Psychology Research Digest
Journal of Applied Psychology - Vol 111, Iss 11
The Journal of Applied Psychology will emphasize the publication of original investigations that contribute new knowledge and understanding to fields of applied psychology.
Who benefits from board quotas? Intersectional disparities and the moderating role of experience for women directors in India.
Although gender quotas are gaining increasing popularity, evidence on their effectiveness is mixed. While some studies set in Western contexts suggest a positive impact on women’s board representation, others demonstrate backlash. Further, because this research primarily treats women as a singular, homogenous group, it overlooks critical intersectionality issues on boards, limiting our understanding of how quotas may shape the outcomes of women directors from marginalized groups. We contribute to this growing scholarly debate on quota effectiveness by examining the outcomes of women directors from both dominant and marginalized groups. Drawing on the instrumental perspective on legitimacy and intersectionality research, we propose that although all women directors gain additional board appointments compared to men when quotas are implemented, marginalized women experience intersectional disadvantages that result in their lower appointment rates compared to dominant women. Importantly, we show that prior executive or independent director experience acts as a powerful equalizer, enabling marginalized women directors to overcome these barriers and close their opportunity gap. We test our hypotheses in the context of India’s gender quota policy using archival data on all men and women directors from dominant and marginalized groups (i.e., gender and religion or caste) serving on the boards of the National Stock Exchange (NSE)1500-listed firms from 2013 to 2017 and shed light on the underlying mechanisms using qualitative insights from 37 interviews with directors. Our mixed-methods field data capture real-world board dynamics and maximize ecological validity to provide critical policy implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Economic trajectories of women: The relationship between abortion and women’s salary growth.
Women’s reproductive rights are intensely debated, with abortion laws in the United States constantly changing. However, the long-term economic consequences of abortion remain largely unknown due to a lack of robust research in this area. Drawing on lifespan career theory, we theorize that pregnancy during the early-career period represents a pivotal inflection point. It initiates divergent reproductive pathways with lasting, path-dependent effects on women’s economic trajectories. We conceptualize abortion as a distinct and constrained early-career event that may be associated with career development in ways that differ meaningfully from both parenthood and nonpregnancy. Using national longitudinal data from 6,218 participants in the United States (1979–2020), we examine how having an abortion, compared with becoming a parent or not experiencing pregnancy at all, is related to women’s long-term economic trajectories. Results show that women who had an abortion, and those who did not become pregnant, earned significantly more over a 30-year period than those who became mothers by an estimated $398,000 ($495,000 in 2025 dollars) and $448,000 ($556,000 in 2025 dollars), respectively. These findings extend lifespan career theory by conceptualizing reproductive decisions during one’s early career as critical but understudied career-defining events that are associated with women’s economic mobility. The results also suggest several potential policy implications: Protecting access to contraception and abortion, and providing mothers with structural family support mechanisms such a job-protected paid parental leave and subsidized childcare, may help women achieve sustained economic stability and career advancement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The implications of pay range transparency on job application preferences and negotiations.
Pay range transparency laws, which require employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings, have gained traction as a strategy for narrowing the gender pay gap by strengthening workers’ access to pay information. However, these policies often give employers considerable latitude in setting how wide or narrow those ranges are, raising questions about whether certain implementations might inadvertently sustain—or even exacerbate—existing wage disparities. Our research addresses this issue by examining how the width of disclosed pay ranges influences women’s and men’s job application and negotiation behaviors and whether providing more clarity around typical salary outcomes can mitigate these unintended consequences. Across four studies—encompassing a large archival data set (Study 1), surveys and field experiments with prospective and actual job seekers (Studies 2 and 3), and an experimental intervention (Study 4)—we consistently find that women exhibit a stronger preference for jobs with narrower pay ranges than men, largely driven by women’s higher risk aversion. Moreover, choosing narrower pay ranges is associated with less assertive negotiation behaviors, suggesting a path through which pay range disclosures may perpetuate gender gaps in compensation. By providing explicit information about the typical starting salary and the criteria used to determine final offers, we show that organizations can reduce these effects and support more equitable outcomes, offering practical insights for policymakers and employers aiming to ensure that pay transparency fulfills its aim of closing, rather than reinforcing, the gender wage gap. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Setting higher referral targets increases the number of women recommended: Evidence from the field and lab.
