Cognitive ability tests are widely used in employee selection contexts, but large race and ethnic subgroup mean differences in test scores represent a major drawback to their use. We examine the potential for an item-level procedure to reduce these test score mean differences. In three data sets, differing proportions of cognitive ability test items with higher levels of difficulty or subgroup mean differences were removed from the tests. The reliabilities of these trimmed tests were then corrected back to the lengths of the original tests, and the subgroup mean differences of the trimmed tests were compared to those of the original tests. Results indicate that it is not possible to come anywhere close to eliminating subgroup differences via item trimming. The procedure may modestly reduce subgroup mean differences in test scores, with effects becoming stronger as higher proportions of items are removed from the tests. Removing items based on difficulty or subgroup differences have roughly similar impacts on test score mean differences for Black-White test taker comparisons, but results are more mixed for Hispanic-White comparisons. Our results also provide preliminary evidence that removing items on the basis of subgroup mean differences may have relatively little effect on test criterion-related validity, but the impact of removing difficult items was more mixed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Research in impression management has primarily examined how self-promotion affects one's image, neglecting the potential benefits of feedback on the underlying image that is being impression managed. This study bridges this gap by integrating impression management with social-cognitive theory to explore how self-promotion can enhance feedback from targets, thereby stimulating initiative-taking and proactive adaptation in the actor. Analyzing five-wave monthly survey data from 574 entrepreneurs, I find a positive relationship between self-promotion and experimentation, which positively associates with business-model adaptation. This indirect effect is observed exclusively among entrepreneurs confident in their capabilities, highlighting the critical role of self-efficacy. Furthermore, results from three scenario-based experiments demonstrate that higher levels of self-promotion elicit greater engagement from targets, with responses containing more constructive elements, such as ideas or concerns, thereby supporting my theory. My findings underscore the richer feedback generated from self-promotion, suggesting it plays a critical role in facilitating agentic behavior. This contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-promotion's impact, proposing new avenues for future studies in impression management and entrepreneurship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

As organizations face constant pressures to respond to changing situations and emergent demands, team members are frequently called upon to change their processes and routines and adapt to new ways of working together. In examining adaptation, most researchers have taken a behavior-driven approach where they collapse across the many types of adaptive demands teams face and rely on traditional input-process-outcome frameworks (e.g., Hackman, 1987; McGrath, 1984) to isolate specific behavioral responses. However, this perspective has resulted in several critical limitations. There are key differences in the way teams must collectively respond to different types of adaptive stimuli to be successful, and current research cannot account for or differentiate adaptive demands by stimulus type and needed responses. In this integrated conceptual review, we address these limitations and develop a novel, stimulus-based phase model of team adaptation. We examine studies across our newly developed stimulus detection, urgency identification, and duration assessment phases, and through the team's adaptive response, adaptive performance, and learning from the experience. We integrate research within each phase of the adaptive process, highlighting factors that demonstrate what successful team adaptation "looks like," and describe future avenues of research to address key issues within each phase. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The configurational or "internal fit" perspective proposes that human resource (HR) systems are most effective when individual practices are configured such that they fit together and are mutually reinforcing. The Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) model has emerged as a predominant way to select and configure HR practices based on whether they attempt to enhance employee ability, motivation, or opportunities. Despite the widespread use of the configurational perspective and AMO model in building a high-performance work system (HPWS), researchers have not clearly articulated how HR practices across the AMO domains should be configured to maximize internal fit across the system. Moreover, research has overlooked the hierarchical nature of an HPWS, such that HR practices are nested within a particular AMO domain, and the AMO domains, in turn, are nested within the HPWS. To address these gaps, we develop and test a that specifies synergistic interactions within and among AMO domains. Analyses of six-wave panel data from 640 firms reveal that internal fit effects of HR practices simultaneously exist within (i.e., HR practice-level interactions) and among AMO domains (i.e., AMO domain-level interactions) to predict workforce productivity and ultimately firm profitability. Moreover, the two sets of interactions predict outcomes beyond the additive effects of the HR practices on which prior research has typically focused. These findings show that HR practices can be configured to have "system" effects. They also highlight the value of the dual internal fit model to understand the performance benefits of optimally configured HR systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

