Imagine the following scenario. Every Monday, Ravi arrives at the boss’s door before anyone else, ready with a well-thought-out compliment: “Nice tie, Mark!” he says, despite them often being awful. 

In meetings, Ravi always enthusiastically agrees with Mark’s ideas, even when they contradict what he said the week before. He regularly drops references to Mark’s past successes and eagerly volunteers for tasks that get him noticed by the leadership team.

Coworkers joke about his flattery, but when promotions come up, it’s Ravi who’s moved up. This isn’t necessarily because of his skills or knowledge, but because he’s made himself so indispensable and visible to the person in charge.

We’ve all heard the labels: teacher’s pet, suck up, sycophant, or bootlicker. These colloquial yet critical phrases describe people who go out of their way to please and be liked by those around them. Yet what they’re doing actually has a name: ingratiation. A technique of persuasion, ingratiation is a compliance strategy used by individuals in everyday social encounters to get another person or group of people to like them more or do them a favor. 

Scholars have categorized ingratiation into three main types, distinguished by the underlying intent behind the behavior. While the specific objectives may differ, the strategies used (see below) are generally consistent across categories.

1. Acquisitive ingratiation involves efforts to gain something tangible, such as a reward, favor, or resource, from the person being targeted.
2. Protective ingratiation is aimed at avoiding punishment, criticism, or other negative outcomes by winning the target’s favor.
3. Significance ingratiation focuses on earning respect or approval, not for a material benefit, but to enhance one’s standing or perceived value in the eyes of others.

Within these categories, there are several common tactics of ingratiation: 

• Flattery: Giving compliments, such as “You’re always so insightful in meetings,” or “I love the way you wear your hair.”
• Conformity: Agreeing with someone’s opinions, even if you don’t truly share them. For example, when meeting someone new, you may agree with their perspective on an important social issue in order to build a relationship. 
• Self-presentation: Highlighting traits or behaviors the other person values, such as appearing hardworking or a non-drinker. 
• Doing favors: Performing helpful acts to gain goodwill, even if you don’t expect a favor in return. 
• Humor or charm: Using wit or social warmth to create a positive connection.

On the surface, ingratiation may appear as simple friendliness. Yet the real intention is to socially influence other people. In hierarchical environments like the workplace, where power dynamics exist between superiors and subordinates, this form of behavior is known as upward ingratiation.² Ingratiation can occur for a number of reasons, most commonly to gain something, such as a promotion, social capital, or another benefit.¹⁹ 

However, research suggests that ingratiation also occurs in response to rejection. According to Rainer Romero-Canyas et al., ingratiation tends to occur after a harsh rejection in a self-defining situation—that is, a context or event that relates directly to a person’s core identity, values, or sense of self-worth.¹⁸ Within this context, ingratiation only happens when two critical conditions are met: first, the possibility of influencing the rejecter still exists; second, the rejection poses a significant threat to the person’s sense of self.

Finally, researchers argue that ingratiation can either be direct, such as complimenting a coworker, or indirect, such as associating oneself with someone who is successful.²² The risk with direct ingratiation is that the receiver may recognize the hidden motive behind the tactic. Indirect promotion, on the other hand, may go undetected but have a similar outcome for the ingratiator. 

Compliance strategy: A method or approach used to get someone to agree to a request or conform to a desired behavior, often without using direct authority or coercion. It’s a key concept in social psychology, marketing, behavioral science, and social and behavior change (SBC) work.

Impression management: The process of trying to control how others see you by adjusting your behavior, appearance, or words to create a certain image. Ingratiation is a form of impression management. 

Upward ingratiation: When someone tries to impress or win favor with a person in a higher position, like a boss, by using flattery, agreement, or helpfulness to appear likable or supportive. 

Conservation of Resources Theory: A psychological theory explaining stress response based on the idea that we are motivated to obtain, protect, and conserve valuable resources (such as time, energy, relationships, self-esteem, and even status). 

Transfer of Attitudes Recursively (TAR) effect: The psychological process where people form positive or negative impressions of a speaker based on how that speaker talks about others.

Perceptual contrast: A psychological effect where the perception of something—whether an object, an experience, an idea, or another person—is influenced by what came before it. For example, a person may seem more agreeable if they’re compared to someone who was just rude or hostile.