Women continue to be underrepresented in numerous occupations and in the highest echelons of many organizations. This may be due, in part, to disadvantages they face in referral-based hiring and promotion processes, as women are less inclined to ask for referrals and less likely to be referred than men for male-dominated jobs. We integrate insights from the goal-setting and creativity literatures to propose an intervention to boost referrals of women: requesting a greater target number of referrals (e.g., at least four instead of at least two referrals). This strategy sets a motivating goal to provide more referrals, which should mechanically increase the number of women referred. In addition, requesting more referrals in male-dominated contexts may lead to prototype divergence, which should increase the rate at which women are referred as people generate additional recommendations. Across two primary studies (a field experiment and an online experiment) and four supplemental studies (another field experiment and three online experiments; all preregistered, total N = 12,615), requesting double the number of referrals increased the number of women referred by 17%–88%. We found evidence that setting more ambitious referral goals mediated the effect of asking for more referrals on the number of women referred, supporting a goals-based account. However, we found inconsistent support for prototype divergence as a mechanism across our studies. Our work establishes a theoretically motivated intervention organizations can use to bolster women’s representation in recruitment pipelines in male-dominated settings, and our full-cycle approach establishes its generalizability across contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Ethics of care leadership expressions during a high-strength event: A gendered analysis of combative versus constructive policy suggestions during the Israel–Hamas war.
The Israel–Hamas war is a protracted high-strength event, marked by peaks of conflict and sustained tension, that tests how leaders function in a context with competing national interests, moral strain, and wide-reaching human and political consequences. Guided by event system theory and ethics of care leadership (ECL), we track how members of the Israeli Knesset express their leadership during this conflict. We analyze 5.2 million words spoken by 152 legislators across 140 Knesset plenary sessions over 16 months. Using natural language processing, we score and classify 4,143 discursive policy suggestions as constructive (repair oriented) or combative (zero sum). We find that (a) expression of ECL is associated with a higher likelihood of constructive suggestions, (b) women express more ECL than men, and (c) men’s care expression rises during peak-strength months, narrowing—but not eliminating—the gender gap in ECL. These findings position ECL expression as both a stable orientation and a context-responsive discursive behavior, clarifying who is most likely to express ECL and when constructive suggestions are likely to emerge as event strength fluctuates. Results advance event system theory by specifying a morally grounded ECL response in high-strength contexts, and they inform practice by identifying care-led discourse as a lever for constructive policy during volatile times. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The unintended consequences of state policies on entrepreneurial activity and quality of work life: A social impact study.
The United States and other countries enacted various policies aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19. Though the pandemic itself took a physical, psychological, and economic toll on society, it is unclear how specific containment policies influenced longer term aspects of employment. Taking up this challenge, this research uses human agency theory to study the effects of U.S. state policy COVID-19 strictness, defined along the spectrum from the absence to the presence (e.g., none, recommended, and mandated) of nine containment policies, on critical macro and micro outcomes. Study 1, using an objective measure of public containment policies enacted during 2020, finds stricter policies (i.e., more restrictions) negatively related to opportunity-based entrepreneurship in 2021. Study 2, using the same public policy strictness measure and a national sample of 801 participants, finds strict policies in 2020 negatively related to residents’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in 2024, which in turn related to their entrepreneurial intentions and quality of work life (QWL). The hypothesized interaction between state policy and sex on ESE was not significant, but post hoc analysis reveals that women residing in states with stricter policies reported lower life and career satisfaction than women in states with less strict policies and that the effects of state policy strictness on career and life satisfaction were more negative for women than for men. A supplemental preregistered experimental vignette study reinforced Study 2 findings such that manipulated state policy strictness caused a decrease in ESE, entrepreneurial intentions, and QWL; manipulated ESE also had a significant effect on entrepreneurial intentions and QWL. We discuss the broader implications of these results for theory and policymaking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Overcoming poverty and unemployment: The transfer dynamics of entrepreneurship training.