While personality trait assessments are widely used in candidate selection, coaching, and occupational counseling, little published research has systematically compared occupations in personality traits. Using a comprehensive personality assessment, we mapped 263 occupations in self-reported Big Five domains and various personality nuances in a sample of 68,540 individuals and cross-validated the findings in informant ratings of 19,989 individuals. Controlling for age and gender, occupations accounted for 2%-7% of Big Five variance in both self-reports and informant reports. Most occupations' average Big Five levels were intuitive, replicated across rating methods, and were consistent with those previously obtained with a brief assessment in a different sociocultural context. Often, they also tracked the Occupational Information Network database's work style ratings and clustered along the International Standard Classification of Occupation's hierarchical framework. Finally, occupations with higher average levels of the personality domains typically linked to better job performance tended to be more homogeneous in these domains, suggesting that jobs with higher performing incumbents are often more selective for personality traits. Several personality nuances had intuitive occupational differences that were larger than those of the Big Five domains (explaining up to 12% variance) and replicated well across rating methods, providing more detailed insights into how job incumbents vary in personality. We provide an interactive application for exploring the results (https://apps.psych.ut.ee/JobProfiles/) and discuss the findings' theoretical and practical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Organizations, researchers, and software increasingly use automatic speech recognition (ASR) to transcribe speech to text. However, ASR can be less accurate for (i.e., biased against) certain demographic subgroups. This is concerning, given that the machine-learning (ML) models used to automatically score video interviews use ASR transcriptions of interviewee responses as inputs. To address these concerns, we investigate the extent of ASR bias and its effects in automatically scored interviews. Specifically, we compare the accuracy of ASR transcription for English as a second language (ESL) versus non-ESL interviewees, people of color (and Black interviewees separately) versus White interviewees, and male versus female interviewees. Then, we test whether ASR bias causes bias in ML model scores-both in terms of differential convergent correlations (i.e., subgroup differences in correlations between observed and ML scores) and differential means (i.e., shifts in subgroup differences from observed to ML scores). To do so, we apply one human and four ASR transcription methods to two samples of mock video interviews (s = 1,014 and 414), and then we train and test models using these different transcripts to score multiple constructs. We observed significant bias in the commercial ASR services across nearly all comparisons, with the magnitude of bias differing across the ASR services. However, the transcription bias did not translate into meaningful measurement bias for the ML interview scores-whether in terms of differential convergent correlations or means. We discuss what these results mean for the nature of bias, fairness, and validity of ML models for scoring verbal open-ended responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

There is long-standing debate over whether pay-for-performance (PFP) enhances or undermines creative performance. Traditional motivation and revised creativity theories suggest that PFP and intrinsic task interest combine additively to enhance creative performance, whereas cognitive evaluation theory and self-determination theory posit that PFP undermines task interest and thus intrinsic motivation and creative performance. To help resolve these conflicting predictions and provide a more comprehensive understanding of how and when PFP influences creative performance, this study incorporates both the incentive and sorting mechanisms of PFP, varying strengths of PFP, and task autonomy as a key moderator. A novel laboratory experiment was designed to capture key elements of workplace contexts, including in the design of the creative tasks, PFP strengths based on benchmarking of U.S. companies' practices, and allowing subjects to sort into different pay conditions, consistent with the opportunity for mobility in the labor market. The results showed that, through both incentive and sorting mechanisms, high PFP intensity enhanced creative performance more so than low PFP intensity, and both were superior to fixed pay. Importantly, task autonomy positively moderated the PFP-creative performance relationship, such that creative performance under PFP increased much more under higher task autonomy. Finally, the difference in creative performance under PFP versus fixed pay was greater when subjects were allowed to sort into their preferred pay conditions than when they worked only under randomly assigned pay conditions. