Nolan Martin :
Hello and welcome to the NEGOTIATEx Podcast. My name is Nolan Martin. Joining me as always is Aram Donigian. Aram, do you want to kick this one off today?
Aram Donigian :
I will. Thanks, Nolan. Folks, today we are joined by Ovul Sezer, an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Cornell University. Ovul is a behavioral scientist and stand up comedian where she applies the same observational tools for both jobs and studies human nature, either in depth using experiments or describing it with humor.
Ovul’s research focuses on impression mismanagement, the mistakes we make when we want to impress others. She investigates how we can better navigate our social world. Ovul earned a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a PhD in organizational behavior, both from Harvard university. Welcome Ovul. And thank you for joining us today.
Ovul Sezer :
Thank you so much, Aram, to join you. Thanks a lot for having me.
NM :
Thanks Ovul. Thanks for joining us today. We’d love to start by asking you about your professional journey. What can you share about the key people and moments that have brought you to where you are today?
Ovul’s Journey in Behavioral Science: From Istanbul To Ivy Leagues & Beyond [01:04]
OS :
Such a great question, but it’s also a very difficult question because I need to list tons and tons of people who inspired me, but I will definitely thank all my mentors. But I will also, hopefully give our audience some people to check out, like some books, some research areas to check out. So I’m originally from Istanbul, and I came to the United States to study at Harvard, and I still feel very grateful and lucky every single day. But I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do in life.
Like, I know I liked math, and that’s why I studied math. And the path to this day, this research, behavioral science, impression management, all of that. Now, when I look back, it almost looks like a movie because everything makes sense, but when I was living through it, nothing seemed that linear. So again, I was very lucky to have all my mentors in all of the places that I’ve been, because before coming to Cornell, I also taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I visited Columbia Business School for a year.
So Harvard, UNC, Columbia, Cornell. I’m so grateful to all my colleagues and mentors, but the key things that really made me want to be, okay, I want to do research, it was actually inspired by the financial crisis in 2008. And I don’t know if I’m also an optimistic person who always sees the good things in hardships, which is true for me.
But when the financial crisis happened, you know, there was a huge shock to labor markets as well. I almost, always wonder if, when we have a big thing like that, like I’m very curious about the effects of pandemic and for that generation too, you know, all of a sudden, all the companies say we don’t hire anymore. We’re not coming to recruit you anymore.
And that was an opportunity for me to check out some of the classes that I really liked and found interesting, but never had the chance to do so because I was like, okay, no one is hiring anyway, no more finance, no more consulting. I don’t know. to do. I’m a math nerd.
So I could do something about it. I took some classes on what we call behavioral economics, which I’m sure are very popular with our audience too right now, because it’s really a fascinating area. And those classes that I took really changed the way I think. And since then, I’ve always been in love with behavioral science.
I would say in terms of like the more key people that our audience can also check, maybe they already know, but Danny Kahneman and Amy Stavrsky’s work on the foundation of behavioral economics was amazing. And the other book I read around that time actually was a sociology book by Goffman, the presentation of self in everyday life, which is very related to what I research nowadays.
So all of those things came together. You know, I’m intrigued by how people make decisions, how people navigate their world, their social world, especially. But to be inspired by that topic. I guess I needed a financial crisis to happen in 2008 so that I could leave the more safer path and I could explore some of my more intellectual interests, and I’m so glad it happened that way.
AD :
I love the framing, right? As an optimist, you see possibility in the midst of crisis. That’s a beautiful statement and probably indicative of the mindset that you possess. You are a behavioral scientist. And standup comedian. Wow. Can you tell us a little bit more about the connection between these two aspects of your life?
And what are the insights you’ve gained about human nature from observing people through both lenses?
Exploring The Intersection Of Comedy & Social Science Through A Lens Of Optimism [04:21]
OS :
Sure. Absolutely. I mean, I can talk forever, so you’re going to have to stop me
AD :
We’ll try. We’ll see what happens.
OS :
When I talk about comedy or research, these are both of my passions. I do see a lot of parallel. And I think my optimism comes into play here too, like finding something positive or humorous in the midst of crisis. Because comedy also comes from frustrations, problems, you know. If you go on stage and if you tell how amazing your life is, you’re not going to get any laugh. It’s usually, it’s usually about how something is extremely problematic and you’re so confused and the audience relates to that.
The similarity I find between comedy and research, I think this is one of the fascinating things about being a social scientist. I know I said I was a mathematician in another lifetime, but one of the nice things about studying social science is that you focus on people. If you look at even our own behavior, human nature is very curious, let’s say.
We have odd behaviors. We have interesting behaviors. We do things that don’t make sense or don’t always line up or, and comedy is also about that, right? Like anytime you want to write a joke, again, you have to identify a problem. And social science research is very similar to that.
