People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work.

Does being disagreeable-that is, behaving in aggressive, selfish, and manipulative ways-help people attain power? This question has long captivated philosophers, scholars, and laypeople alike, and yet prior empirical findings have been inconclusive. In the current research, we conducted two preregistered prospective longitudinal studies in which we measured participants' disagreeableness prior to entering the labor market and then assessed the power they attained in the context of their work organization ∼14 y later when their professional careers had unfolded. Both studies found disagreeable individuals did not attain higher power as opposed to extraverted individuals who did gain higher power in their organizations. Furthermore, the null relationship between disagreeableness and power was not moderated by individual differences, such as gender or ethnicity, or by contextual variables, such as organizational culture. What can account for this null relationship? A close examination of behavior patterns in the workplace found that disagreeable individuals engaged in two distinct patterns of behavior that offset each other's effects on power attainment: They engaged in more dominant-aggressive behavior, which positively predicted attaining higher power, but also engaged in less communal and generous behavior, which predicted attaining less power. These two effects, when combined, appeared to cancel each other out and led to a null correlation between disagreeableness and power.

The Possession of High Status Strengthens the Status Motive.

The current research tested whether the possession of high status, compared with the possession of low status, makes individuals desire having high status even more. Five studies (total N = 6,426), four of which were preregistered, supported this hypothesis. Individuals with higher status in their social groups or who were randomly assigned to a high-status condition were more motivated to have high status than were individuals with low status. Furthermore, upper-class individuals had a stronger status motive than working-class individuals, in part, due to their high status. High-status individuals had a stronger status motive, in part, because they were more confident in their ability to achieve (or retain) high status, but not because of other possible mechanisms (e.g., task self-efficacy). These findings provide a possible explanation for why status hierarchies are so stable and why inequality rises in social collectives over time.

The preference for distributed helping.

Whether deciding how to distribute donations to online requesters or divide tutoring time among students, helpers must often determine how to allocate aid across multiple individuals in need. This paper investigates the psychology underlying helpers' allocation strategies and tests preferences between two types of allocations: distribution (allocating help to multiple requesters) and concentration (allocating help to a single requester). Six main experiments and three follow-up experiments (n = 3,016) show a general preference for distributing help, because distribution feels procedurally fairer than concentration. We provide evidence for this preference in Experiment 1, test its psychological mechanisms (Experiments 2-3), and examine consequences for the amount of help provided (Experiments 4, 5a, and 5b). Experiment 3 demonstrates a boundary condition to the preference for distribution, showing that if one requester seems needier than others it can feel fairer to concentrate help to him or her. Next, testing real donation decisions in Experiments 4-5b, helpers distributed their donations across multiple requesters, which led them to donate more in aggregate when there were more requesters. Finally, the preference for distribution only resulted in more donations to a larger number of requesters when the donation decision was "unpacked," that is, when donors made allocations for each requester separately (Experiments 5a and 5b). Understanding helpers' allocation strategies provides insight into how people help others, how much they help, and why they help. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).