Power distance orientation: The extent to which individuals accept and expect unequal power distribution within organizations or social hierarchies. People with high power distance orientation are more comfortable with authority and hierarchy, while those with low orientation prefer more equal and participatory relationships.

Humans have been ingratiating for centuries, perhaps even millennia. Today, the term is mostly used in business and human resources settings, but it’s been practiced across many contexts. In his book, Ingratiation from the Renaissance to the Present, historian Jeff Diamond looks at the various ways in which humans have been moulding themselves to try to gain favor.⁹ Diamond charts this phenomenon starting from the Renaissance, when people would try to win favor and patronage of the wealthy and powerful while maintaining their dignity, independence, or principles. Many influential figures at the time, including Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Michel de Montaigne, grappled with this ethical dilemma. In more modern times, Diamond looks at how life coaches such as Andrew Robbins and Dale Carnegie preached tactics of ingratiation to persuade people to buy something or get them to do what you want. 

In 1934, for example, Carnegie released How to Win Friends and Influence People, an early self-help book which included a chapter on “How to Make People Like You Instantly.”¹⁰ Here, Carnegie, who was an advocate of “applied human relations,” argued that success in a person’s work or career could be dramatically enhanced by the art of ingratiation. As the 20th century progressed, ingratiation increasingly became a hot topic in the corporate world and other workplaces across the globe. 

Despite being a staple of humans’ social toolbox, it wasn’t until 1964 that the concept of ingratiation as a method of gaining compliance was first introduced by American social psychologist Edward E. Jones in his book Ingratiation: A Social Psychological Analysis.¹ Jones proposed that individuals could increase the chances of persuading others by expressing genuine interest in them, affirming their viewpoints, and presenting themselves in a favorable light. These approaches he categorized as compliments, favor-doing, opinion conformity, and positive self-presentation. Overall, Jones viewed ingratiation as a deliberate social strategy designed to enhance likability in order to influence others’ decisions or behavior. 

The decade before Jones introduced ingratiation as a sociological concept, American sociologist Erving Goffman was working on impression management, the process by which people consciously or unconsciously attempt to control how others perceive them. In his widely renowned 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,³ Goffman compared everyday life to a theater; each of us plays different roles depending on our audience, whether as a friend, employee, or leader. In this “performance,” we carefully manage our behavior, appearance, and expressions to shape how others see us. For example, you might act confident during a job interview, even if you feel nervous inside, in order to project competence and make a favorable impression. In contrast, a child being bullied at school might laugh along with the insults or pretend not to care, to avoid showing vulnerability and receiving further taunting. 

Therefore, according to Goffman’s perspective, ingratiation can be viewed as performative and strategic, akin to acting. 

Jones’s work laid the foundation for a larger body of research on interpersonal influence, compliance, and power dynamics. Social psychologist Barry Schlenker, for example, worked extensively on self-presentation and impression management, studying the situational and dispositional factors that influence ingratiation. In his 1980 book Impression Management: The Self-Concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations, Schlenker argues that people are motivated to control how others see them in order to maintain a consistent and socially acceptable identity.²⁰ This applies across many contexts, including job interviews, dating, public speaking, leadership, and more.

Far from being a relic of courtly flattery or Renaissance patronage, today, ingratiation remains embedded in our social fabric. In a study of 272 students in Germany, all but one admitted to performing at least one of the four tactics in Jones’s ingratiation theory (compliments, favor-doing, opinion conformity, and positive self-presentation).²¹ In other words, almost everyone does it to some degree. 

Dale Carnegie

American writer, lecturer, and pioneer in the field of self-improvement, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. He rose to fame with his 1936 best-selling book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which offered practical advice on persuasion, likability, and effective communication. Carnegie’s work emphasized the power of flattery, empathy, and positive reinforcement in building successful personal and professional relationships.

Erving Goffman

Canadian-born American sociologist widely regarded as one of the most influential social theorists of the 20th century. He is best known for his groundbreaking work on symbolic interactionism and impression management, particularly through his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In this work, Goffman introduced the metaphor of social life as theater, where individuals perform roles depending on their audience and setting.

