自夸对个体建议采纳的影响

Influence of Self-Bragging on Advice Taking

自夸是人们为了维持自尊而做出的一种印象管理行为。然而这种行为会因方式与内容的不同对观察者造成差异性感知。基于说服效应的情绪路径,本研究采用一个预实验和一个正式实验探讨了建议者自夸方式和内容对决策者建议采纳的影响及心理机制。结果表明,较隐性与热情自夸,显性与能力自夸条件下决策者建议采纳程度更低,而决策者对建议者的好感分别中介了上述关系。

Since working systems are increasingly uncertain and competitive,people tend to adopt necessary persuasive arguments to show themselves better than others,especially for salesmen and interviewers.Activated by self-superiority belief and self-enhancement motivation,self-bragging commonly occurs in normal life.People do so in order to achieve positive image management.In the process of advice presentation,People are likely to brag themselves to endeavor for trust and identity from others,and thus make their advice endorsed.Deriving from the hubris hypothesis,different types and content of bragging may lead to different outcomes during advice taking process.We expect that decision makers favour an implicit braggart(who claims to be"good")or a warmth braggart as compared to an explicit braggart(who claims to be"better than others")or a competence braggart,respectively,and therefore differentiate their level of advice taking.The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of self-bragging types and content on advice-taking,and the mediator role of decision makers’liking towards advice presenter.Two experiments were designed to explore the influence of self-bragging types and content on people’s advice-taking by a classical paradigm.The decision task was to estimate the number of coins in a glass.Pre-experiment was designed to confirm the effectiveness of self-bragging manipulations and test the appropriate advice given in the latter experiment.In the formal experiment,a 2(bragging type:implicit vs explicit)x 2(bragging content:warmth vs competence)between-subjects design was conducted to explore the influence of self-bragging type and content on advice taking,and the mediator role of decision maker’s liking towards advice presenter.There were 80 college students who took part in the pre-experiment and 144 college students who took part in the formal experiment.The dependent variable was the level of advice-taking,which was calculated by the formula of WOA(weight of advice).The statistical result showed that compared with implicit bragging,decision makers took less advice from advice presenters of explicit bragging;Compared with warmth braggarts,the level of advice taking was lower when advice presenters were competence braggarts.The relationship between types of bragging,content of bragging on advice taking was mediated by decision maker’s liking toward advice presenters,which indicated that an implicit braggarts(vs explicit braggarts)or a warmth braggarts(vs competence braggarts)was more likeable,and hence raised the level of advice taking.The present study mainly contributes to literatures on antecedents of advice taking by showing that different types and content of selfbragging for advice presenters may function.In addition,this study differentiates 2 dimensions(i.e.types and content)of self-bragging and indicates the potential negative effect of explicit and competence bragging within social interactions.Therefore,if practitioners want others to take their recommendations,they can present their virtue,merits and warmth to leave positive image.However,it is unadvisable to praise themselves by showing self-superiority compared with others or to make much display of their own competence.