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The project examines the effect of perceived income inequality on consumers' perceptions toward counterfeit vs. legitimate products. We also test the potential moderating effect of individuals' Social Dominance Orientation.

The project examines the effect of perceived income inequality on consumers' perceptions toward counterfeit vs. legitimate products. In addition, we test the effect would be mitigated when consumers believe that counterfeit products benefit only the wealthy.

In this project we examine how the repair of consumer goods may be related to as sense of calling - ones social purpose.

Based on the findings from previous studies in this project - that income inequality (vs. neutral) cue increases the egalitarian value associated with counterfeit products - the current study tests a potential reversal effect by increasing perception of fairness through a different (i.e., counterfeit unrelated) means.

This research seeks to understand how positive emotions, specifically feelings of gratitude, help motivate the responses of beneficiaries to the dishonesty. Drawing on work showing that individuals react positively to the dishonesty of others, particularly that which benefits them directly, this research seeks to understand why gratitude may arise from others’ dishonesty. The project to seeks to understand why beneficiaries feel gratitude for the dishonesty of others, what are the boundaries of these reactions, and what sort of unethical behavior reduces of gratitude, reducing positive reinforcing behaviors.

This study examines how perceived income inequality affects the values consumers attach to counterfeit (vs. genuine) goods. We examine the potential moderating effect of social status of the audience in the setting where the product is used.

This research seeks to understand how positive emotions, specifically feelings of gratitude, help direct the responses of beneficiaries to the unethical behavior of others. Drawing on work showing that individuals react positively to the unethical behavior of others, particularly that which benefits them directly, this research seeks to understand why gratitude may arise from others unethical actions. The project seeks to understand why beneficiaries may feel gratitude to the unethical behavior of others, what are the boundaries of these reactions, and what sort of unethical behavior invites or suppresses gratitude. Finally, this work seeks to understand how gratitude is uniquely linked to beneficiaries positive reinforcement, helping to explain how these behaviors may be reinforced by audiences who benefit from them.

The purpose of this study is to test how perceived income inequality may affect people's evaluation of a genuine phone vs. a counterfeit phone, a genuine phone vs. an outwardly damaged phone, and a genuine phone vs. an inwardly damaged phone.

This research seeks to understand how positive emotions, specifically feelings of gratitude, help direct the responses of beneficiaries to unethical behavior of others. Drawing on work showing that individuals react positively to the unethical behavior of others, particularly that which benefits them directly, this research seeks to understand why gratitude may arise from others unethical actions. The project seeks to understand why beneficiaries may feel gratitude for the unethical behavior of others, what are the boundaries of these reactions, and what sort of unethical behavior invites or suppresses gratitude. Finally, this work seeks to understand how gratitude is uniquely linked to beneficiaries positive reinforcement, helping to explain how these behaviors may be reinforced by audiences who benefit from them.

This study is part of the Income Inequality and Counterfeit project. The key objective here is to test the potential moderating effect of product usage setting (i.e., public vs. private) of the counterfeit.

In this project, we examine how personality characteristics contribute to status conflict in work teams. Specifically, we examine how and why personalities driven by a grandiose sense of self - narcissists - may contribute to or reduce conflict based on one's relative position within a status hierarchy. To do so, we examine agentic and communal narcissists, those who respectively support their grandiose personalities through behaviors that confirm their agentic or communal superiority. We hypothesize that the drive to claim credit for behaviors to confirm one's superiority that is at the heart of narcissistic self-regulation is not ubiquitous across all contexts. Instead, narcissistic demands are conditional on the types of tasks and feedback that work groups find themselves, suggesting that narcissism is positively related to status conflict in some context, whereas negatively related to it in others.

This research seeks to understand how positive emotions, specifically feelings of gratitude, help direct the responses of beneficiaries to unethical behavior of others. Drawing on work showing that individuals react positively to the unethical behavior of others, particularly that which benefits them directly, this research seeks to understand why gratitude may arise from others unethical actions. The project seeks to understand why beneficiaries may feel gratitude for the unethical behavior of others, what are the boundaries of these reactions, and what sort of unethical behavior invites or suppresses gratitude. Finally, this work seeks to understand how gratitude is uniquely linked to beneficiaries positive reinforcement, helping to explain how these behaviors may be reinforced by audiences who benefit from them.

In this study, we explore whether a pre-tested preference for counterfeit goods, driven by a recognized egalitarian value under conditions of inequality, still exists in context where the financial benefits of counterfeits go to a select few (reinforcing rather than alleviating inequality).

In this study, we measure perceptions of inequality in existing society and ask participants to look at and value a replica luxury watch (Replica Rolex Submariner Date), asking them if counterfeit products offer an egalitarian value - one that helps to make life feel fair.

In this study we will measure perceptions of inequality and the value of replica (counterfeit) watches compared to original ones. We do so by sampling, and comparing differences, between respondents who use Reddit threads focused on (1) Replica luxury watches and (2) Luxury watches.

