Let's start with your collaborations. What work have you done together?
Barsade: We started with a project about the cynical attribution error. This is the phenomenon that if somebody does something nice for you, you are much less likely to give them credit as the amount of blame you give people who do something that hurts you. So we're not as grateful as we are vengeful. She did such a great job on that study that I thought this is a wonderful person to work with.

We collaborated on another very provocative study looking at implicit affect in organizations. It was more of a theoretical argument. Lakshmi isn't just a good empiricist — she's a really good theoretician. So she was a full partner on that project.

Ramarajan: I remember talking with Sigal about my own ideas for projects. Recently we ramped up a project on respect in the workplace, which came out of my own non-profit experience.

So, when I was first talking to Sigal about my idea, she said, 'Oh, I have this data from a non-profit, a long-term healthcare facility. It might actually work for that. Why don't you check it out, and if it does, we can work on it.'

In the paper, we talk about the importance of respect in the workplace. Often times, in the non-profit setting, we think it's the job that burns you out or it's the person, and there's really nothing the organization can do about it. What we try to show is that people feeling respected or not respected in the workplace has more to do with how burned out they are than the demands of the job or their personality. That, in fact, organizations when they try and change can actually influence the burnout. I think it applies to organizations more broadly, but specifically for a non-profit, where burn-out is a pretty important phenomenon in terms of worker turnover and providing good care for clients.

Have you published any of your collaborative research?
Barsade: Yes, the respect paper is being published, with Lakshmi as first author. We have also presented it at conferences, and it has received a lot of press coverage, including a picture of Lakshmi in one of Canada's top daily newspapers.

Our research, in general, has gotten a lot of play. The paper about implicit affect was requested by one of the most important compendiums in our field called Research in Organizational Behavior. The cynical attribution paper, which we need to finish up, will probably be sent into The Journal of Applied Psychology.

Lakshmi is doing groundbreaking work with her dissertation, which has really been her passion, on interpsychic multiple identities and what that does to decision making and cooperation.

What drives your collaboration?
Ramarajan: I think we're both passionate about saying something in a paper that is somehow valuable to the field of research. When I start on a project, it's not because I think, oh Sigal would love to write about respect or I would love to write about something to do with subconscious emotion. It's because the idea is intriguing and people haven't done it before.

As the project carries on or develops, whatever caught our imagination is something that snowballs into passion and a commitment to say something. We don't start out saying: This is my agenda and that we're both on the same page to begin with. It's through the development and the execution and the research and writing that we both become convinced. It's a joint endeavor — we wouldn't have gotten there individually.

Has working together helped you with your own work?
Ramarajan: Sigal has been extremely encouraging of my ideas. I'll think of an idea, then I'll go to her and say, 'This is something that caught my interest, what do you think about it?' She'll encourage me to develop it more and then come back to her. For example, the paper on respect is something I had been toying with because of my own work experience in the non-profit world. When I finally showed her a draft, she said, 'Oh this can actually be done. Why don't we see where it can go.'

Any advice for people applying to a doctoral program?
Ramarajan: I've had people tell me don't worry about developing a lot of relationships or working on multiple projects. And that what you should really be doing is focusing on your own projects and finding someone who will support you in that, and will be mostly hands off. I've heard other people say the apprentice model is the way to go — start on somebody's project and build your tool kit and then move on. I think there are many ways of figuring out how to build a relationship with a faculty member and learn the skills you need to do good research. In my case it worked out that it was a little bit of everything.

Barsade: My first piece of advice would be: Be sure you absolutely love to investigate problems. Are you the kind of person who is curious about why and how things work? Are you in your workplace thinking: Why is that happening, or how can I make that better and wanting to think about it from a very systematic perspective.

Kind of a direct corollary from that is a love of research. Sometimes people get in to a doctoral program, and they don't necessarily understand what research is. It's not a question of how you do it, but a love of the question and the search for the answer. You really need to have that.

And you need to be really self-starter. Your time is your own, largely. The resources and the faculty are there to make of it what you will. Research is slow, and so you have to be able to be persistent.