R E S E A R C H    P R O G R A M S

I. Competition and Social Comparison

My work has helped reinvigorate the study of competition in social psychology, and it has also contributed to our theoretical understanding of social comparison processes (Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013; Garcia, Reese, & Tor, 2020; Garcia & Tor, in press). More specifically, my research has begun to identify the situational factors that amplify and diminish social comparison concerns and thus competitive behavior. For example, my work on the N-Effect (Garcia & Tor, 2009; Garcia & Tor, 2010; Garcia, Reese, & Tor, 2020) shows that competitive motivation decreases as the number of competitors increases, controlling for expected payoff; this effect occurs because social comparison concerns decrease as the number of competitors increases. Other research explores how situational factors shape entry decisions into competitions, for example, showing that culture and gender affect competitive preferences such as competition size and one’s status in the competition pool (Garcia, Weaver, & Chen, 2019; Hanek, Garcia, & Tor, 2016; Wu, Garcia, & Kopelman, 2018). While I am continuing to study competition, recent projects are beginning to extend insights from my competition work to explore people’s tolerance for inequality (Garcia & Tor, under review; Ritov & Garcia, 2022).

II. Psychology of Inequality

My work on the psychology of inequality has explored tradeoffs in inequality, such as the tension between paying equal allocations versus more lucrative but unequal allocations  (e.g., Garcia, Bazerman et al., 2010; Garcia, Tor, & Gonzalez, 2006; Garcia, Tor, Bazerman, & Miller, 2005). More recently, I have also examined how people allocate scarce resources and their willingness to maximize joint gains, at the cost of inequality. For example, in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, I found that third-party decision makers are less likely to re-assign a breathing ventilator from an elderly patient to a young patient in need – to maximize life – when both patients have been identified by name than when they have not (Ritov & Garcia, 2022). Similarly, I found that these identification effects extend to maximizing profits. That is, decision makers are less likely to switch from default payoffs to more lucrative unequal payoffs when the payoff recipients have been identified by name than when they have not (Ritov & Garcia, 2023). 

I have also examined the viability of winner-take-all solutions. For example, one article (Garcia & Miller, 2007) examined how third-party decision makers sometimes become averse to resolving preference disputes (e.g., the kind of music to be played at the high school prom) with winner-take-all solutions such as a coin toss. More specifically, whereas third parties may feel comfortable flipping a coin to resolve a preference dispute when it is simply about preferences, such as when half the students want "EDM" music for the prom and others want "hip-hop," third party decision makers become averse to such winner-take-all solutions when preferences cleave along social category lines, such as when one ethnic group of students wants “EDM” and another ethnic group wants “hip-hop.” In this latter case, the dispute transforms from one about which preference will prevail to whose preference will prevail. 

I have also done work examining the issue of gender and inequality (with Dr. Kathrin Hanek). While we have examined how gender differences in competitive preferences may lead to inequalities (Hanek, Garcia, & Tor, 2016; Hanek & Garcia, 2023), we have also outlined various social psychological barriers women face in the workplace (Hanek & Garcia, 2022).

III. Judgement and Decision Making

My research program on judgment and decision making subsumes several themes (e.g., Garcia, Chen, & Gordon, 2014; Tor, Gazal-Ayal, & Garcia, 2010; Weaver, Garcia, Schwartz, & Miller, 2007), including self versus other differences in perspective. 

For example, in the presenter’s paradox (Weaver, Garcia, & Schwarz, 2012; Weaver, Hoch, & Garcia, 2016), we show that presenters of information tend to over-include mildly favorable information, thinking “more is better” in their presentations, and do not realize that evaluators think “less is more.” For example, gift-givers may think that including a $10 gift card for coffee in addition to a cashmere sweater makes the gift seem even more generous, but the inclusion of the gift card ironically detracts from the perceived generosity, from the gift-recipient’s perspective. The reason is that presenter's tend to use an "adding rule" (i.e., more is better) and thus include mildly favorable information, whereas evaluators tend to use an "averaging rule" whereby mildly favorably information dilutes the desired impression. 

My work has also uncovered the status signals paradox (Garcia, Weaver, & Chen, 2019): when trying to make new friends, friend-seekers think that signaling status, such as driving a BMW, will make them seem more attractive as a potential close friend than driving a Honda; however, would-be friends are repelled by such status signals and prefer to befriend the Honda driver.

Interestingly, status signaling can also backfire in sales transactions, but for different reasons. Research on the sellers’ status signaling fallacy (Moyal & Garcia, 2023) shows that sellers who signal status actually undermine their trustworthiness in the minds of would-be buyers, who prefer to buy from sellers who do not signal status.