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The dramatic rise in political polarization and aggravation of race relations are prominent in the United States. While dissimilarity to others is thought to undermine trust, I challenge the assumption that dissimilarity does so uniformly in the workplace where cross-party and cross-race interactions are structurally induced. Leveraging construal-level theory, I theorize that deep- versus surface-level differences with a coworker interact with ideology to activate higher versus lower construals of trustworthiness, prompting liberals and conservatives to distrust their coworkers in different ways. For liberals, I argue that perceived political dissimilarity undermines perceived trustworthiness (a higher level/abstract construal, capturing one's trustworthiness ) and disclosure. For conservatives, I argue that perceived racial dissimilarity undermines perceived trustworthiness (a lower level/concrete construal, capturing one's trustworthiness ) and reliance. Study 1 (a proof of concept) and Study 2 (a longitudinal, dyadic field study) utilize inductive theory-building and exploratory analyses. Studies 3a, 3b(i), and 3b(ii) (three preregistered experiments) support my hypotheses: Liberals tend to view politically dissimilar coworkers as less trustworthy people in the world and refrain from disclosures, while conservatives tend to view racial outgroup coworkers as less trustworthy in their jobs and refrain from reliance. Given liberal and conservative employees' roles in the calcification of political and racial group cleavages, respectively, organizations must determine whether both forms of bias should be addressed-indeed, racial bias is socially unacceptable, whereas political bias is widely tolerated-and, if so, whether interventions should target employees based on ideology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Drawing on uncertainty management theory and the nascent work on justice variability, we examine employees' and experiences of abusive supervision and ethical leadership. Conceptualizing the simultaneous display of abusive and ethical leadership styles as a form of justice variability, we suggest that a direct supervisor's ethical leadership exacerbates, rather than ameliorates, the detrimental effects of his/her abusive supervision on employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance. We further contend that a similar effect exists when employees vicariously experience leadership interactions involving their direct supervisor and higher level manager, whereby higher level managers' ethical leadership exacerbates the negative effects of their abusive supervision toward supervisors on those supervisors' employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance. We draw the contrast between the direct and vicarious experiences by theorizing justice uncertainty and linking-pin effectiveness uncertainty, respectively, as two distinct theoretical mechanisms that explain the two proposed destructive effects. Using a multisource and multiphase lagged field study and two vignette-based experiments, we find general support for our model. Our research advances the theories of justice variability, vicarious leadership and (in)justice, and supervisors' linking-pin role effectiveness. We also offer practical insights for managing "Jekyll and Hyde" leadership across organizational hierarchies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

We present a meta-analytic investigation of the theoretical mechanisms underlying why experienced workplace aggression is harmful to the three core performance outcomes (i.e., task performance, citizenship behavior, and deviant behavior). Through a comprehensive literature review of 405 empirical articles, we first extract and identify five prominent theoretical mechanisms: relationship quality, justice perception, psychological strain, negative affect, and state self-evaluation. By synthesizing evidence from these articles, which include 471 unique samples from 36 countries or regions ( = 149,341 participants), we reveal the incremental effects of the five mechanisms, compare their relative strengths for each performance outcome, and examine their cultural contingencies. We find that when the five mechanisms are examined simultaneously, only relationship quality and state self-evaluation show incremental effects across all performance outcomes in the predicted direction. Moreover, the comparative strengths of mechanisms vary across performance outcomes: The impact of workplace aggression on task performance is best explained by the negative affect and state self-evaluation mechanisms, its impact on citizenship behavior is best explained by the relationship quality mechanism, and its impact on deviant behavior is best explained by the negative affect mechanism. Finally, the prominence of some mechanisms is contingent on certain cultural dimensions: The relationship quality mechanism is strengthened by individualism and masculinity, while the state self-evaluation mechanism is strengthened by masculinity. