Publications

Journal Article
Jordan, J. J. (2023). A pull versus push framework for reputation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 27 (9), 66-82. Publisher's Version PDF
Jordan, J. J., & Kteily, N. S. (2023). How reputation does (and does not) drive people to punish without looking. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 120 (28). Publisher's VersionAbstract
Punishing wrongdoers can confer reputational benefits, and people sometimes punish without careful consideration. But are these observations related? Does reputation drive people to people to “punish without looking”? And if so, is this because unquestioning punishment looks particularly virtuous? To investigate, we assigned “Actors” to decide whether to sign punitive petitions about politicized issues (“punishment”), after first deciding whether to read articles opposing these petitions (“looking”). To manipulate reputation, we matched Actors with copartisan “Evaluators,” varying whether Evaluators observed i) nothing about Actors’ behavior, ii) whether Actors punished, or iii) whether Actors punished and whether they looked. Across four studies of Americans (total n = 10,343), Evaluators rated Actors more positively, and financially rewarded them, if they chose to (vs. not to) punish. Correspondingly, making punishment observable to Evaluators (i.e., moving from our first to second condition) drove Actors to punish more overall. Furthermore, because some of these individuals did not look, making punishment observable increased rates of punishment without looking. Yet punishers who eschewed opposing perspectives did not appear particularly virtuous. In fact, Evaluators preferred Actors who punished with (vs. without) looking. Correspondingly, making looking observable (i.e., moving from our second to third condition) drove Actors to look more overall—and to punish without looking at comparable or diminished rates. We thus find that reputation can encourage reflexive punishment—but simply as a byproduct of generally encouraging punishment, and not as a specific reputational strategy. Indeed, rather than fueling unquestioning decisions, spotlighting punishers’ decision-making processes may encourage reflection.
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Kassirer, S., Jordan, J. J., & Kouchaki, M. (2023). Giving-by-proxy triggers subsequent charitable behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 105 (104438). Publisher's Version PDF
Jordan, J., & Sommers, R. (2022). When does moral engagement risk triggering a hypocrisy penalty? Current Opinion in Psychology , 47. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Society suffers when people stay silent on moral issues. Yet people who engage morally may appear hypocritical if they behave imperfectly themselves. Research reveals that hypocrites can—but do not always—trigger a “hypocrisy penalty,” whereby they are evaluated as more immoral than ordinary (non-hypocritical) wrongdoers. This pattern reflects that moral engagement can confer reputational benefits, but can also carry reputational costs when paired with inconsistent moral conduct. We discuss mechanisms underlying these costs and benefits, illuminating when hypocrisy is (and is not) evaluated negatively. Our review highlights the role that dishonesty and other factors play in engendering disdain for hypocrites, and offers suggestions for how, in a world where nobody is perfect, people can engage morally without generating backlash.
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Jordan, J. J., & Kouchaki, M. (2021). Virtuous Victims. Science Advances , 7 (42). URLAbstract
How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than nonvictims who have behaved identically. Across 17 experiments (total n = 9676), we document this Virtuous Victim effect and explore the mechanisms underlying it. We also find support for the Justice Restoration Hypothesis, which proposes that people see victims as moral because this perception serves to motivate punishment of perpetrators and helping of victims, and people frequently face incentives to enact or encourage these “justice-restorative” actions. Our results validate predictions of this hypothesis and suggest that the Virtuous Victim effect does not merely reflect (i) that victims look good in contrast to perpetrators, (ii) that people are generally inclined to positively evaluate those who have suffered, or (iii) that people hold a genuine belief that victims tend to be people who behave morally.
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Jordan, J. J., Yoeli, E., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors. Scientific Reports , 11. URLAbstract
COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We evaluated messaging that emphasized personalpublic, or personal and public benefits of prevention. In initial studies (conducted March 14–16, 2020), the Public treatment was more effective than the Personal treatment, and no less effective than the Personal + Public treatment. In additional studies (conducted April 17–30, 2020), all three treatments were similarly effective. Across all these studies, the perceived public threat of coronavirus was also more strongly associated with prevention intentions than the perceived personal threat. Furthermore, people who behaved prosocially in incentivized economic games years before the pandemic had greater prevention intentions. Finally, in a field experiment (conducted December 21–23, 2020), we used our three messaging strategies to motivate contact-tracing app signups (n = 152,556 newsletter subscribers). The design of this experiment prevents strong causal inference; however, the results provide suggestive evidence that the Personal + Public treatment may have been more effective than the Personal or Public treatment. Together, our results highlight the importance of prosocial motives for COVID-19 prevention.
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Capraro, V. *, Jordan, J. J. *, & Tappin, B. M. *. (2021). Does observability amplify sensitivity to moral frames? Evaluating a reputation-based account of moral preferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 94. PDF
Jordan, J. J., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Signaling when nobody is watching: A reputation heuristics account of outrage and punishment in one-shot anonymous interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. PDF
Martin, J. W. *, Jordan, J. J. *, Rand, D. G., & Cushman, F. (2019). When do we punish people who don’t? Cognition. PDF
Jordan, J. J. (2018). Which accusations stick? Nature Human Behaviour , 2, 19-20. PDF
Jordan, M. R. *, Jordan, J. J. *, & Rand, D. G. (2017). No unique effect of intergroup competition on cooperation: Noncompetitive thresholds are as effective as competitions between groups for increasing human cooperative behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior , 38 (1), 102-108. PDF
Jordan, J. J., Sommers, R., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. G. (2017). Why do we hate hypocrites? Evidence for a theory of false signaling. Psychological Science , 28 (3), 356-368. PDF
Jordan, J. J., & Rand, D. G. (2017). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of high continuation probabilities in repeated games. Journal of Theoretical Biology , 421, 189-202. PDF
Perc, M., Jordan, J. J., Rand, D. G., Wang, Z., Boccaletti, S., & Szolnoki, A. (2017). Statistical physics of human cooperation. Physics Reports , 687, 1-51. PDF
Jordan, J.J.,, Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. G. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature , 530, 473-476. PDF
Jordan, J. J., Hoffman, M., Nowak, M. A., & Rand, D. G. (2016). Uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 113 (31), 8658–8663. PDF
McAuliffe, K., Jordan, J. J., & Warneken, F. (2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition , 134, 1-10. PDF
Jordan, J. J., McAuliffe, K., & Rand, D. G. (2015). The effects of endowment size and strategy method on third-party punishment. Experimental Economics , 19 (4), 741-763. PDF

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