The carrot and the stick: Respected and disrespected group members' motives tot engage in group-serving efforts

Previous research has demonstrated that intragroup respect can strengthen people's commitment to the group and encourage them to exert themselves on behalf of it. In the present research, the authors argue that similar behavior can ensue from self-focused concerns when group members are disrespected. Experiment 1 (N = 174) confirms that high respect as well as low respect motivates people to increase their actual discretionary efforts on behalf of the group. These findings were replicated and extended in Experiment 2 (N = 138), where it was established that enhanced efforts only emerge when people consider the way they are evaluated by others as diagnostic for their position in the group. In addition, it is demonstrated that whereas the efforts of respected people were primarily motivated by affective commitment to the group (group-focused concerns), the behavior of disrespected people was driven by anxiety about their acceptance into the group (self-focused concerns). © 2006 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.