Explore the vast range of titles available.

Using survey data from CEOs and other top managers at large and mid-sized public companies in the U.S., as well as from journalists, we explore how ingratiation, a fundamental means of building and maintaining one's social capital, may trigger behavior that damages the social capital of the person being ingratiated. Although ingratiation, such as flattery or opinion conformity, may elicit positive affect from its target, we suggest it can also elicit a specific form of negative affect toward the target, which in turn can trigger interpersonal harm-doing. Focusing on ingratiation by top managers toward the CEO, we find that ingratiating managers are likely to develop feelings of resentment toward the CEO and that ingratiation may be especially likely to elicit resentment among top managers when the CEO is a racial minority or a woman. We also find that negative affect from ingratiation can induce interpersonal behavior that has the potential to damage the social capital of the influence target, as feelings of resentment that result from ingratiatory behavior can trigger social undermining of the CEO in the manager's communications with journalists.

This study considers the potentially negative consequences for corporate leaders of being subjected to high levels of ingratiation in the form of flattery and opinion conformity from other managers and board members. Chief executive officers (CEOs) who have acquired positions of relatively high social status in the corporate elite tend to be attractive targets of flattery and opinion conformity from colleagues, which can have potentially negative consequences for CEOs and their firms. Our theory suggests how high levels of flattery and opinion conformity can increase CEOs' overconfidence in their strategic judgment and leadership capability, which results in biased strategic decision making. Specifically, we contend that heightened overconfidence from receiving high levels of such ingratiatory behavior reduces the likelihood that CEOs will initiate needed strategic change in response to poor firm performance. We tested and confirmed our hypotheses with a dataset that includes original survey data from a large sample of U.S. CEOs, other top managers, and board members in the period 2001-2007. Further analyses suggest that strategic persistence that results from high levels of flattery and opinion conformity directed at the CEO can result in the persistence of low firm performance and may ultimately increase the likelihood of the CEO's dismissal. Implications for theory and research on social influence, sources of overconfidence in decision making, and the dynamics of executive careers are discussed.

Drawing from theory and research on interpersonal attraction, as well as interviews with 42 directors of large U.S. industrial and service firms, we identified a set of social influence tactics that are less likely to be interpreted by the influence target as manipulative or political in intent and are therefore more likely to engender social influence. We consider who among top managers and directors of large firms is most likely to exercise such tactics and how their use affects the likelihood of garnering board appointments at other firms. An analysis of survey data on interpersonal influence behavior from a large sample of managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) at Forbes 500 companies strongly supports our theoretical arguments: managers' and directors' ingratiatory behavior toward colleagues is more likely to yield board appointments at other firms to the extent that it comprises relatively subtle forms of flattery and opinion conformity, which our theory suggests are less likely to elicit cynical attributions of motive. Supplementary analyses also indicate that these relationships are mediated by an increased likelihood of receiving a colleague's recommendation for the appointment. Moreover, we theorize and find that managers and directors who have a background in politics, law, or sales, or an upper-class background, are more sophisticated and successful in their ingratiatory behavior.

Sincere praise reliably conveys positive or negative feedback, while flattery always conveys positive but unreliable feedback. These two praise types have not been compared in terms of communication effectiveness and individual preferences using neuroimaging. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured brain activity when healthy young participants received sincere praise or flattery after performing a visual search task. Higher activation was observed in the right nucleus accumbens during sincere praise than during flattery, and praise reliability correlated with posterior cingulate cortex activity, implying a rewarding effect of sincere praise. In line with this, sincere praise uniquely activated several cortical areas potentially involved in concern regarding others’ evaluations. A high praise-seeking tendency was associated with lower activation of the inferior parietal sulcus during sincere praise compared to flattery after poor task performance, potentially reflecting suppression of negative feedback to maintain self-esteem. In summary, the neural dynamics of the rewarding and socio-emotional effects of praise differed.

Research has shown that personality cults are a strategy to further political legitimation. They function to secure a leader’s position in the absence of democratic legitimation methods by using excessive flattery towards the leader. Habitual public flattery towards democratic leaders has not received scholarly attention, even though it can provide insight into the danger authoritarian discursive rituals can have on democratic processes. By applying a ritual perspective to a comparative case study analysis, this paper illustrates how political flattery is not just an instrumental means for self-promotion in the political order, but also a manipulative and antidemocratic exploitation of epideictic rhetoric. Furthermore, the implicit requirement for ritualized flattery hinders accountability and deliberative decision-making, and the process of integrating differences of opinion or interest towards a collective and impartial political practice. Leaders who surround themselves with sycophants encourage opinion- and action-conformity to whatever pleases that specific leader.