Edward E. Jones

Prominent American social psychologist best known for his pioneering research on ingratiation and impression management. In the 1960s, Jones played a central role in shaping modern social psychology, particularly in understanding how people form and manage social perceptions. Beyond his foundational work on ingratiation, Jones contributed to the development of core social psychology concepts, including the fundamental attribution error and the actor-observer bias.

Barry Schlenker

American social psychologist best known for his influential work in the 1980s on self-presentation, impression management, and social identity. Schlenker built upon the early theories of Edward E. Jones to explore how individuals manage the impressions they give to others in order to achieve personal and social goals.  

The majority of research on ingratiation has looked at workplace contexts, and in particular, the one-to-one relationships within these spaces. These studies demonstrate that although ingratiation may appear like a harmless technique to curry favor at work, it can have negative consequences for everyone involved. 

However, ingratiation has also been studied in many-to-one contexts such as politics and social media.¹² In these spaces, social rewards often depend on how well one can manage impressions and win approval from those with authority or influence. In online spaces, for example, ingratiation has been positively linked to receiving job leads on social media platforms such as LinkedIn.¹¹

Workplace relationships

Studies show that when leaders try to impress their bosses—a behavior known as upward ingratiation—it often helps them build stronger relationships with their superiors and boosts their chances of succeeding at work.⁴ However, leaders aren’t just dealing with their bosses—they have other audiences too, like their team members in more junior roles. The same behavior that helps leaders look good to their bosses can sometimes have negative effects on those they manage.

Specifically, when leaders focus too much on pleasing their higher-ups, their relationships with subordinates can suffer. Why? Leaders’ ingratiation toward superiors is often seen by subordinates as self-serving, leading to distrust and a decline in relationship quality.⁵ More junior employees may also feel that the leader is prioritizing personal gain over team welfare and diverting attention away from supporting subordinates. These perceptions can make employees less motivated and less likely to perform well. 

To explore this complex dynamic, researchers from South Korea created a model to examine how upward ingratiation affects both the leader’s own outcomes and their team’s performance.⁵ They studied 91 leaders, their bosses, and 215 employees in South Korea, gathering data over time from different sources. 

The results showed that trying to win over a boss can indeed lead to success for the leader by strengthening the leader-boss relationship. At the same time, however, it can hurt employees’ performance by weakening the leader-subordinate relationship. Interestingly, if employees believe their leader is politically skilled—meaning they’re good at managing social dynamics—the negative impact on team performance is lessened. These findings suggest that upward ingratiation can be a double-edged sword: helpful for leaders' careers, but potentially harmful to team dynamics if not handled carefully. 

Counterproductive workplace behaviors

In addition to alienating team members, ingratiation can have a range of other negative impacts on people in the workplace. Drawing on “conservation of resources theory,” researchers from China and Pakistan explored the psychological costs of trying to impress supervisors.⁷ First proposed by psychologist Stevan E. Hobfoll in 1989,⁸ conservation of resources theory suggests that people are fundamentally motivated to obtain, retain, and protect resources that they value. These resources can be tangible (like money, food, or housing) or intangible (such as time, social support, status, or emotional well-being). According to the theory, stress occurs when individuals perceive a threat of resource loss, actually lose resources, or fail to gain expected resources after investing effort.

For example, an employee who works overtime in hopes of receiving a promotion (a valued resource) may experience stress if the promotion goes to someone else, because they’ve invested time and energy without receiving the expected return.

In the study, researchers followed 216 employee-supervisor pairs from six manufacturing companies in China to understand how ingratiation might lead to negative workplace behaviors. They did this in three stages over three months. In the first phase, employees completed a survey where they described how often they used ingratiation tactics—such as flattery or favor-doing—toward their supervisors, and shared their personal attitudes about workplace hierarchy (known as ‘power distance orientation’). One month later, the same employees reported how emotionally exhausted they felt at work. Finally, in the final phase, the supervisors evaluated whether those employees had engaged in counterproductive work behaviors, such as being careless, argumentative, or deliberately slow. 

The study found that ingratiation can lead to emotional exhaustion, which in turn increases the likelihood of counterproductive work behaviors, like slacking off, undermining others, or acting out. Because employees invested so much effort and emotional energy into appearing sincere and supportive, they depleted their internal resources. This made them more prone to acting in ways that harmed the organization or their relationships at work.

