- Tepper School of Business, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
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Taya R Cohen
Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, Faculty Member
- Taya R. Cohen, PhD is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at the Tepper School of Business a... moreTaya R. Cohen, PhD is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. She teaches MBA and executive education courses on Negotiations, and on Managing People and Teams, and doctoral seminars on Negotiations and Conflict Management, and on Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences. Her research is in the area of organizational psychology, with a particular focus on understanding moral character and ethical behavior in organizations. Her investigations of intergroup conflict reveal how behaviors that might be considered wrong or immoral in interpersonal interactions with fellow in-group members (e.g., competition, deception) can instead be regarded as moral and just when enacted across group boundaries. This double standard in how we evaluate the same actions differently according to whether they are directed at in-group members versus out-group members highlights how morality and intergroup conflict are inexorably linked. Prior to joining the faculty at the Tepper School, Professor Cohen spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Dispute Resolution Research Center at Northwestern University, where she taught Negotiations at the Kellogg School of Management. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.edit
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In Study 1, participants completed five extant shame and guilt proneness inventories based on different theoretical conceptions of the difference between shame and guilt. Factor analyses revealed that despite very different theoretical... more
In Study 1, participants completed five extant shame and guilt proneness inventories based on different theoretical conceptions of the difference between shame and guilt. Factor analyses revealed that despite very different theoretical distinctions, the shame proneness subscales loaded on one factor, and the guilt proneness subscales loaded on one factor. In Study 2, we altered scale items so that hypothetical
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Five studies demonstrated that highly guilt-prone people may avoid forming interdependent partnerships with others whom they perceive to be more competent than themselves, as benefitting a partner less than the partner benefits one's... more
Five studies demonstrated that highly guilt-prone people may avoid forming interdependent partnerships with others whom they perceive to be more competent than themselves, as benefitting a partner less than the partner benefits one's self could trigger feelings of guilt. Highly guilt-prone people who lacked expertise in a domain were less willing than were those low in guilt proneness who lacked expertise in that domain to create outcome-interdependent relationships with people who possessed domain-specific expertise. These highly guilt-prone people were more likely than others both to opt to be paid on their performance alone (Studies 1, 3, 4, and 5) and to opt to be paid on the basis of the average of their performance and that of others whose competence was more similar to their own (Studies 2 and 5). Guilt proneness did not predict people's willingness to form outcome-interdependent relationships with potential partners who lacked domain-specific expertise (Studies 4 and...
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... Intergroup TAYA R. COHEN AND CHESTER A. INSKO A hotel and its employees have a dispute regarding wages, so the employees go on strike. ... The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, First Edition. Edited by Daniel J. Christie. © 2012... more
... Intergroup TAYA R. COHEN AND CHESTER A. INSKO A hotel and its employees have a dispute regarding wages, so the employees go on strike. ... The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, First Edition. Edited by Daniel J. Christie. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ...
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Research Interests: Marketing, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Experimental games, Leadership, and 16 moreSocial Exclusion, Social Perception, Group Processes, Intergroup Conflict (Psychology), Social Class, Public Good, Humans, Female, Male, Young Adult, Social distance, Social Isolation, Free Riding, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Dominance, and Social Dilemma
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Page 1. Interindividual-Intergroup Discontinuity in the Prisoner's Dilemma Game CHESTER A. INSKO JOHN SCHOPLER KENNETH A. GRAETZ STEPHEN M. DRIGOTAS DAVID P. CURREY SHANNON L. SMITH DONNA BRAZIL ...
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Cohen, T. R., Wolf, S. T., Panter, A. T., & Insko, C. A. (2011). Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 947-966. doi: 10.1037/a0022641. Published... more
Cohen, T. R., Wolf, S. T., Panter, A. T., & Insko, C. A. (2011). Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 947-966. doi: 10.1037/a0022641.
Published version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022641
Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how two prototypical moral emotions—guilt and shame—should be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment—the Guilt And Shame Proneness scale (GASP)—that measures individual differences in the propensity to experience guilt and shame across a range of personal transgressions. The GASP contains two guilt subscales that assess negative behavior-evaluations (NBEs) and repair action tendencies following private transgressions and two shame subscales that assess negative self-evaluations (NSEs) and withdrawal action tendencies following publically-exposed transgressions. Both guilt subscales were highly correlated with one another and negatively correlated with unethical decision making. Although both shame subscales were associated with relatively poor psychological functioning (e.g., neuroticism, personal distress, low self-esteem), they were only weakly correlated with one another and their relationships with unethical decision making diverged. Whereas shame-NSE constrained unethical decision making, shame-withdraw did not. Our findings suggest that differentiating the tendency to make negative self-evaluations following publically-exposed transgressions from the tendency to hide or withdraw from public is critically important for understanding and measuring dispositional shame proneness. The GASP’s ability to distinguish these two classes of responses represents an important advantage of the scale over existing assessments. Although further validation research is required, the present studies are promising in that they suggest the GASP has the potential to be an important measurement tool for detecting individuals susceptible to corruption and unethical behavior.
Published version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022641
Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how two prototypical moral emotions—guilt and shame—should be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment—the Guilt And Shame Proneness scale (GASP)—that measures individual differences in the propensity to experience guilt and shame across a range of personal transgressions. The GASP contains two guilt subscales that assess negative behavior-evaluations (NBEs) and repair action tendencies following private transgressions and two shame subscales that assess negative self-evaluations (NSEs) and withdrawal action tendencies following publically-exposed transgressions. Both guilt subscales were highly correlated with one another and negatively correlated with unethical decision making. Although both shame subscales were associated with relatively poor psychological functioning (e.g., neuroticism, personal distress, low self-esteem), they were only weakly correlated with one another and their relationships with unethical decision making diverged. Whereas shame-NSE constrained unethical decision making, shame-withdraw did not. Our findings suggest that differentiating the tendency to make negative self-evaluations following publically-exposed transgressions from the tendency to hide or withdraw from public is critically important for understanding and measuring dispositional shame proneness. The GASP’s ability to distinguish these two classes of responses represents an important advantage of the scale over existing assessments. Although further validation research is required, the present studies are promising in that they suggest the GASP has the potential to be an important measurement tool for detecting individuals susceptible to corruption and unethical behavior.