It’s just the methodology becomes a little different after you find the idea for the scientific research, you conduct an experiment or collect some data of some sorts, whereas for the comedy, you have to go on stage and tell the joke and if people laugh, that means you’re telling the truth.
AD :
What’s your best joke? Do you have a good joke?
OS :
I have so many great jokes, but you have to come to my show.
AD :
All right. So where do we catch your show?
OS :
I perform as part of a group. I’m part of a lineup in Gotham comedy club in New York city. So I go down to New York city from upstate. It’s a great adventure every month. Gotham comedy club between as New Yorkers say, I learned how to say it. 7th and 23rd.
AD :
Okay, and when this airs, Nolan, we got to make sure that we put some links in so we can catch Ovul in action.
NM :
Sounds great. Ovul, you have a background in both applied mathematics and organizational behavior. Why might a multidisciplinary mindset be beneficial when studying social interactions?
Analyzing The Digital Landscape: The Intersection Of Social Science & Data Science [06:31]
OS :
Yeah, absolutely. I think right now it’s almost a necessity given that the world has changed so much. Again, one of the things that excites me about being a social scientist is that there’s also so much data in the world, right?
When we say social interactions, of course, I’m very interested in face to face interactions, but look at our world now. We have Zoom, we have social media sites, that are again, almost a necessity. Like if someone asks you, do you have LinkedIn? And if you say no, it almost looks suspicious now. Like, I’m not, no, I’m not saying you have to have it, but it almost, so you have to give an explanation for it.
Like if you say I’m not doing social media, I don’t have an Instagram or Twitter account or something like that. You have to give a reason almost it’s by default, you have to have these. extra platforms, which also gives a lot of data. So that, I think, combining the social science perspective with the organizational behavior perspective with the more math or stats background, I mean, the math and stats gives you the power to analyze the data.
Again, one of the nice things right now is that there’s millions and millions of data out there. I find it so fascinating to think about this, you know, it’s almost an attention economy. Some economists say, friends would say that everyone is fighting for our attention. The moment we wake up, we get notifications, that is the WhatsApp texts, other websites, other things that we use, social media, email. Everything is a social interaction. If you think about it, and that’s amazing, that’s super exciting for a scientist at the same time, it can be overwhelming. Both for all of us who are going through this journey and also for the researcher.
So having the math or stats background on those tools makes you very well equipped to, how do I get this data? How do I analyze millions of people’s interactions either from sort of websites or sometimes from the experiments that I conduct either with companies or in our lab. So I would say it’s a good combo. I would say it’s a good combo. Although math was hard though. And so maybe that’s how I justify studying it. Because sometimes I think about all the proofs that I had to write as an undergrad and I’m like, that was hard.
AD :
But tremendous value and great application for sure to the work you’re doing now. And we’re going to get into some of these shifts. You were just talking about the changes that are occurring just a little bit more, love to dig more into your research on impression mismanagement.
Can you tell us a little bit, how do you define that term? And then kind of as a follow on. What are some of the common mistakes people make or perceptions people have when they’re trying to impress others?
The Complexity Of Impression Management: Strategies, Missteps & Social Perceptions [08:51]
OS :
Sure. So there has been research on what we know as impression management, which is absolutely an area of work that I love very much. And that work used to show, obviously as human beings, you know, we care about what other people think of us and we try to impress others. We try to look good. We try to be likable. We try to look smart. And we already know from the past work that people have some strategies that they engage in and they usually work.
For instance, you know, if you’re in a meeting with your boss, we know that flattery works, we know that’s conformity, opinion conformity works. And it’s usually true. I mean, you don’t see these things very outrageously in the workplace, but at the same time, anytime someone high status gives an opinion, a lot of people would say, oh, that’s a great idea.
No, like usually those are the things that you hear. And we know that these things lead to a good impression. Again, very important area of work. What I call impression mismanagement is we also have some behaviors that stem from our intuitions about how the world works and we engage in these behaviors. And most of these behaviors, I would even argue kind of. Universal. I’m going to give some examples. Universal. We all know about them from like very little age, yet they’re not exactly very productive behaviors.
For instance, my dissertation work was about humble bragging, which to this day still fascinates me. Now I’ve done so many experiments related to humble bragging, which was again, a hard thing to study, but also very fun. And even today I would see a humble brag on LinkedIn or Twitter. Sometimes people would say that work and I would be like, It’s another humble brag that I still observe. In 2024, and we still have that.