Our study examines the training transfer dynamics of action-oriented entrepreneurship training to understand when and how a positive impact on the alleviation of poverty and unemployment among young adults unfolds. We theorize about the training transfer dynamics in terms of absolute changes and developmental trajectories. To test our hypotheses, we conducted field experiments across seven countries with 6,257 university students who we randomly assigned to a training group or a nonintervention control group. We collected data before the implementation of an entrepreneurship training program (T1), directly after the training program (T2), as well as 9–18 (T3) and 19–32 months (T4) after the baseline, with a total number of 15,660 observations. Results from discontinuous growth curve modeling show that action-oriented entrepreneurship training can increase income and employment in the short and long term. We further demonstrate that training transfer dynamics can unfold in the form of a “catch-up” effect, which is characterized by nonsignificant or even negative short-term absolute changes but positive long-term developmental trajectories in economic effectiveness outcomes. Our results contribute to the literature on training transfer and hold important practical implications for policymakers regarding the evaluation of future entrepreneurship training interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Community weaving to address societal grand challenges: The case of mental health destigmatization.
Addressing society’s most pressing problems requires sustained coordination among stakeholders across organizational boundaries. A central dilemma of such grand challenges is how to sustain engagement among actors who hold potentially incommensurate objectives, priorities, and values while pursuing a shared vision of social impact. Yet existing scholarship reveals little about how novel organizing forms are built and maintained throughout grand challenge initiatives and even less about the iterative cycles of interactions among their stakeholders. We examine this dilemma through a 3-year action research study of a multistakeholder initiative focused on eliminating mental health stigma. We draw on participant observation, interviews, and archival data to develop a grounded model of community weaving—an organizing approach that enables sustained engagement among heterogeneous actors under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and evaluative heterogeneity. Community weaving combines a central coordinating architecture with semiautonomous substructures that support partial alignment around a multivocal shared purpose while enabling distributed, locally meaningful action. Rather than resolving tensions in stakeholder goals, values, and priorities, the initiative sustains participation by recursively reworking persistent tensions as it grows. Our model and theorizing advance research on organizing for social impact by showing how collaboration can be maintained without full convergence or centralized control. In doing so, we shift attention from consensus and governance toward partial alignment, multivocality, and recursive coordination as mechanisms for sustaining collective action in complex social systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Unveiling the hidden hazards: Exploring the unintended consequences of legal changes on employee injuries.
This study investigates the unintended effects of legal changes in shareholder litigation on employee injuries, revealing substantial consequences for employee welfare when restrictions are placed on shareholder litigation. Using a quasi-natural experiment involving the adoption of universal demand laws, we found that this reform, aimed at improving operational efficiency, is associated with a 28% increase in workplace injuries. This increase coincided with a marked surge in managerial focus on firm growth, without a commensurate increase in attention to safety. The association is stronger in lower income counties, highlighting a potential economic redistribution effect that concerns vulnerable employee groups. We also find that female-led firms exhibit minimal increases in injury rates after the adoption, in contrast to male-led firms, indicating that CEO gender moderates the relationship. These findings highlight how regulatory changes may be associated with unintended consequences for employees through shifts in managerial focus. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The escalation of prosocial commitment: How the B corporation movement catalyzes social impact.
Organizations have embraced sustainability certifications as a way of demonstrating their prosocial commitments. These certifications are often rigorous and resource-intensive, and yet some certified organizations increase their efforts beyond receiving the certification. To understand why, we revisit the literature on escalation of commitment to theorize the escalation of prosocial commitment. We test our framework by analyzing why B Corporations (B Corps)—businesses that have been certified for their prosocial commitments—would participate in an initiative that challenged them to improve their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and whether their efforts have any effect. Our framework emphasizes three organization-level drivers of escalation of prosocial commitment: image and identity, internal and external context, and urgency to demonstrate impact. Our findings largely support these drivers. Furthermore, escalation of prosocial commitment leads to improvements in both DEI practices and sustainability practices more generally and has collective spillover benefits, including reduced certification attrition rates and a positive shift in the DEI profiles of new B Corps that certified for the first time after the conclusion of the initiative. We also find a surprising outcome—what we call a paradox of inclusivity: B Corps with less emphasis on DEI practices, despite being strong in other sustainability areas, were more likely to exit the B Corp movement after the initiative. Our research contributes to the escalation of commitment literature, reveals practice implications for certifying bodies and organizations seeking to foster social impact, and offers insights to policymakers about potential levers for remaking capitalism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>