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Organizational failures often cause significant harm to employees, the organization itself, and the environment. Investigations of failures consistently highlight how key employees behaved in (perhaps unintentionally) unethical ways that de-prioritized safety, such as investing fewer resources in safety (vs. other priorities) over time. Drawing on these investigations, we suggest a previously underexplored theme could explain why organizational failures persist and why employees did not "see" the potential for their behaviors to cause harm to others: Employees were distanced from where the harm eventually occurred, either in terms of space (e.g., being located miles away from the job site) or time (e.g., making decisions that would not have impacts for months or years). We use construal level theory to investigate how the way employees construe where work occurs-defined as work context construal-influences perceptions of harm and the ethical framing of risk-mitigating behaviors. We hypothesize that high-level (abstract) work context construals (vs. low-level, concrete ones) reduce perceptions of potential harm which, in turn, leads to framing risk-mitigating behaviors as less of an ethical obligation. Six studies-a correlational survey of aviation employees (Study 1), field experiments with offshore drilling employees (Study 2A) and health care workers (Study 2B), a preregistered experiment with nurses (Study 3), and two supplemental studies (Studies 4A/B)-support our hypotheses. We discuss implications of this research for understanding organizational failures, particularly in a world where technology increasingly enables employees to monitor complex and high-risk work occurring many miles away, or on the other side of the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of including neurodivergent people (e.g., those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], autism, dyslexia) in the workforce. However, research suggests that some selection tools (e.g., measures of conscientiousness) show lower means for those with ADHD, which may carry implications for personnel selection. The three studies reported here address three questions: (1) What is the magnitude of ADHD-based differences in conscientiousness, and are these differences driven by facets with high or low job relevance? (2) Could reframing conscientiousness items within work contexts attenuate group mean differences in conscientiousness? And (3) do work-specific and general conscientiousness measures have different measurement properties for respondents with ADHD? Study 1 surveyed 291 undergraduates, finding those with ADHD scored significantly lower on global conscientiousness and its facets. Study 2 (a mixed-design experiment) had 317 employees complete a work-specific and a decontextualized set of conscientiousness items. Using work-specific conscientiousness items reduced differences in conscientiousness by ADHD status. Study 3 (a between-subjects design, = 515) experimentally increased the stakes of survey administration to approximate a selection context. Mean differences by ADHD status were present on both work-specific and general items for global conscientiousness and most facets, even under high stakes. However, these results are qualified by findings of measurement noninvariance on general and work-specific conscientiousness facet measures, suggesting scale mean differences by ADHD status may be driven by item content rather than construct-level differences. Together, the findings reinforce a need for ongoing investigation into the implications of using conscientiousness assessments with neurodivergent people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Automated video interviews (AVIs) that use machine learning (ML) algorithms to assess interviewees are increasingly popular. Extending prior AVI research focusing on noncognitive constructs, the present study critically evaluates the possibility of assessing cognitive ability with AVIs. By developing and examining AVI ML models trained to predict measures of three cognitive ability constructs (i.e., general mental ability, verbal ability, and intellect [as observed at zero acquaintance]), this research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it advances our understanding of how cognitive abilities relate to interviewee behavior. Specifically, we found that verbal behaviors best predicted interviewee cognitive abilities, while neither paraverbal nor nonverbal behaviors provided incremental validity, suggesting that only verbal behaviors should be used to assess cognitive abilities. Second, across two samples of mock video interviews, we extensively evaluated the psychometric properties of the verbal behavior AVI ML model scores, including their (internal consistency across interview questions and test-retest), (relationships with other variables and content), and (measurement and predictive). Overall, the general mental ability, verbal ability, and intellect AVI models captured similar behavioral manifestations of cognitive ability. Validity evidence results were mixed: For example, AVIs trained on observer-rated intellect exhibited superior convergent and criterion relationships (compared to the observer ratings they were trained to model) but had limited discriminant validity evidence. Our findings illustrate the importance of examining psychometric properties beyond convergence with the test that ML algorithms are trained to model. We provide recommendations for enhancing discriminant validity evidence in future AVIs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Leadership scholars recognize that there is value in capturing how leaders view themselves and how they are viewed by others. Recently, the leadership Arena-Reputation-Identity (LARI) model has been advanced as a means of more precisely capturing the shared and unique perspectives that underlie multisource ratings of leadership. Despite its strengths, several critical questions pertaining to this model remain unanswered: (1) Does the wealth of information provided by the LARI model have any bearing on the effectiveness of a leader? (2) Does the amount of variance explained by a particular source within the LARI model depend on