Interestingly, employees who strongly accept hierarchical relationships (high power distance orientation) were less affected. This suggests that cultural attitudes toward authority shape how draining ingratiation feels and how likely it is to trigger negative outcomes.

Over-flattered

Much attention has been given to how ingratiation affects those who use it. But too much flattery can be a bad thing for those on the receiving end, too. 

Professors and doctoral students from the Department of Business Administration at the University of Michigan looked at the possible downsides for CEOs when they receive too much flattery or agreement from other top managers and board members.⁶ Generally speaking, CEOs with high status are more likely to be surrounded by people who praise them and go along with their opinions. That’s why they are successful and in positions of authority. However, while this might seem like something good, it can actually lead to problems.

The study used survey data from CEOs, senior managers, and board members in the United States between 2001 and 2007. The results showed that too much flattery can cause CEOs to stick with failing strategies, which hurts the company’s performance and can even lead to the CEO being fired. Furthermore, constant praise can make CEOs overly confident in their leadership and decision-making skills, leading them to make poor strategic choices, especially when their company isn’t doing well.

Overall, the findings help explain how social influence can shape leadership decisions and affect a CEO’s career path.

It’s clear that ingratiation has its positives and negatives. Although ingratiation is often used to win favor, it can backfire, causing problems for both the ingratiator and the ingratiated. As a tactic to navigate workplace relationships and get ahead in the world, the appropriateness of ingratiating continues to be debated. 

Authenticity vs. manipulation

One major controversy is whether ingratiation is a genuine social lubricant or a manipulative tactic. Early supporters of the strategy, such as Edward Jones and Robert Cialdini, argue that flattery and agreeableness can build rapport and trust, especially in hierarchical or high-stakes settings. In his book Influence, for example, Cialdini praises ‘liking’ as one of the core principles that drives compliance.¹⁵ 

More recently, however, critics have contended that ingratiation often masks self-interest and can be ethically questionable, especially when used to gain unearned rewards, promotions, or influence. This tension raises broader questions about sincerity in professional and political life, and whether likability is being used as a substitute for merit.

In their work in consumer psychology, Margaret Campbell and Amna Kirmani highlight that perceived insincerity in flattery leads to suspicion and backlash.¹⁴ They propose that people use what’s called ‘persuasion knowledge’—their understanding of sales tactics—when they suspect the salesperson has a hidden motive. This might be a store assistant telling someone that an item of clothing looks amazing on them when clearly it doesn’t fit correctly, in order to get a sale. If people think someone is using praise to manipulate, they become less trusting and less compliant. However, our ability to detect a salesperson’s ulterior motive rests on two things: how obvious the motive is and how mentally focused the person is.¹⁴ If the motive is clear, both distracted and focused people tend to pick up on it. But if the motive is subtle, distracted people are less likely to notice it and may see the salesperson as more genuine than those who are paying full attention.

Power imbalances

Ingratiation often flows upward in a power hierarchy, such as employees toward bosses or students toward teachers. Studies have shown that influence tactics like ingratiation are frequently used by lower-status employees to influence superiors, often driven by perceived necessity rather than genuine alignment.¹⁶ In such cases, ingratiation may reflect and reinforce existing inequalities rather than sincere admiration or alignment. This, in turn, raises concerns about coerced performance and the emotional labor expected of those in subordinate roles.

In one study, David Kipnis and Richard Vanderveer looked at how a leader’s decisions about giving rewards are influenced by how subordinates behave.¹⁷ They hypothesized that a leader would give more rewards to a flattering (ingratiating) worker if there was also a difficult or hostile worker on the team. However, when they tested this with 30 male university students, their prediction wasn’t supported. Instead, they found that the flattering worker got more rewards regardless of whether there was a problem worker or not. Also, when there was a hostile worker present, the leader gave more rewards overall to all the cooperative team members. 

The findings suggest that how we perceive one person can affect how we see and treat others. This process relates to perceptual contrast, a psychological principle where the perception of one thing is influenced by what came before it. In other words, when two stimuli (such as employees) are presented in sequence, the second is often judged in relation to the first, rather than on its own. 