And just to give an example of humble bragging, I’m sure listeners know about this, but just because I love humble bragging, this is my opportunity to humble brag, although I should say we shouldn’t engage in this behavior based on the results of our research, but an example would be, oh, why do people hit on me even when I’m in my sweat pants? Or something like, I don’t know, in job interviews, when people are asked, what’s your biggest weakness, we usually say, oh, I work too hard. And my favorite is sometimes people say I’m too nice. I’m too kind.
AD :
It reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office. You know, like my greatest weakness is my greatest strength or something like that.
OS :
Exactly, exactly. That’s a behavior that exists, like that, I’m a perfectionist as an answer. Again, I’m from Istanbul, Turkey, so I know that that question comes up in interviews in Turkey too, and people do say, oh, I’m a perfectionist, I’m very hardworking. And when we run experiments, lots of different populations would drop lots of different samples.
We found out that this is indeed an intuition that people have. And where does this coming from? Because people think it’s going to help them. Like, we know that bragging is bad. It’s also universal value. From the very young age, we learn if you’re too boastful, people will think you’re arrogant. So you don’t want to do that.
So we have these more sophisticated, more nuanced strategies that exists like humble bragging. Oh, I’m going to be talking about how great I am, but I’m going to put it like a little mask of either complaint or false humility. So it’s a bit softened, right? It’s a softer brag. But what we find, which was fascinating was even though people think it’s going to be better, it’s actually worse than bragging.
So that’s, for instance, one example of impression mismanagement where people are engaging in a bit more sophisticated, more indirect self presentation strategy, yet it backfires even more and it’s actually more harmful than straightforward bragging. Or another thing that we explored, this was also fascinating because it’s the other side of the coin.
Sometimes people would not share anything. People would be like, I don’t want to make anyone. You know, feel weird about this. Like, let’s say I’m promoted at work or let’s say, I have something amazing in my life. I’m not going to announce it, in case some other people who want a similar thing gets offended. Right.
Again, it’s coming from very good intentions. We don’t share, like sometimes people even would hide their school name. Like how I go to school in Palo Alto, New Haven, Cambridge, like these are all amazing schools, like Stanford, Yale, Harvard, all of them, but it actually backfires more because then the recipient of that behavior thinks, oh my goodness, you think I’m not going to be able to handle your success.
That’s very offensive, right? That there’s something that paternalistic motive you are trying to control my envy or jealousy or my emotional reaction to your success gets in the minds of people, and we don’t like that. We feel that it’s actually very offensive and insulting. People say from like school years to, you know, people say, oh, I didn’t talk about my pregnancy or engagement.
I didn’t tell them about my vacation or talk about my school or my grades in school. People will be like, oh, I was getting good grades and my friend was not that good. So I would never share my grades. So that intuition exists since a very young age, which I find fascinating, but we do find that it’s not necessarily productive. So that’s what I call impressions. mismanagement, right? There are these behaviors that we think they work, yet it’s a much more complex nuance that we have to strike the right balance.
AD :
As you’re mentioning the second one, Nolan and I both went to West Point, and one of the things that West Pointers will sometimes do is talk about, refer to it as a small engineering school on the Hudson.
NM :
I was just thinking the exact same thing. We just go to school just north of New York, or just north of the city.
AD :
Or DU I hear it referred to sometimes too, which affects, you know, I would love to hear, that’s really interesting to hear these mismanagement strategies that we put into practice thinking they’re going to be helpful. They actually backfire on us worse. I’d love to hear a few more.
And as you share a few more, I guess a question I would have is, are any more common as you look across generational differences or gender differences or cultural differences, or even across industries, two questions. Additional mismanagement strategies that people try to use. Do you see any trends along any of those different identifiers?
The “I Told You So” Effect: Exploring Universal Behaviors in Impression Mismanagement [15:04]
OS :
Sure. So in terms of some other behaviors, I stuck with that because there’s so many of them, for instance, these two examples that I gave during published work. So we didn’t publish these papers through peer review process. So if any person wants to check them out, they can definitely find these papers on their humble bragging or hiding success.
I’m going to talk about some of the work in progress that we’re doing right now. Meaning there’s still peer review with their conferences and stuff, but it’s still in the publication process. So fingers crossed they’ll come out soon. One thing that I find also interesting is this sentence that we all know.
It’s called, I told you, so we call it, I told you so effect. Now, another fascinating thing about this. So every language has this phrase. I told you so. First of all, I find that fascinating, right? You check German, you check French, you check, I don’t know, any other language, Spanish, Turkish, and you find this phrase, which is amazing.
And we all know, like when we are in the recipient side of it, we know that it’s frustrating to hear that, right? You’re already wrong about something and someone else giving you advice at time one or at a previous point. And now they’re telling you, well, I told you so, just don’t say that to me. And some people would even say, oh, I don’t want to say it, but I told you so.