the observability of the leadership dimension being rated? (3) Does the LARI model generalize to the upper echelon of the firms (i.e., senior executives) while also accommodating additional source effects (i.e., board members)? Drawing on multisource ratings of 491 senior executives' leadership competencies, as well as a team-based assessment of their effectiveness, we first conceptually and empirically extend this Model 1 that can accommodate predictive relationships, that is, LARI (S-1) model, and then find that the LARI (S-1) model functions well as a means of conceptualizing multisource ratings of leadership (even in a distinct context and additional sources of ratings). We also find that the LARI (S-1) model captures a significant, and at times, substantial portion of variability in leader effectiveness. Our results also suggest that the extent to which a particular source of leadership ratings predicts a leader's effectiveness is based, in part, on the observability of the leadership dimension being assessed. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This meta-analysis aims to understand the impact of witnessed workplace mistreatment. Bringing together two streams of research, it examines (a) the boundary conditions of observer reactions that reflect a principled moral disapproval of violations of interpersonal justice (i.e., deontic reactions) and (b) the extent to which witnessed mistreatment explains incremental variance in a range of employee outcomes beyond the effects of experienced mistreatment. The results demonstrate that observer psychological and behavioral deontic reactions are not straightforward. For example, while observers have negative reactions toward perpetrators, they fail to intervene and have mixed reactions toward targets. Findings from a series of moderator analyses illuminate the role of perpetrator rank, mistreatment severity, and study context in explaining these disparate observer deontic reactions. Further, although experienced mistreatment explains more variance in most employee outcomes than witnessed mistreatment, witnessed mistreatment still has a unique and sizable contribution. The implications of these findings and future directions for research on witnessed mistreatment are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although the literature on individual job crafting has proliferated over the past decade, research on the collaborative crafting efforts of organizational teams has lagged behind, which is surprising given the prominence of team-based arrangements in contemporary work and the importance of team proactivity in today's business environment. Drawing on proactive motivation theory and the literature on proactive performance in teams, this article presents a large-scale intervention study aimed at increasing team proactive motivation, including a pretest/posttest control group with 96 teams and 1,077 employees. We study the extent to which a team proactive motivation intervention is associated with changes in three dimensions of team crafting (task team crafting, relational team crafting, and cognitive team crafting) at both 6 months and 1 year after the intervention. We also examine the mediating role of change in the three team-level crafting dimensions in explaining the association between the intervention and change in team performance over time. Our results show that the intervention is positively associated with change in all three forms of team crafting. Furthermore, change in team crafting positively associates with change in team performance 6 months and 1 year after the intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Speaking up on social injustices may help create more just and inclusive organizations. Yet, many people choose to remain silent. In this article, we test how managerial silence on injustices can shape impressions of a manager's lack of support for an outgroup. In Study 1, we surveyed employees and found that many noticed their managers' silence and recounted that such silence influenced how they perceived their managers. We then conducted nine experimental studies (Studies 2-6, Supplemental Studies 1-4) to test how observers' perceptions of managers who engage in silence on an outgroup injustice depend on whether managers have spoken up or remained silent in the past. We demonstrate that when a manager engages in selective silence by previously speaking up on an injustice but remains silent on an outgroup injustice, observers perceive the manager as harboring greater bias and as supportive of the outgroup than if they remained totally silent on both issues. In contrast, when a manager engages in selective silence by previously speaking up on an injustice but then remains silent on a second outgroup injustice, observers perceive the manager as generally supportive of social justice and as supportive of the second outgroup than if they remained totally silent on both issues. We discuss implications for speaking up and remaining silent on injustices in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite Americans' recent heightened awareness of racial inequality, anti-Asian racism at work remains underrecognized and largely unaddressed. In this research, we aim to understand why White bystander coworkers may fail to confront anti-Asian racism. Integrating the moral exclusion perspective and research on racial positions, we propose that due to perceiving Asian Americans as more foreign than other non-White coworkers, White coworkers are less likely to feel anger and engage in confrontation when witnessing anti-Asian racism at work. We first