A necessary evil?

While much of the literature on ingratiation suggests that the technique can damage a person’s social capital,¹¹ promote harmful workplace behaviors, or upset junior employees.¹⁴ Yet in some societies, ingratiation is an expected and welcomed behavior. 

A study by Janak Pandy, a psychologist from the University of Allahabad, asked 40 undergraduate students from upper and lower castes to rate their perceptions of six ingratiating behaviors through a survey: opinion conformity, self-enhancement, other enhancement, name-dropping, changing with situations, and instrumental dependency.²³ Pandy found that not only did the students across both castes view ingratiation as an expected behavior—they believed it was a source of success and achievement. He suggests that in a traditional, feudal, and hierarchical society such as India, society itself provides normative legitimacy to behaviors such as ingratiation. 

It’s therefore important not to view ingratiation as an innately good or bad set of behaviors, but rather a technique that should be understood within the context of the culture or society in which it is practiced. 

Ingratiation and backstabbing

Most of us have encountered someone at school or work who offered a compliment to our face, only to speak negatively about us behind our backs. Even in the top echelons of big businesses, this kind of two-faced behavior appears to persist. 

Gareth Keeves, James Westphal, and Michael McDonald, professors and students at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas, found a surprising link between executives’ ingratiation toward their CEOs and their subsequent criticism of those same CEOs in the media.¹¹ In other words, the more executives tried to flatter or align themselves with their CEO internally, the more likely they were to speak negatively about them to journalists.

The study used survey data from CEOs and other top managers at large and mid-sized public companies in the United States, as well as from journalists. The researchers wanted to see how ingratiating to build and maintain social capital could actually harm the status of the person being ingratiated (i.e., the CEO). 

Keeves, Westphal, and McDonald found that when executives engaged in repeated flattery but did not receive the rewards or recognition they expected, they often experienced frustration and resentment. These negative emotions were then expressed in the form of anonymous quotes to the press that undermined the CEO’s reputation. The researchers suggest that this behavior is a form of coping. That is, executives who feel they must suppress their true opinions to preserve internal harmony or their own careers may eventually seek other means to regain control and express dissatisfaction.

The findings of the study reinforce the idea that flattery, though often seen as a harmless or even effective social tactic, can lead to emotional strain and backchannel resistance when it fails to deliver the desired outcomes.

Captatio benevolentiae

Flattery has long been a staple of political rhetoric. For centuries, it’s been used by candidates and leaders to win favor, build rapport, and position themselves as allies of the people they seek to persuade. One particular rhetorical strategy, known as captatio benevolentiae, describes when a speaker praises their audience to win favor. But how do direct recipients and indirect observers of this flattery respond? 

Nicola Cavazza and Margherita Guidetti, social psychologists from Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia in Italy, explored whether flattery directed at an audience influences their opinion of the speaker. They also wanted to know whether observers, who are not the direct targets of the praise, react positively, negatively, or indifferently.

Cavazza and Guidetti conducted two experiments. In Study 1, university students evaluated a fictitious candidate for a student government position who gave a speech either including a flattering remark about their department, another department, or with no flattery at all. Results showed that direct flattery (targeting the participant’s group) increased positive evaluations of the speaker. This suggests that audience members reciprocate liking when they feel their group is appreciated. Observed flattery (directed at another group), however, did not significantly reduce speaker evaluations, nor did it increase suspicion of manipulation. This is possibly due to the Transfer of Attitudes Recursively (TAR) effect, where the observer infers the speaker's positive qualities based on their praise of others.

In Study 2, the design was extended to a more politically distant context, with a candidate addressing either university students or farmers. Again, the presence of a flattering message led to higher overall evaluations of the candidate, regardless of which group was being praised. The study found no evidence that flattery increased suspicion among observers, even in the politically charged scenario. Moreover, the effect of flattery was not moderated by the participants’ identification with their social group, suggesting that flattery works broadly and automatically. This reinforces the idea that social norms of reciprocity and positive attribution can make flattery an effective, low-risk persuasive tool in political communication.¹³

The Similar-To-Me Effect

The ultimate goal of ingratiation is to get people to like you more. But what if the secret to being liked isn’t what you say, but how much you remind someone of themselves? In this article, we look at the Similar-to-Me Effect to uncover the psychology behind why we favor those who reflect our own traits, beliefs, and backgrounds, and what that means for influence, hiring, and human connection.

