The most important caveat is that lab studies find much larger effect sizes than in the field, to the extent that the average field effect for the ingratiating tactics is negative. This is probably due to the fact that lab experiments can be better controlled.
The first sentence seems really important and I’m wondering how to interpret the second. One hypothesis that is consistent with the first sentence is that studies show that in lab environments where arbitrary people are thrown into very short term interactions ingratiation works quite well… but that in the iterated environment of real long term working relationships it is detected and causes more problems than it helps with. Call this the hypothesis that “bullshit only works at first”.
The second sentence argues against this hypothesis, but I’m not sure how strongly the second sentence is supported. Is it on-the-spot speculation? Is it the considered opinion of most experts in the field?
If the hypothesis that “bullshit only works at first” is the correct one it suggests that ingratiation should be avoided, or at the very least it suggests that ingratiation should be avoided in relationships that are dissimilar from random short term laboratory interactions. Am I off track here? Is the hypothesis (and its implied behavioral upshot) clearly ruled out by the research you explored and are summarizing? Clarification would be useful :-)
If you look at tables 8 and 9 from Gordon you can see that once you control for “transparency” (i.e. how obvious the bullshit is) the setting is no longer a significant predictor. So I’m not sure I agree that it’s the “iterated” part of real-world interactions which cause this result (it seems likely that you can more easily tell if someone’s changing their behavior to follow an experiment if they are a close coworker than a random student, for example), but I think your point about transparency being important is relevant.
The first sentence seems really important and I’m wondering how to interpret the second. One hypothesis that is consistent with the first sentence is that studies show that in lab environments where arbitrary people are thrown into very short term interactions ingratiation works quite well… but that in the iterated environment of real long term working relationships it is detected and causes more problems than it helps with. Call this the hypothesis that “bullshit only works at first”.
The second sentence argues against this hypothesis, but I’m not sure how strongly the second sentence is supported. Is it on-the-spot speculation? Is it the considered opinion of most experts in the field?
If the hypothesis that “bullshit only works at first” is the correct one it suggests that ingratiation should be avoided, or at the very least it suggests that ingratiation should be avoided in relationships that are dissimilar from random short term laboratory interactions. Am I off track here? Is the hypothesis (and its implied behavioral upshot) clearly ruled out by the research you explored and are summarizing? Clarification would be useful :-)
This is a good point.
If you look at tables 8 and 9 from Gordon you can see that once you control for “transparency” (i.e. how obvious the bullshit is) the setting is no longer a significant predictor. So I’m not sure I agree that it’s the “iterated” part of real-world interactions which cause this result (it seems likely that you can more easily tell if someone’s changing their behavior to follow an experiment if they are a close coworker than a random student, for example), but I think your point about transparency being important is relevant.