MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONS


It’s the Journey, Not Just the Destination: Conveying Interpersonal Warmth in


OVUL SEZER ASSISTANT PROFESSOR


Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration


Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Cornell University


Written Introductions Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 177, July 2023 LINK TO PAPER


Co-authors • Ovul Sezer


Assistant Professor, Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University


• Kelly A. Nault, IE Business School • Nadav Klein, INSEAD


Summary


Professionals are often called upon to introduce themselves in contexts such as networking events and job interviews; today many such introductions occur in text-based forms, including on professional websites, over email, and on written applications. Written introductions may make it difficult to convey the same levels of interpersonal warmth communicated in richer media, like video or live meetings. So while text-based self-promotion allows people to reach a wide audience, it’s possible to lose this important determinant of impressions.


Te authors used a real world context (LinkedIn) and show across seven studies that people conveyed greater warmth in written introductions when they emphasized their journey, as in the path taken to achieve their accomplishments as well as their outcomes. It was determined that this increased warmth was partly because the writer seemed more humble. Tese results extended beyond naive evaluators to human resource specialists. Te expression of experiences did not have the same effect in live-action introductions, however -- only in writing.


TO IMPACT CONTENTS


RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: CORNELL SC JOHNSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS • 2023 EDITION


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