Surging Underdogs and Slumping Favorites: How Recent Streaks and Future Expectations Drive Competitive Transgressions

Beyond the first choice: The impact of being an alternate choice on social integration and feedback seeking.

“…Despite the strengths of this research, common method bias remains a limitation, as we measured the mediator and the dependent variable in the same questionnaire across some of our studies (Supplemental Studies S2a and S2b address this concern at https://osf.io/9dpqv/). In addition, echoing work on underdog expectations and the desire to prove others wrong (Nurmohamed, 2020), there may also be instances in which alternate choices are motivated to perform effectively through more adaptive mechanisms (Doyle et al, 2022; Lount et al, 2017; Nurmohamed et al, 2021). Moreover, we did not differentiate between newcomers to an organization versus employees transitioning to a new role within the same organization.…”

Sorry to ask but … how is apology effectiveness dependent on apology content and gender?

“…Further, we used R’s apaTables and textreg packages to export the tables of descriptive statistics and correlations as well as regression results. As noted in the Supplemental Analysis section, we additionally ran a negative binomial model using R’s MASS package (Doyle et al, 2022; Greene, 2012) to account for possible issues stemming from overdispersion of the like count variable (i.e., variance is significantly higher than its mean).…”

Underdogs and favorites: Past, present, and future

“…Recognizing the importance of violating expectations to the experience of underdogs and favorites, the perceived uncertainty about a future outcome can act as a catalyst in triggering their distinct psychological orientations (Doyle et al., 2022). Whether it's underdogs riding the positive momentum from a string of success or favorites experiencing negative momentum from a recent setback or string of losses (Dai et al., 2018; Doyle et al., 2022), research has shown that it is often elements from an actor's past that enhance outcome uncertainty, thus evoking thoughts of unexpected outcomes in the future. In this way, the experience of underdogs and favorites is not just about their current standings or future expectations, but it often involves looking back at their pasts and projecting into their futures.…”

“…At the heart of this shift is an acknowledgment that the underdog and favorite labels not only forecast the outcome of a contest based on relative strengths and weaknesses vis‐a‐vis a specific competitor(s), but also include the potential for these expectations to be violated . This possibility—that outcomes can defy expectations, with underdogs having the potential to win when a loss is predicted or favorites experiencing an unexpected defeat—plays a critical role in shaping the psychology, motivational orientations (e.g., Lount et al., 2017), and behavior (e.g., effort, quitting, transgressions (Dai et al., 2018; Doyle et al., 2022; Nurmohamed, 2020)) of the individuals or groups involved.…”

“…Conversely, favorites experience pressure to live up to high expectations derived from their past performance, thus motivating them to maintain their position of strength or dominance and avoid the embarrassment and anxiety that would follow underperforming (e.g., Dai et al., 2018; Doyle et al., 2022). Although losing is unpleasant in general, thoughts of losing are likely to loom large over favorites, potentially inducing anxiety over the prospect of being cast in an especially negative light (Dai et al., 2018; Marr & Thau, 2014).…”