Department of Sociology, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 4;15(3):e0228672. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228672. eCollection 2020.
Risk-takers are rhetorically extolled in America, but does this veneration ignore the downsides of failure? We test competing perspectives on how workplace risk-takers are perceived by examining cultural attitudes about individuals who successfully take, unsuccessful take, and avoid risks at work. The results of two experiments show that, in comparison to risk-avoidance, expected workplace outcomes are enhanced by successful risk-taking and that failure does not appear to significantly harm expected workplace outcomes for risk-takers. While one experiment finds that failed risk-takers are seen as more likely to be downsized (because they are viewed as more foolish), we also find failed risk-takers are perceived as more likely to be hired and promoted. Mediation analyses reveal this is primarily because risk-taking-regardless of outcome-considerably increases perceptions of agency and decreases perceptions of indecisiveness, and these attributions predict positive workplace outcomes. We also find the results to be remarkably similar across varying participant characteristics (namely, gender, race, education level, work experience, income, and age), which suggests that there is a broad cultural consensus in the U.S. about the value of risk-taking. In sum, we find evidence that observers generally make more positive attributions about risk-takers than about risk-avoiders, even when risk-takers fail.
冒险者在美国常被赞美，但这种尊崇是否忽视了失败的代价？为了检验关于职场冒险者的看法，我们从竞争的角度来检验人们如何看待那些成功冒险、失败冒险和回避风险的人。两项实验的结果表明，与回避风险相比，成功冒险会提升预期的工作成果，而失败似乎并不会对冒险者的预期工作成果造成显著的负面影响。虽然一项实验发现，冒险失败的人更有可能被裁员（因为他们被视为更愚蠢），但我们也发现冒险失败的人更有可能被雇佣和晋升。中介分析表明，这主要是因为冒险行为（无论结果如何）极大地增加了人们对能动性的感知，降低了对犹豫不决的看法，而这些归因预测了积极的工作结果。我们还发现，这些结果在不同的参与者特征（即性别、种族、教育水平、工作经验、收入和年龄）之间非常相似，这表明在美国，人们对冒险行为的价值有广泛的文化共识。总之，我们有证据表明，观察者通常会对冒险者做出比回避者更积极的归因，即使冒险者失败了。
