Trying to make a good impression can make a bad impression when you try too hard to promote yourself. At the same time, how can you convey your accomplishments and qualities if you don’t talk about them? The answer: is dual-promotion, which is the art of promoting others as you’re promoting yourself.
Promoting your accomplishments is necessary to advance in your career. While self-promotion increases perceptions of competence, it reduces perceptions of warmth and empathy and increases the potential for an overall negative impression. Researchers in human behavior and psychology call this the “self-promotion dilemma.” If you promote yourself, you might come across as more competent, but also as someone who lacks warmth and empathy, which leads to a more negative impression of others. If you don’t promote yourself, however, you might convey more warmth but also come across as less competent.
A study from a trio of American researchers offers a solution to this dilemma. According to the authors of the study, anyone can come across as both competent and warm if they combine self-promotion with the promotion of others at the same time what the researchers call “dual promotion.” For example, you might describe one of your major accomplishments as a leader and then praise your staff for their contribution to the accomplishment through their hard work and creativity.
Through a series of experiments involving lay volunteers for lab experiments as well as politicians and hiring professionals, the research empirically confirms the effectiveness of this “effective and elegant” proposed solution.
In one experiment, for example, the researchers asked 202 managers and professionals in hiring functions to evaluate a text from a worker describing a joint project with another worker. The participants read one of two types of texts: a text in which the worker self-promoted only or a text in which the worker self-promoted but also praised the work of his or her partner (i.e. dual-promoted).
Using 1 to 7 Likert scales, the participants rated workers who dual-promoted as significantly warmer than those who self-promoted only and rated these workers’ overall impression more positively. There was no difference in perceptions of competence. Further analysis showed a causal link between warmth and overall positive impression. This experiment thus showed that workers, if they dual-promoted, could display qualities of warmth without harming perceptions of their competence.
In a second experiment, participants evaluated two texts related to the joint project, one from each worker. Again, the statements included either self-promotion or dual-promotion. The introduction of a counterpart’s text did not change the positive impact of a worker’s dual promotion as illustrated in the first experiment regardless of whether the counterpart self-promoted or dual-promoted. However, counterparts who dual-promoted made self-promoting workers look even worse.
Another experiment, still including a two-worker project but incorporating a variety of communications strategies (self-promotion only, dual promotion, other promotion only, and a neutral statement with no promotion), showed that self-promotion only can indeed boost impressions of competence more than other-promotion or no promotion; nevertheless, impressions of warmth and, importantly, overall impressions are harmed. Only dual promotion, this experiment confirmed, avoids the self-promotion dilemma by increasing impressions of warmth without hurting impressions of competence and overall impressions.
The results of these experiments were replicated when the researchers moved their study of dual-promotion into the political sphere. Two hundred voters reviewed politicians’ statements about work on a committee, rating their warmth, competence, and overall impression. The voters were then asked about their likelihood to vote for the politicians they had just rated. Politicians who dual-promoted (promoted their accomplishments but also praised their colleagues) not only increased voter perceptions of their warmth but also voter perceptions of their competence leading to more positive overall impressions and earning the support of more voters than self-promoting-only politicians. In the political context, praising others does not only increase the perceptions of one’s warmth without harming perceptions of competence, but, on the contrary, actually increases voter perceptions of confidence, expertise, and overall competence.
It’s important to remember that the participants in the first experiment were hiring professionals, reflecting the real-world application of dual promotion in creating the right impression to the right people. The success of the politicians who dual-promoted in garnering voter support also reinforces the real-world application of this solution to the self-promotion dilemma. Successful people promote themselves but do so in a way that does not project arrogance or self-importance. Jim Collins and others in the past have extolled the virtue of leaders who combine competence and humility. This study offers an applicable method for anyone hoping to land a job or a promotion to achieve the same difficult balance of injecting humility in descriptions of their accomplishments and qualities.
Eric VanEpps’ profile at Vanderbilt University
https://business.vanderbilt.edu/bio/eric-vanepps/
Einav Harts’ profile at George Mason University
https://ecastill.scripts.mit.edu/
Maurice Schweitzer’s profile at The Wharton School
https://oid.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/schweitz/
Dual Promotion: Bragging Better by Promoting Peers. Eric M. VanEpps, Einav Hart, and Maurice E. Schweitzer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (April 2024).
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000431
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