Some people would even give you that little spiel beforehand. Now, one of the fascinating things about that, for instance, it’s not that people don’t know how frustrating that is. People know it is frustrating. People don’t engage in that behavior to make a good impression. They know that the moment they say it, it’s going to ruin that advice taking, advice giving context.
At the same time, as human beings, we love being right. That tremendous power of being right, you know, when you’re right about something, that’s such a powerful feeling and it gives us so much joy to say it. When somebody else is wrong, you know, we can think about any sort of prediction when I told you so it becomes relevant, right?
Like if you give personal advice, sure. You can say, I told you so depending on whether they follow your advice or not. But anytime we talk about any social issue, these things come up, right? Imagine we talk about stock market and I make a prediction. And you say, no, no, that’s not how it’s going to happen again.
Again, I may tell you, I told you so, or we had the election in the past, just last month or maybe a month and a half ago. Similarly, people have all sorts of predictions and afterwards. Now people are debriefing about the results and what’s going to happen and how it’s going to unfold. And again, we see this. I told you so thing a lot.
So anytime we have some sort of a prediction going on and some commentary about the future, this phrase. exists because we love being right so much. The reason why I wanted to give this as an example, because I find this behavior fascinating, but also, you know, with humble bragging or hiding success, we talked about how you want to look good or you don’t want to upset anyone.
But sometimes these impression mismanagement mistakes also come from how I mean, it makes you feel good sometimes, again, just saying it feels good. So sometimes the reason for the mistakes is very intra psychic and very emotional from our end. How much time do we have? How many behaviors?
AD :
That one, you know, I even think about in so often in business or as we think about resolving conflicts or negotiating really anything. You know, when you’re trying to convince or influence somebody of something, in a way there is some predictive nature to that conversation. And when things come true, I would assume it’s very tempting to even gently
OS :
Aay, see, I was right about this.
AD :
Yeah. You know, and I don’t know, have you done any research on the, like generational or gender differences when it comes to any of these strategies that are more prevalent, like older men or younger women or what, anything like that?
Generational Insights: Analyzing Impression Management Across Social Media Platforms [18:37]
OS :
Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question in terms of the, looking at the actual generational effect. I couldn’t find that data yet. So I really hope that some social media site would give me that data. So I can at least look at, you know, we can compare different, like we can compare Gen Z, millennials or Gen X.
And I would say, you know, your intuition is right. That the reason why I think, you know, that when we laid out the whole research agenda in the beginning, like, you know, impression management was a research area. And now after some decades, researchers like me and so many other great researchers are studying both impression mismanagement and also how this conversation happened, which is very related again, it’s about social interaction.
I think one reason it became popular again is because things have changed, all those technological changes, and it changed people’s maybe norms a little bit. Like, I don’t think people’s tendency to brag or self promote or things like that. I mean, we’re all human beings.
We all care about these things, but one changes right now. We see it every day as a very prevalent thing. Now you go on to LinkedIn and you see everyone is sharing some photos and some of their successes. And like after three days, you might think to yourself, maybe I should also come up with a post so that some of my supervisors can see, or maybe I can share some of my successes with my other friends in my network.
So because everything is more visible now, I mean, the fact that we all have a personal page is fascinating. You know, some people in the eighties didn’t have that eye, right or in the nineties, when I was a kid, I never remember my mom or dad going to their personal website, curating a post like never happened.
AD :
It would have to be on a poster board outside the house somewhere. I don’t know. You’d have to have like a personal bulletin board is what would have been.
OS :
Right. So there wasn’t anything like that. So it just changed the norms around it. And we know that the norms change the perception and relate to like, where do we see differences?
We do find some cross cultural differences between these behaviors because again, norms are different for instance bragging in the US, it’s a very individualistic culture, is very different than bragging in Japan, which is way more collectivistic culture as a cross cultural researchers would identify. In collectivistic cultures, being humble is way more rewarded. So bragging, I’m not saying we are all in love with braggarts here in the US. That’s not what I’m trying to say, but bragging in other cultures and especially in more collectivist cultures is even more of a sin, let’s say. So we do find some differences with cross cultural behavior.
Regarding the hiding success thing, remember I said some people don’t share their success? I know that in a lot of cultures like Turkey, Greece, Israel, like other Mediterranean, Middle Eastern countries, you wear a bracelet or something called evil eye. So even if you share a positive news, it’s like protecting you.
So obviously there’s so many nuances there, right? So I find that fascinating. And some of the work that I’ve done touches on that. I hope to collect more data, hopefully from every other country and see how these norms affect both people’s tendency to engage in these behaviors and how they come across, how we perceive them.
NM :
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for Part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already. And also join us next week for part B of this awesome interview.
