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Can mood influence the way people produce and respond to ingratiating messages? Based on recent affect-cognition theories we demonstrate for the first time that mild negative mood increased communicators' use of ingratiatory tactics such as flattery, conformity and self-promotion (Exp. 1). Experiment 2 further confirmed that ingratiatory messages written in a negative mood were more effective and resulted in more positive interpersonal evaluations than messages written in a positive mood. Experiment 3 found that negative mood also improved recipients' willingness to accept realistic ingratiation. An analysis of response latencies (Exps. 1 and 3) and recall (Exp. 3), and mediational analyses showed that these effects were consistent with negative mood promoting longer and more attentive processing by both senders and recipients. The theoretical implications of these results for recent affect-cognition theories are considered, and the practical implications of these findings for everyday strategic communication and interpersonal behavior are discussed.

We propose that powerful individuals can become victims of self-objectification, whereby power-relevant attributes become more important to their self-definition and lead to behavior consistent with that self-definition. This process is triggered by the receipt of ostensibly kind acts from subordinates, which are interpreted by power-holders as objectifying acts of ingratiation. In Studies 1 and 2, high-power participants rated power-relevant attributes as more important to their self-definition, but only after a triggering event (i.e., receiving a favor, reading a scenario about a subordinate who voices agreement with his boss's ideas). In Studies 3 and 4, high-power participants who received a favor were more likely than others to believe that they are objectified for their power-relevant attributes. As a result, they rated power-relevant attributes as more important to their self-definition (Study 3) and were willing to pay more for products associated with power, but not for products unrelated to power (Study 4).

An experiment was conducted in which three levels of personal evaluation (positive, mixed, or negative) were crossed with two levels of dependence of the evaluator (high or low) and two levels of accuracy of the evaluation (high or low). Liking for the evaluator was expected to increase linearly with the favorableness of the evaluation, with two possible exceptions: When a positive evaluation from a dependent evaluator was inaccurate, and when a negative evaluation from a dependent evaluator was accurate. In the former case, the obvious inaccuracy of the positive evaluation in the face of the temptation to ingratiate was expected to elicit a decrement in liking (an “ingratiation effect”) by the person being evaluated. In the latter case, the honesty of the evaluator in the face of the temptation to ingratiate was expected to elicit an increment of linking (an “extra credit effect”) by the person being evaluated. Only the second of these two possibilities was supported.

This study examines the effects of three variables that are hypothesized to influence the salience of ingratiation as a technique for obtaining valued payoffs: the Machiavellianism of the potential ingratiator, the perceived discretionary power of the target person who controls payoffs, and the discrepancy between the relevant attitudes of the potential ingratiator and the target person. As anticipated, the amount of ingratiating conformity manifested by subjects was greatest when these three variables carried values that were presumed to make ingratiation a moderately salient response. Least conformity occurred when salience was very high. Relationships between any one of the three independent variables and conformity were found to depend upon the level at which the other two variables were set. The findings suggest an explanation of some of the contradictory outcomes generated by research dealing with conformity and attitude change.

Within the general framework of a competitive job-seeking task, subjects described themselves to a potential supervisor on a series of traits. For subjects in two (dependence) conditions, these ratings were to serve the supervisor as the most important basis for determining who would be his high-paid assistant and who would be a low-paid clerical helper. Subjects in the third (no dependence) condition believed that job assignments were determined by coin flip and the ratings were simply a means of getting acquainted with the supervisor. In one dependence condition (supervisor-aware), the subjects believed that the supervisor was cognizant of his role in the assignment of subordinates. In the other dependence condition (supervisor-unaware), the subjects were told that the supervisor actually determined job assignments by a simple statement of preference but thought job assignments were determined by coin flip. As predicted, subjects in the supervisor-aware condition were more inclined than supervisor-unaware subjects to be modest in their claims of personal attributes that reflect the judgments of others (e.g., “popular”). Subjects in both dependence conditions were less modest in claiming traits reflecting task competence than were control subjects. Further evidence indicates that dependent subjects with an aware supervisor went to greater lengths to establish the credibility of their ratings than other subjects did. Conclusion: While self-enhancement is the normal reaction to a condition of social dependence, the tendency to claim positive attributes is complicated and inhibited by the knowledge that the target person is aware of his relative power.