This article examines conditions that influence consumers’ use of persuasion knowledge in evaluating an influence agent, such as a salesperson. We propose that persuasion knowledge is used when consumers draw an inference that a persuasion motive may underlie a salesperson's behavior. These motive inferences then affect perceptions of the salesperson. We propose that two factors, the accessibility of persuasion motives and the cognitive capacity of the consumer, affect whether consumers use persuasion knowledge. When an ulterior persuasion motive is highly accessible, both cognitively busy targets and unbusy observers use persuasion knowledge to evaluate the salesperson. When an ulterior motive is less accessible, cognitively busy targets are less likely to use persuasion knowledge, evaluating the salesperson as more sincere than are cognitively unbusy observers. Several experiments find support for the predictions.

This research investigates how observers react when they see someone else being given a compliment that is flattering but that appears sincere. Prior work suggests that to the extent the compliment is perceived to be genuine, observers will not judge the source negatively. Merging insights from social comparison research and dual attitudes theory, this article presents a novel conceptualization of observer reactions to flattery. Specifically, while observers’ deliberative attitudes toward apparently sincere flattery may be positive, a spontaneous process of comparing oneself with the target will produce an implicit negative reaction rooted in the unpleasant sensation of envy. This conceptualization yields a host of related implications, successfully predicting observers’ reactions toward insincere as well as sincere flattery and toward the flattery target as well its source, and also explaining how their envy-based negative reaction may ironically induce observers to behave in a manner consistent with the flatterer’s interests. Convergent findings across four experiments provide a multifaceted understanding of observer reactions to flattery, while also informing the literature on social comparison and envy.

A fleet of baited remote underwater video stations was set in lagoonal and inter-reef waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, across 14° of latitude and the entire shelf. Counts of the maximum number seen in any one field of view were used to estimate relative abundance of 347 species of bony fishes, cartilaginous fishes and sea snakes. Boosted regression trees were used to assess the influence of depth and location of sampling sites on species richness. Multivariate regression trees and indices of specificity and fidelity (Dufrêne-Legendre indices) were used to distinguish 17 spatially contiguous vertebrate groups within a hierarchy of spatial scales. Location across the shelf and depth had the greatest influence on species richness, with peaks occurring around the ~35 m isobath in the inter-reef waters of the reef matrix, coinciding with shallow banks and shoals. Richness increased slightly toward the equator. Nine terminal vertebrate communities parallel to the coast were distinguished inshore and offshore in deep and shallow water along a latitudinal gradient. There were important community boundaries at Bowen in the south, Townsville in the centre, and Cape Flattery in the north. Latitudinal groupings were most evident inshore. Offshore communities were spatially extensive and separated lagoonal, mid-shelf and outer-shelf sites. Community boundaries were correlated with knowledge of strong gradients in sedimentary and oceanographic processes influenced by the shape of the reef matrix and regional tides and currents.

The obligation to manifest the truth about oneself forms part of the penitential ritual. This is exomologesis, a kind of dramatization of oneself as a sinner, which is realized through clothing, fasting, ordeals, exclusion from the community, standing as a supplicant at the door of the church, and so on. A dramatization of oneself as a sinner, a dramatic expression of oneself as a sinner, by which one acknowledges one is a sinner, but without doing this--at any rate, without necessarily, primarily, or fundamentally doing this-through language: this is exomologesis. Here, Foucault discusses parresia as an obligation.

This research uses a dual attitudes perspective to offer new insights into flattery and its consequences. The authors show that even when flattery by marketing agents is accompanied by an obvious ulterior motive that leads targets to discount the proffered compliments, the initial favorable reaction (the implicit attitude) continues to coexist with the discounted evaluation (the explicit attitude). Furthermore, the implicit attitude has more influential consequences than the explicit attitude, highlighting the possible subtle impact of flattery even when a person has consciously corrected for it. The authors also clarify the underlying process by showing how and why the discrepancy between the implicit and explicit attitudes induced by flattery may be reduced. Collectively, the findings from this investigation provide implications for both flattery research and the dual attitudes literature.