Abstract
The current research examined the effect of group potential—characterized by upward trend—on individuals’ preference for groups. In three experiments, participants (Total N = 189) assessed group members’ impressions, anticipated future achievements, and willingness to join high-potential moderate-achievement and moderate-potential high-achievement groups. As predicted, anticipated future achievements led to willingness to join in the high-potential groups. Specifically, compared with high-achievement groups, participants formed better impressions of high-potential groups, anticipated higher future achievements of them, and were more willing to join them. Importantly, anticipated future achievements totally mediated the effect of group potential on willingness to join. Future directions of research on moderating roles of stereotypes and culture on preference for group potential are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The authors sincerely thank the reviewers and editors for many productive suggestions during the interactive review.
Funding
This work was supported by a Key Program (No. 18ZDA331) from the National Social Science Fund of China and by a General Program (No. 31571147) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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ZX conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed and interpreted the data, wrote the report. BZ and XT revised the manuscript. JW and FW had role in the study design.
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Xie, Z., Wen, F., Tan, X. et al. The attractiveness of group potential: The mediating role of anticipated future achievements in willingness to join. Curr Psychol 41, 6744–6754 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01184-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01184-3