Host country national support to expatriates: a motivated information processing perspective

PurposeThe support of host country nationals (HCNs) is a key determinant of expatriate adjustment and performance. The purpose of this paper is to explore underlying motivations for their support to expatriates. Previous research has shown that HCNs with pro-social motivation are more likely to help expatriates. Drawing upon motivated information processing in groups (MIP-G) theory, the authors test whether epistemic motivation moderates the observed relationship between pro-social motivation and HCNs’ support toward expatriates.Design/methodology/approachThe authors ran two correlational studies (N = 267) in the USA (Study 1) and South Korea (Study 2). Across two studies, epistemic motivation and social motivation were measured using their multiple proxies validated in previous research. The authors also measured HCNs’ willingness to offer role information and social support to a hypothetical expatriate worker.FindingsResults lend support to our hypotheses that pro-social HCNs are more willing than pro-self HCNs to provide role information and social support to the expatriates, but this occurs only when they have high rather than low epistemic motivation.Originality/valueThe current paper contributes the literature on HCNs helping expatriates by qualifying the prior results that a pro-social motivation (e.g. agreeableness and collectivism) increases the willingness of HCNs to help expatriates. As hypothesized, this study found that that case is only true when HCNs have high, rather than low, epistemic motivation. Also, previous research on MIP-G theory has mainly focused on the performance of small groups (e.g. negotiation, creativity and decision-making). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first attempt to test MIP-G theory in the context of HCNs helping expatriates.

On the Epistemic Costs of Friendship: Against the Encroachment View

I defend the thesis that friendship can constitutively require epistemic irrationality against a recent, forceful challenge, raised by proponents of moral and pragmatic encroachment. Defenders of the “encroachment strategy” argue that exemplary friends who are especially slow to believe that their friends have acted wrongly are simply sensitive to the high prudential or moral costs of falsely believing in their friends’ guilt. Drawing on psychological work on epistemic motivation (and in particular on the notion of “need for closure”), I propose a different picture of what friendship requires in the doxastic realm. I argue that contrary to what the encroachment strategy suggests, exemplary friends’ belief formation ought not be guided by a concern with accuracy or error avoidance, but instead by a need to avoid a “specific closure” – namely, a need to avoid concluding in their friends’ guilt. I propose that exemplary friendship often generates a defeasible, doxastic obligation to exemplify such a need, despite its inherent corrupting effects on exemplary friends’ epistemic faculties.

Does Customer Experience Always Benefit Company? Examining Customers’ Epistemic Motivation and Interaction With Service Contexts

The main purpose of this study is explaining how and when customer experience benefits the company. Built upon social identity theory, we propose that customer experience leads to customer engagement behavior, via two routes: customer-company and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, we advance that customers’ epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior. We ran two studies to validate the measurement of customer experience and to test our hypotheses. For the two studies, we employed a survey method by recruiting consumers of beauty salons in Vietnam. The results demonstrated that EXQ as a measurement for customer experience is applicable to the context of the study and provided empirical support for the hypotheses. Such as, this research found that customer experience positively influences customer engagement behavior as mediated by customer-company and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, this research revealed that customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior via customer-employee identification. However, the moderating role of customer epistemic motivation is insignificant for the mediated relationship via customer-company identification. Finally, this research offers theoretical and practical contributions that are elaborated and further discussed.

Ideological Differences in Race and Gender Stereotyping

We investigated whether political ideology was associated with the endorsement of race and gender stereotypes, and examined motivational and cognitive factors that could account for any ideological differences. Across five preregistered studies, people who were more politically conservative more strongly supported the use of stereotypes to make social inferences based on race, and endorsed specific stereotypes about racial and gender groups. An internal meta-analysis indicated that a greater desire to uphold group-based hierarchy and lower epistemic motivation to deliberate explained, in part, why conservatives were more likely to endorse the use of stereotypes, while cognitive ability did not have a significant explanatory role. These findings suggest that characteristics of individuals not inherently linked to any particular social group can shape perceptions about whether stereotypes are valid, and highlight how basic psychological motivations lead liberals and conservatives to diverge in their perceptions of groups.

Consumption Motivation of Limited Edition Product in Reselling Open Market

Recently, the phenomenon of purchasing limited edition products has been spreading rapidly in the reselling open market. As various technologies are introduced in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, platform-centered digital distribution has become popular and consumers buy limited edition products as a reflection of their various access behaviors to satisfy their social needs for reselling and not out of mere curiosity or personal preference. Accordingly, this study includes a survey conducted among 564 consumers of limited edition products who were leading the consumer-centered reselling open markets in Korea. Specifically, five factors of limited edition products consumption motivation—functional, emotional, social, epistemic, and economic—are defined, and how these factors affect the continuous consumption attitudes of consumers with such active consumption attitudes as a medium is considered. The analysis result shows that emotional factors are not significant as a motivation factor to limited product consumption while economic factors had a significant effect on the behavior of continued resale product consumption. This result clearly indicates that while consumers sometimes purchased limited edition products merely out of functional, social, and epistemic motivation, acquiring economic value through reselling in the customer to customer open market was also an important consumption motivation.

Individual Differences in Miserly Thinking Predict Endorsement of Racial/Ethnic Stereotypes

The “cognitive miser” metaphor is a classic characterization of mental life wherein cognitive efficiency is favored over careful and reflective thinking. A presumed implication is that reliance on intuitive processing in the absence of reflective thinking should encourage stereotyping. However, research to date has not adequately tested whether proclivities to engage reflective thinking correspond with less stereotype endorsement, nor if their influence occurs independent of cognitive ability and epistemic motivation. In two studies, we conducted straightforward tests of this hypothesis by measuring individual differences in miserly or reflective thinking, cognitive ability, and epistemic motivation as unique predictors of stereotype endorsement. We utilized objective, performance-based measures of reflective thinking via the Cognitive Reflection Test. The results provide the first direct evidence for the cognitive miser hypothesis. Individual differences in miserly thinking predicted endorsements of racial/ethnic stereotypes independent of cognitive ability and epistemic motivation.

Dogmatism and the Need for Closure

Research and both applications of theories of dogmatism and the need for closure implicate the importance of closed belief systems in cognition, social interactions, and decision-making. Research traditionally examines dogmatism as a personality trait wherein people vary in the extent to which they actively justify and maintain their closed belief systems through ideological rigidity. The need for cognitive closure is a related concept, but research and theorizing in this area provides an account of an epistemic motivation to obtain knowledge and answers rapidly—to find information quickly and hold fast to the conclusions drawn from that information. Research on both dogmatism and the need for cognition hold significant implications for and applications to political decision-making and ideology, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, and resistance to change.

CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY OF INDONESIAN MUSLIMS: THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION, AUTHORITARIANISM AND ISLAMIC TOTALISM

This research proves that religiosity (Islamic totalism) is a predictor of conservative ideology, as is the need for cognitive closure and right wing authoritarian which has been proven as a psychological variable that affects conservative ideology. The ideology of conservatism emphasizes on the tendency to preserve what is already established, resist change and maintain existing orders whether social, economic, legal, religious, political, or cultural (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). This research utilized a quantitative survey method. Participants of this study were 528 college students from Jakarta with multiple regression analysis. The results obtained are 1) Islamic totalism, cognitive closure and right wing authoritarian are social and economic conservatism predictors; 2) only Islamic totalism is a religious conservatism predictor; 3) Islamic totalism has the greatest influence on social, economic and religious conservatives.