“Can the gender gap in the salary intended to ask for after graduating from a Business School be altered by an intervention displaying developments of the gap over time?“ This study follows up earlier annual studies where a gap has been found between female and male students, respectively, as to what salary they intend to ask for at a job interview after having graduated as a Bachelor or Master in Business and Economics (e.g., Wahlund, 2019). The purpose of this study is to examine if, and if so, how information about this gap influences the salary the students intend to request, and thus also the gap. To study this research question, we will include a randomized information intervention in the 2021 version of a longitudinal, annual survey carried out among all students at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). In the survey, we will add two interventions consisting of two different developments of the gender gap over time: 1) a diminishing gap over (a “closing gap”), and 2) a stable or constant gap over time (“persistent gap”). The measure of salary intended to ask for is similar to the one about expected salary at the first job after graduation analyzed by Fröberg et al (2020a, b). Both questions have been included in the annual survey since 2015. We thus exploit the longitudinal survey at SSE—the SSE Employer Image barometer—in 2021 (e.g., Wahlund, 2019) for our intervention. We are adding three information interventions to the survey, randomly distributed among the respondents: a control group (receiving no information on any gender gap), a treatment 1-group (being displayed the persistent gap) and a treatment-2 group (being displayed the closing gap). To test the causal impact of the intervention and the salary intended to ask for we will use both a between-subject design (comparing means in post intervention measures between the randomized groups) and a between-and-within subject design (using a difference-in-difference model approach), eliciting the same expected request measure before the intervention (pre-measure) as that used after the intervention (post-measure). We start the analysis by checking if women still intend to ask for less salary than males do (cf. Fröberg et al. 2021c, mimeo). We then test if our interventions of informing about the gender gap in salary intended to ask for, as either persistent or closing, respectively, changes the gender gap compared to those in the control group that are not informed of any gap (between subjects). We will then also test if there is a change in the gap compared with the same question being asked earlier in the study (within subjects). In the light of us exploring a new method of potentially affecting the gender gap in salary intended to ask for among students, we pre-register hypotheses about different potential directions and describe how we intend to interpret our results. In essence, we expect that information of the gender gap in salary intended to ask for has a weaker effect on female students than on male students, on average. This follows from two sources. The first is Fröberg et al (2020a) in which we see a general insensitivity in females’ expected career entry pay, not changing their expectations, not even as recent female alumni from the same school who just have been employed by their most preferred employers attain higher salaries compared to male alumni from the same school at the same employer do. Male students, on the other hand, increased their expectations over time the better female alumni did, compared to male alumni at their most preferred employer. Second, following a pilot intervention we did in the SSE Employer Image barometer 2020 (Fröberg et al., 2020b) when being informed that there was a gender gap in expected pay in previous years, some male and female students increased their expectations as a result of the intervention (compared to a control group not being showed anything), yet male students did so to a larger degree than female students. In this intervention we provided a written statement of there being a gender gap in expected salaries or in intended salary requests before restating a question on their expected salary. One noteworthy result was that males increased their expectations when learning about females expecting less than males on average. This is also in line with what we found in Fröberg et al (2020a). We hypothesize that this derives from last place aversion (Buell et al., 2014), encouraging males to take action by increasing their expected requests. Females, on the other hand, are expected to be encouraged not to take action since the future evolution goes in one to them favorable direction anyway. Given these results we also hypothesize that our treatment 2 (closing gap) will have a stronger effect on the gender gap in intended to ask for salary than treatment 1 (persistent gap), both in comparison to the control group and in within-subject comparison. For females being intervened with a closing gender gap compared to a persistent gender gap should lead to even less of a response. Hence the effect of T2 should be smaller for females compared to T1, if the hypothesis is true that female expectations are not easily malleable. For males seeing a closing gender gap compared to just a persistent gender gap leads to a stronger effect for males, making them increase the salary they intend to ask for if male expectations increase as a result of last place aversion. Another interpretation is that men have a promising outlook, where they are informed that they are in a group that systematically ask for more pay than the other group (treatment 1). Thus, they are motivated to ask for even more. When they see a closing gap (treatment 2), they need to revise their negotiation strategy such that their group is still winning. Women, on the other, hand are in a group that systematically ask for less than the other group. Based on confirming with stereotypes, women could be encouraged to ask for less if they are afraid that they are planning to ask for too much compared to their group. But women could also reason that they are equally capable as the male fellow students and decide to raise their negotiation strategy. Upon seeing that the gap is closing, women could thus ask for more to keep making progress with the winning team. In all, we believe that informing about the closing and/or persistent gap will have an effect on the salary intended to ask for, with different effects depending on gender. Finally, although the pre-analysis plan does not include any exploratory tests, we may explore additional models and specifications depending upon the data we get. Importantly, these deviations from the pre-analysis plan will be clearly documented in the final research paper.

Based on the other studies' findings that perceived income inequality increases the egalitarian value associated with counterfeit (vs. genuine) products, in this study, we test the possibility that this effect is mitigated or even reversed when fairness is achieved by other means.

In this study, we examine how perceptions of inequality increase the egalitarian value of counterfeit goods - where buying counterfeit goods makes life feel fair. Specifically, we test a moderating condition where having fairness needs met through alternative means (recalling events that were specifically fair) reduces the egalitarian value of counterfeits.