the behavior.
H1b: the employee feels sadness or anxiety in response to the behavior.
H2: Participants will see a workplace behavior as less descriptively normative in a company when an employee at the company feels shame in response to enacting the behavior compared to when:
H2a: the employee feels neutral/no emotion in response to the behavior.
H2b: the employee feels sadness or anxiety in response to the behavior.
H3: Participants will have stronger behavioral intentions to avoid engaging in a workplace behavior at a company when an employee at the company feels shame in response to enacting the behavior compared to when:
H3a: the employee feels neutral/no emotion in response to the behavior.
H3b: the employee feels sadness or anxiety in response to the behavior.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Injunctive norm: Composite of three (continuous) items: To what extent at [this company] is [this behavior]:
1) Unacceptable or acceptable? (1=Very unacceptable; 5=Very acceptable)
2) discouraged or encouraged? (1=Strongly discouraged; 5=Strongly encouraged)
3) Punished or praised (1=Strongly punished; 5=Strongly praised)
We will take the average of these three items if their agreement is high (alpha>.6). If agreement is low, we will analyze each item separately.
Descriptive norm: Composite of two (continuous) items: To what extent at [this company] is [this behavior]:
1) an uncommon or common thing for employees to do (1=very uncommon; 5=very common)
2) an uncustomary or customary thing to do (1=Very uncustomary; 5=Very customary)
We will take the average of these two items if their agreement is high (alpha>.6). If agreement is low, we will analyze each item separately.
Behavioral intentions:
1) Imagine that you are a new employee at [this company]. You want to succeed at [this company]. How likely are you to engage in [this behavior]? (1=Very unlikely; 5=Very likely; measured continuously).
* Company and behavior are randomly sampled (see Question 8).
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There are six different emotions. We manipulate the emotion that is associated with the workplace behavior (e.g., the target says that attending a virtual conference during the workday would make them feel [ashamed][sad][anxious][happy][proud][neutral/no emotion]).
Participants are assigned two emotions from the total pool of six emotions randomly and without replacement. The assignment of emotion to workplace behavior is randomized within and across participants (see Question 8).
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will create dummy variables for each condition. We will regress the dependent variable on k-1 dummy variables, with shame (1=shame; 0=other emotions) as the reference category. We will cluster standard errors by participant.
reg [DV] anxious sad neutral happy proud, vce(cluster participant_id) [with shame as the omitted reference category.
H1a, H2a, H3a will be tested by the significance of the coefficient for neutral in the above model. This compares shame to neutral.
H1b, H42b 3b will be tested by the significance of the coefficient for anxious in the above model, and the significance of the coefficient for sad in the above model. This compares shame to anxiety and to sadness, respectively.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will exclude all observations for any participant who appears in the dataset more than once, determined by both duplicate participant IDs and duplicate IP addresses (if available). We will also exclude any observation that does not provide a valid participant ID.
Participants must pass two multiple choice instruction check questions to access the study. Participants who fail this check twice are excluded from participating. Failing means answering any question incorrectly twice.
At the end of the study, there are two attention checks. Participants see a spreadsheet. Participants have to report a value from the spreadsheet. Participants see the emotions scale we use as stimuli in the study. They have to correctly identify the emotion that is reported in the scale. Participants who answer either or both questions incorrectly or skip either or both questions will be excluded.
Participants who report technical issues that prevent them from seeing the stimuli will be excluded.
Participants who do not complete the study in full (as indicated by 100 progress) will be excluded.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. The study will be posted for 500 participants to Prolific Academic. Data collection will stop once the request is filled on the platform (which sometimes leads to slightly fewer or more participants).
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) Workplace behaviors
Participants view two workplace behaviors (e.g., Took a long time to make a decision on a project,
Expressed personal concerns about a strategic direction). Workplace behaviors are semi-randomly sampled without replacement within the participant. Participants are randomly assigned to Behavior Group A or Behavior Group B. No predictions are made regarding the main or moderating effects of Behavior Group A or B. There are nine workplace behaviors in each group.
Positive emotions
We include two positive emotions (happy, proud) for exploratory purposes. We explore two additional questions:
(1) Do negative emotions in response to a behavior send a stronger signal about the organization’s injunctive norms than positive emotions?
(2) Does shame signal a stronger signal about the organization’s injunctive norms than pride?
We include one filler question.
To what extent at [the company] is [the behavior]…
a hard or easy thing for employees to do?
We vary the name of the company across participants for the purpose of stimuli sampling. Participants are randomly assigned to one of the six names. We will collapse across all company names in the analysis.