Why do we like someone more after doing them a favor?

The Benjamin Franklin Effect reveals that asking someone for a favor can actually increase their affection for you. It’s a quirky psychological twist that turns our usual ideas about influence upside down. In this article, we look at the history of the Benjamin Franklin Effect and how it can be leveraged across many aspects of life to get people to like you more. 

1. Jones, E. E. (1964). Ingratiation: A social psychological analysis. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
2. Bhowmick, S. (2024, January 7). The boss is always right: Does upward ingratiation always work? HRWorld. https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/trends/leadership/the-boss-is-always-right-does-upward-ingratiation-always-work/106609491
3. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.
4. Wang, Z., Luan, Y. and Zhang, L. (2024), "How proactive subordinates cope with supervisor knowledge hiding: the impression management tactic of upward ingratiation", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 45 No. 6, pp. 921-934. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-03-2023-0127
5. Kim, Ji & LePine, Jeffery & Chun, Jae. (2018). Stuck between a rock and a hard place: Contrasting upward and downward effects of leaders’ ingratiation. Personnel Psychology, 71, 10.1111/peps.12267. 
6. Park, S. H., Westphal, J. D., & Stern, I. (2011). Set up for a Fall: The Insidious Effects of Flattery and Opinion Conformity toward Corporate Leaders. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56(2), 257-302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839211429102
7. Yan, M., Xie, Y., Zhao, J., Zhang, Y., Bashir, M., & Liu, Y. (2020). How ingratiation links to counterproductive work behaviors: The roles of emotional exhaustion and power distance orientation. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2238. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02238
8. Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513
9. Diamond, J. (2017). Ingratiation from the Renaissance to the present: The art and ethics of gaining favor. Lexington Books.
10. Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. Simon & Schuster.
11. Keeves, G. D., Westphal, J. D., & McDonald, M. L. (2017). Those Closest Wield the Sharpest Knife: How Ingratiation Leads to Resentment and Social Undermining of the CEO. Administrative Science Quarterly, 62(3), 484-523. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216686053 
12. Korzynski, P., Protsiuk, O., Turnley, W. H. (2025). Managing impressions via social media: The influence of self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification on job leads and career satisfaction. European Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2025.02.003
13. Cavazza, N. (2016). When political candidates “go positive”: the effects of flattering the rival in political communication. Social Influence, 11(3), 166-176, DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2016.1206962
14. Campbell, M. C., & Kirmani, A. (2000). Consumers’ use of persuasion knowledge: The effects of accessibility and cognitive capacity on perceptions of an influence agent. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(1), 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1086/314308
15. Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. HarperCollins.
16. Kipnis, D., Schmidt, S. M., & Wilkinson, I. (1980). Intraorganizational influence tactics: Explorations in getting one’s way. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(4), 440–452. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.65.4.440
17. Kipnis, D., & Vanderveer, R. (1971). Ingratiation and the use of power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(3), 280–286. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030587
18. Romero-Canyas, R., Downey, G., Berenson, K., Ayduk, O., & Kang, N. J. (2010). Rejection sensitivity and the rejection-hostility link in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality, 78(1), 119–148. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00611.x
19. Shaheen, S., Bari, M. W., Hameed, F., & Anwar, M. M. (2019). Organizational cronyism as an antecedent of ingratiation: Mediating role of relational psychological contract. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1609. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01609
20. Schlenker, B. R. (1980). Impression management: The self-concept, social identity, and interpersonal relations. Brooks/Cole.
21. Lamm, H. (2017). Ingratiation Attempts in Real Life: Determinants of Their Success. Psychological Reports, 121(1), 48-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294117720697
22. Tal-Or, N. (2010). Indirect ingratiation: Pleasing people by associating them with successful others and by praising their associates. Human Communication Research, 36(2), 163–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01372.x
23. Pandey, J. (1980). Ingratiation As Expected and Manipulative Behaviour in Indian Society. Social Change, 10(3-4), 15-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049085719800303