Becky Schaumberg

Becky Schaumberg
  • Assistant Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    3730 Walnut Street
    556 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Links: CV

Overview

I am an Assistant Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach negotiations. I use social psychology and organizational behavior theory to understand the factors that promote and impede positive employee outcomes such as job performance, leadership, and effective decision-making. I am particularly interested in how these outcomes relate to guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride. These emotions are self-conscious emotions. These are emotions that make us feel bad for failing to meet expectations and make us feel good for exceeding them. They are the emotions that tie the individual to the collective. As such, these emotions are essential to the act of organizing.

A central contribution of my research is to understand the role of self-conscious emotions in organizations-to make their influence and role in organizational life visible. I look at how these emotions affect the people who feel them (e.g., How does my tendency to experience guilt relate to how I feel about my job or my ability to lead?), affect those around them (e.g., How does my experience of shame affect your inferences about my organization’s values?), and how these emotions, in turn, affect the larger organization, including its culture. Ultimately, my work shows self-conscious emotions relate to a range of employee behaviors. And understanding these emotions can improve employee and organizational outcomes.

I received my undergraduate degree from Carleton College in Minnesota and my PhD from Stanford University.  Prior to joining Wharton, I was an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at NYU Stern School of Business.

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Research

Please see my  CV for a full list of publications and working papers.

  • Rebecca Schaumberg (2024), When expressing pride makes people seem less competent, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 184 (). Abstract

    People often take great satisfaction in their professional and personal accomplishments. Previous research suggests that sharing these pride experiences enhances impressions of one’s competence. However, this past work has examined pride in contexts where others’ reactions were absent, unlike most workplaces and performance-oriented settings where diverse reactions to similar achievements occur. I argue that what pride signals about a person’s competence depends on how others respond to similar successes. Specifically, expressing pride in a performance signals lower competence when others do not share the same prideful reaction. Nine preregistered studies support this prediction. The results also showed that expressing pride in a performance indicates that the performance is close to one’s peak ability. This inference about someone’s performance potential helped explain why expressing pride can signal lower competence. Overall, this work shows that pride is not an unconditional indicator of competence but rather contingent on the emotional responses of others.

  • Zhiying Ren and Rebecca Schaumberg (2024), Disagreement Gets Mistaken for Bad Listening, Psychological Science. 10.1177/095679762412399 Abstract

    It is important for people to feel listened to in professional and personal communications, and yet they can feel unheard even when others have listened well. We propose that this feeling may arise because speakers conflate agreement with listening quality. In 11 studies (N = 3,396 adults), we held constant or manipulated a listener’s objective listening behaviors, manipulating only after the conversation whether the listener agreed with the speaker. Across various topics, mediums (e.g., video, chat), and cues of objective listening quality, speakers consistently perceived disagreeing listeners as worse listeners. This effect persisted after controlling for other positive impressions of the listener (e.g., likability). This effect seemed to emerge because speakers believe their views are correct, leading them to infer that a disagreeing listener must not have been listening very well. Indeed, it may be prohibitively difficult for someone to simultaneously convey that they disagree and that they were listening.

  • Rebecca Schaumberg (2022), Shame broadcasts social norms: The positive social effects of shame on norm acquisition and normative behavior, Psychological Science, 33 (8), pp. 1257-1277. Abstract

    How does shame affect social cohesion? Prior work has drawn divergent conclusions to this question because shame can spur maladaptive behaviors for people who experience it. However, past work has overlooked the interindividual effects of shame—how one’s expression of shame affects people who witness it. We investigated these social-learning effects of shame and identified norm transmission as a reliable route by which shame facilitates social cohesion. Across five studies and two supplemental studies with U.S.-based adult participants (N = 3,726), we manipulated whether someone conveys shame, no specific emotion, or other discrete emotions regarding their behavior. We then assessed the effect of this emotional expression on participants’ norm inferences and norm-conforming behavior. We found that shame broadcasts particularly strong signals about social norms, and people adjust their behavior to align with these norms. We discuss how these findings challenge common conclusions about shame and generate insights about shame’s influence on social life.

Teaching

Past Courses

  • LGST2910 - Negotiations

    This course examines the art and science of negotiation, with additional emphasis on conflict resolution. Students will engage in a number of simulated negotiations ranging from simple one-issue transactions to multi-party joint ventures. Through these exercises and associated readings, students explore the basic theoretical models of bargaining and have an opportunity to test and improve their negotiation skills.

  • MGMT2910 - Negotiations

    This course examines the art and science of negotiation, with additional emphasis on conflict resolution. Students will engage in a number of simulated negotiations ranging from simple one-issue transactions to multi-party joint ventures. Through these exercises and associated readings, students explore the basic theoretical models of bargaining and have an opportunity to test and improve their negotiation skills.

  • OIDD2910 - Negotiations

    This course examines the art and science of negotiation, with additional emphasis on conflict resolution. Students will engage in a number of simulated negotiations ranging from simple one-issue transactions to multi-party joint ventures. Through these exercises and associated readings, students explore the basic theoretical models of bargaining and have an opportunity to test and improve their negotiation skills.

  • OIDD2990 - Judg & Dec Making Res Im

    This class provides a high-level introduction to the field of judgment and decision making (JDM) and in-depth exposure to the process of doing research in this area. Throughout the semester you will gain hands-on experience with several different JDM research projects. You will be paired with a PhD student or faculty mentor who is working on a variety of different research studies. Each week you will be given assignments that are central to one or more of these studies, and you will be given detailed descriptions of the research projects you are contributing to and how your assignments relate to the successful completion of these projects. To complement your hands-on research experience, throughout the semester you will be assigned readings from the book Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein, which summarizes key recent ideas in the JDM literature. You will also meet as a group for an hour once every three weeks with the class's faculty supervisor and all of his or her PhD students to discuss the projects you are working on, to discuss the class readings, and to discuss your own research ideas stimulated by getting involved in various projects. Date and time to be mutually agreed upon by supervising faculty and students. the 1CU version of this course will involve approx. 10 hours of research immersion per week and a 10-page paper. The 0.5 CU version of this course will involve approx 5 hours of research immersion per week and a 5-page final paper. Please contact Professor Joseph Simmons if you are interested in enrolling in the course: jsimmo@wharton.upenn.edu

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Latest Research

Rebecca Schaumberg (2024), When expressing pride makes people seem less competent, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 184 ().
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In the News

Building Stronger Family Offices by Sharing Knowledge and Securing the Future

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Knowledge @ Wharton - 2024/11/21
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