Subjects made potency judgments of the sentence subject in 128 items such as “Bill hurt the coward,” and “Joe helped the gentle man”. The verbs and objects used in constructing stimuli varied widely in their evaluative and potency characteristics. Seventyfour percent of the variation in the mean in-context potency ratings was accounted for by an equation of the form: In-context potency = −a + bV P + V e (cO e − dO p ) , where a, b, c , and d are positive constants, and V p , O p , V e , and O e refer to the potency and evaluative ratings of isolated verb and object components. Several implications of the equations are discussed in terms of belief in a “just world”, ingratiation, appeasement and threat of retaliation.

Subjects were instructed to present themselves in the best or worst possible light in response to an “objective” personality inventory. Half of the subjects received a socially desirable profile in return, and half a socially undesirable profile. Subsequently, self-esteem was assessed. Three hypotheses derived from the literature on ingratiation were tested: self-persuasion, direct approval, and task success. The data support the task-success hypothesis which relates self-esteem in the “managed impression” situation to success in creating a false impression.

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that a person who communicates immediacy by using another's name will be evaluated with general positive affect when the name usage is attributable to tacting or conditions of noningratiation. When the use of another's name is attributable to manding or ingratiation, it was predicted that the name user would be evaluated with general negative affect. In the first experiment, subjects listened to taperecorded job interviews in which the job applicants either used (six times) or did not use the interviewer's proper name. Applicants who used the interviewer's name were rated generally as influenced by desire for the job. Applicants who did not use the interviewer's name were seen more often as motivated to show their true selves. In addition, applicants who used the interviewer's name were rated significantly more insincere, incompetent, phony, and significantly less likeable, desirable to know, and hireable than applicants who did not use the interviewer's name. In the second experiment, an attractive female interviewed two males simultaneously and used one's name (11 times) more than the other's (one time). Males who were called by name reported significantly greater liking for the interviewer than males who were not called by name. Males who were not called by name felt that the interviewer liked the name-called males significantly more than she liked them. Results of the second experiment were replicated using the Bemian observer method. The third experiment involved placing a male and a female subject alone for 15 min “to get to know each other.” One group of males was told ahead of time to call their female partners by name ( X = 6 ) during the conversation. A second group of males was told not to use the female's name. Compared with the non-name users, the name users were evaluated by the females as significantly more motivated to make a good impression, phony, distant, and significantly less outgoing, and desirable as future discussion partners. Results of the three experiments were consistent with predictions made from Jones' ingratiation-attractiveness model and Bem's theory of perception. Possibilities were suggested for future research.

One hundred and twenty subjects were divided into two groups, receiving either 100% or 33% reinforcement for the emission of the “correct” emotional-labeling response during an acquisition phase of 60 trials. This phase was followed by 60 trials during which conditions of none, or low change, moderate change, and substantial change from the base-line rates were established, thereby giving us three positive-discrepancy groups and three negative-discrepancy groups of 20 subjects each. Changes in the effectiveness of social reinforcement were assessed by comparing, through the use of difference scores, the average number of correct responses made during the last two blocks of the shift phase with the average number of correct responses made during the last two blocks of the acquisition series. As hypothesized, a significant interaction between the initial rate of reinforcement and amount of change was obtained. A negatively accelerated linear trend was found for the 100% groups and a quadratic trend peaking at the moderate-change level for the 33% groups. These results were interpreted as indicating the importance of direction as well as of the magnitude of change. Contrary to a second hypothesis, positivity of subjects' mood changes was significantly affected only by magnitude of change. It was also found that subjects who valued the experimenter's approval and who encountered a substantial decrement in rate of approval were more likely to be resistant to extinction and to volunteer for an unpleasant experiment than were their counterparts who received a substantial increase in rate of approval. These reactions were taken as supporting the notion, derived from the senior author's SRS model, that subjects may use ingratiation tacties to reduce disparities between current and past levels of reinforcement.