Goodwin, R.D., Dodson, S.J., Chen, J.M., & Diekmann, K.A. (2020). Gender, sense of power, and desire to lead: Why women don’t “lean in” to apply to leadership groups that are majority-male. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 44(4), 468-487. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684320939065

In four studies, we examined the interaction between gender and gender composition of the leadership group on leader candidates’ sense of power, desire to lead, and intentions to apply to become a member of a leadership group. We found that women, compared to men, expected lower sense of power when considering applying to a majority-male (vs. gender-balanced) leadership committee. This pattern observed for women in majority-male leadership committees was not, however, evident for men in majority-female leadership committees. Furthermore, women’s lower sense of power explained why they expressed lower desires to lead and intentions to apply for a majority-male leadership committee compared to men. Finally, we found that increasing women’s sense of power increased their desires and intentions to lead in a majority-male committee.

Dodson, S.J. & Heng, Y.T. (2022). Self-compassion in organizational research: A integrative review and future research agenda. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 43(2), 168-196. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2556

This review describes self-compassion and its theoretical underpinnings in a workplace context, systematically reviews the current empirical literature on self-compassion using samples of working adults, critically analyzes the current state of the literature, and provides recommendations for robust future research. In the process, we offer a conceptualization of self-compassion that aligns past research with current directions in organizational compassion. We also identify unresolved issues and underexplored research areas in the field and guide future scholarly work surrounding self-compassion in organizations by highlighting several empirical opportunities that could advance our theoretical understanding of how self-compassion manifests in organizational contexts.

Dodson, S.J., Goodwin, R.D., Graham, J., & Diekmann, K.A. (2023). Moral foundations, himpathy, and punishment following sexual misconduct allegations. Organization Science, 34(5), 1651-1996. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1652

We build on Moral Foundations Theory and deontic justice theory to propose a model that explains why some third parties punish victims who report sexual misconduct and support the alleged perpetrators. We argue that moral concerns can influence emotional responses, credibility judgments, and third-party motivations to resolve injustice in ambiguous contexts. Specific to sexual misconduct allegations, binding moral foundations of authority, loyalty, and purity can give rise to himpathy – sympathy toward the alleged perpetrator and anger toward the accusing victim. Across five studies, adherence to binding foundations predicted increased sympathy toward the alleged perpetrator and anger toward the accusing victim, which led to higher perpetrator and lower victim credibility judgments. Himpathy and credibility judgments serially mediated the relationship between third parties’ binding moral foundations and their inclination for victim punishment and disinclination for perpetrator sanctions. 

Dodson, S. J., Goodwin, R. D., Wakslak, C. J., Diekmann, K. A., & Graham, J. (2025). She sees the trees, he sees the forest: Descriptive gender stereotypes of concreteness and abstractness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000453

We utilize social role and construal-level theories to identify and explain descriptive expectations of men’s and women’s cognition. We find evidence of gendered construal-level stereotypes in six preregistered studies and an internal meta-analysis. We find that people tend to implicitly associate the names of women with low-construal terms and men with high-construal terms and tend to describe women as more concrete than men in general and across occupations. Across these studies, we also found that women were described as more concrete than abstract, whereas men were described as more abstract than concrete. These stereotypic associations were observable in the language used to recommend LinkedIn users from varying industries and occupations. Beliefs that women are more concrete than men affect their assignments to desirable and undesirable detailed tasks, a mechanism that could perpetuate gender roles and organizational inequity.