conducted a survey study (Study 1), demonstrating the external validity of the phenomenon that White coworkers are less likely to confront racism when the victim is Asian American versus Black. We then conducted two experiments (Studies 2 and 3) with a realistic, interactive design and behavioral measures of confrontation, supporting our hypothesized mechanisms (i.e., perceived target foreignness and anger). Study 3 further generalized our theory by including Hispanic/Latinx American targets as an additional comparison group and showing that the relative perceived foreignness among Asian American, Hispanic/Latinx American, and Black targets reduced White coworkers' anger and confrontation. We then conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Employees' novel ideas often do not get recognized or valued by their managers, thus precluding these ideas from benefiting the organization. Drawing on the social-cognitive model of creativity evaluation (Zhou & Woodman, 2003) and integrating it with a social network (N/W) lens, this article investigates how characteristics of the social networks of managers and employees play a role in influencing managers' valuation of and willingness to implement novel employee ideas. In three studies-an experimental study manipulating idea novelty and the functional diversity of idea evaluators' (i.e., managers') network, and two network field studies (with managers evaluating actual product ideas generated by employees)-we document how managers generally disfavor novelty and, therefore, are unwilling to implement novel yet useful ideas. However, we find that managers' advice network diversity and employees' centrality in the advice network among their peers help mitigate this negative effect. Managers are able to better appreciate the value of novel ideas when they have more diverse networks and when idea-proposing employees have high centrality in their peer network. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring person-occupation fit serves many important purposes, from helping young people explore majors and careers to helping jobseekers assess fit with available jobs. However, most existing fit measures are limited in that they focus on single individual difference domains without considering how fit may differ across multiple domains. For example, a jobseeker might be highly in a job, yet not possess the requisite to perform the job well. The current research addresses this issue by evaluating an integrative set of person-occupation fit assessments that measure 88 fit dimensions across five domains: and . These measures were either newly developed or adapted from existing assessments to directly correspond with occupational variables from the Occupational Information Network database. Across three studies with diverse samples, we obtained extensive reliability and validity evidence to evaluate the fit assessments. Results consistently showed that integrating across fit domains led to practical improvements in predictions of relevant outcomes, including career choice and subjective and objective career success. However, some fit measures (i.e., interests and knowledge) were generally more predictive of outcomes than others (i.e., personality), thus warranting greater consideration for use in research and applied contexts. We discuss how our results advance theoretical and practical knowledge concerning the measurement of person-occupation fit in the modern labor market. Moreover, to inspire additional research and applications involving whole-person fit measurement, we made all newly developed fit assessments publicly available, providing guidance for using them with the Occupational Information Network database. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although punishment deters misconduct, protects employees from harm, and maintains cooperation in organizations, not all leaders punish-some are lenient. Employees keenly watch leaders' responses to misconduct. Leniency is often judged as unfair because it violates moral principles of justice, motivating observers to withhold support to leaders. Our research shifts the conversation to explain how moral consideration of offenders factors into the sensemaking of leaders' leniency that influences observer reactions. Perceptions of offender personal need (distress from the offender's personal life that is outside their control) raise observers' humanitarianism, which is reflected in compassion. Compassion elicited from offender personal need motivates observers to reduce the distress from the situation, lessening the unfairness of the leniency and punitive reactions to the leader. Three experiments demonstrated that leniency elicited unfairness that reduced support to leaders; observers' perceptions of offender personal need moderated the effects of leniency, reducing its unfairness and punitive reactions to leaders. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that compassion mediated the moderating effects of offender personal need. Only distress from personal need that is inflicted onto offenders (i.e., other-inflicted personal need), compared to distress from work performance need (Study 2) and self-inflicted personal need (Study 3), elicited compassion that lessened the unfairness of leniency. Study 3 also showed that self-inflicted personal need elicited contempt for the offender, which mediated the moderating effect of self-inflicted personal need, bolstering the unfairness of leniency and lessening support to lenient leaders. Implications to theory and practice are presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).