Party Like It's 1999
Conspicuous consumption in a recession: Toning it down or turning it up?
Joseph Nunes, Xavier Drèze & Young Jee Han
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2008 recession reportedly led to the demise of conspicuous consumption with wealthy consumers abandoning luxury goods that prominently display their brands for more subdued designs. Utilizing data collected before and in the midst of the recession from designer handbag manufacturers, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, we find products introduced during the recession actually display the brand far more prominently than those products withdrawn. Data from Hermès and luxury ads in Vogue magazine also indicate manufacturers did not tone things down. Our results suggest conspicuous consumption endures in recessions; consumers who do not exit the luxury goods market are still interested in logo-laden products.
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Terri Conley
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a highly influential paper, Clark and Hatfield (1989) demonstrated that, whereas men were quite likely to accept a casual sexual offer from a confederate research assistant, women never did so. The current research provides a more in-depth explanation of gender differences in acceptance of casual sex offers via 4 (quasi-) experiments. First, using a person-perception paradigm, I assessed people's impressions of women and men who proposed a casual sexual encounter in the same manner that confederates in Clark and Hatfield did. Women and men agreed that female proposers were more intelligent, successful, and sexually skilled than men who made the same proposals. Second, I demonstrated that the large gender differences from the original Clark and Hatfield study could be eliminated by asking participants to imagine proposals from (attractive and unattractive) famous individuals, friends, and same-gender individuals. Next, I assessed factors associated with likelihood of agreeing to the casual sex proposal. The extent to which women and men believed that the proposer would be sexually skilled predicted how likely they would be to engage in casual sex with this individual. Finally, I examined these factors in the context of actual encounters from the participants' previous experiences, and the results were replicated in this context. Overall findings suggest that the large gender differences Clark and Hatfield observed in acceptance of the casual sex offer may have more to do with perceived personality characteristics of the female versus male proposers than with gender differences among Clark and Hatfield's participants and that sexual pleasure figures largely in women's and men's decision making about casual sex.
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Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol
Mara Squicciarini & Jo Swinnen
American Association of Wine Economists Working Paper, December 2010
Abstract:
Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.
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Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain's reward circuitry
Jason Chein, Dustin Albert, Lia O'Brien, Kaitlyn Uckert & Laurence Steinberg
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The presence of peers increases risk taking among adolescents but not adults. We posited that the presence of peers may promote adolescent risk taking by sensitizing brain regions associated with the anticipation of potential rewards. Using fMRI, we measured brain activity in adolescents, young adults, and adults as they made decisions in a simulated driving task. Participants completed one task block while alone, and one block while their performance was observed by peers in an adjacent room. During peer observation blocks, adolescents selectively demonstrated greater activation in reward-related brain regions, including the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, and activity in these regions predicted subsequent risk taking. Brain areas associated with cognitive control were less strongly recruited by adolescents than adults, but activity in the cognitive control system did not vary with social context. Results suggest that the presence of peers increases adolescent risk taking by heightening sensitivity to the potential reward value of risky decisions.
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The Impact of Emergency Birth Control on Teen Pregnancy and STIs
Sourafel Girma & David Paton
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use panel data from local authorities in England between 1998 and 2004 to examine the differential impact of increased access for teenagers to emergency birth control (EBC) at pharmacies on teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We estimate both difference-in-difference (DD) and the more robust difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) models. The DD estimates provide some evidence that pharmacy EBC schemes are associated with higher teenage conception rates, but this result is not upheld in the DDD models. In contrast both the DD and DDD models provide consistent evidence that pharmacy EBC schemes are associated with higher teenage STI rates.
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Madonna or Don McLean? The effect of order of exposure on relative liking
Mario Pandelaere, Kobe Millet & Bram Van den Bergh
Journal of Consumer Psychology, October 2010, Pages 442-451
Abstract:
While many studies have shown that exposure frequency affects consumer attitudes and preferences, the current paper provides evidence that exposure order also does so. Three studies show that people like stimuli to which they are first exposed better than later encountered, similar stimuli. Controlling for exposure frequency and duration, individuals prefer the version of a song they heard first to a version they heard later and images they saw first to mirror images they saw later. In addition, our results suggest that perceived originality contributes to the preference for a first encountered stimulus. Our results are discussed in relation to research on order effects in sequential rating formats.
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Mitja Back et al.
European Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on a social relations perspective on mating, the actual and assumed reciprocity of mate choices was studied in a real-life speed-dating context. A community sample involving 382 singles aged 18-54 years filled out a questionnaire for the measurement of self-perceived mate value, sociosexuality, extraversion, and shyness and participated in free speed-dating sessions. Immediately after each date, choices and assumed choices were recorded. Measures of physical attractiveness and flirting behaviour were obtained by independent observers. Results show that actual mate choices are not reciprocal although people strongly expect their choices to be reciprocated and flirting behaviour is indeed strongly reciprocal. This interesting pattern of results was explained by investigating individual and dyadic effects of flirting, self-perceived mate value and physical attractiveness on mate choices. Results have important implications for understanding mating behaviour, sex differences and the (in)accuracies of mating decisions.
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Robert Burriss, Lisa Welling & David Puts
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is well established that women's preferences for masculinity are contingent on their own market-value and the duration of the sought relationship, but few studies have investigated similar effects in men. Here, we tested whether men's attractiveness predicts their preferences for feminine face shape in women when judging for long- and short-term relationship partners. We found that attractive men expressed a stronger preference for facial femininity compared to less attractive men. The relationship was evident when men judged women for a short-term, but not for a long-term, relationship. These findings suggest that market-value may influence men's preferences for feminine characteristics in women's faces and indicate that men's preferences may be subject to facultative variation to a greater degree than was previously thought.
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Time spent with friends in adolescence relates to less neural sensitivity to later peer rejection
Carrie Masten et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Involvement with friends carries many advantages for adolescents, including protection from the detrimental effects of being rejected by peers. However, little is known about the mechanisms through which friendships may serve their protective role at this age, or the potential benefit of these friendships as adolescents transition to adulthood. As such, this investigation tested whether friend involvement during adolescence related to less neural sensitivity to social threats during young adulthood. Twenty-one adolescents reported the amount of time they spent with friends outside of school using a daily diary. Two years later they underwent an fMRI scan, during which they were ostensibly excluded from an online ball-tossing game by two same-age peers. Findings from region of interest and whole brain analyses revealed that spending more time with friends during adolescence related to less activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula-regions previously linked with negative affect and pain processing-during an experience of peer rejection 2 years later. These findings are consistent with the notion that positive relationships during adolescence may relate to individuals being less sensitive to negative social experiences later on.
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Disrupting the flow: How brief silences in group conversations affect social needs
Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes & Ernestine Gordijn
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We all know the awkward feeling when a conversation is disrupted by a brief silence. This papers studies why such moments can be unsettling. We suggest that silences are particularly disturbing if they disrupt the conversational flow. In two experiments we examined the effects of a single brief instance of silence on social needs, perceived consensus, emotions, and rejection. Study 1 demonstrated that fluent conversations are associated with feelings of belonging, self-esteem, and social validation. If a brief silence disrupts this fluency, negative emotions and feelings of rejection increase. Study 2 replicated these effects in a more realistic setting, and showed that the effects of a brief silence are considerable despite participants' unawareness of the silence. Together, results show that conversational flow induces a sense of belonging and positive self-esteem. Moreover, this research suggests an implicit route to social validation, in which consensus is inferred from fluent group conversation.
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Adam Brasel & James Gips
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that brand exposure can have double-sided effects on behavior, with brand identity associations creating both positive and negative effects on objective consumer performance. Experimental results from a racing game involving functionally identical cars with differently branded paint jobs show that Red Bull branding creates a U-shaped effect on race performance, as Red Bull's brand identity of speed, power, and recklessness work both for and against the players. Even though brands were exposed supraliminally, effects traveled through nonconscious channels. Double-edged effects of branding on consumer performance could be increasingly important as ambient advertising and product cobranding become more commonplace.
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Prostitution 2.0: The Changing Face of Sex Work
Scott Cunningham & Todd Kendall
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of Internet technology for solicitation by sex workers has raised important legal and regulatory questions. We provide a description of the new institutions that facilitate prostitution online, and their potential market effects. We then supply some of the first evidence on several key parameters of interest to policymakers. First, we find that workers who solicit online largely represent growth in the overall prostitution market, as opposed to simple displacement of the off-line, street-focused market, although we find sizeable displacement effects among sex workers in their 30s and 40s. Using a newly-implemented survey, we also find that most sex workers who solicit online engage in lower-risk behaviors than traditional street-based workers; however, workers close to the margin for migration from outdoor work bring riskier business and sexual practices with them as they enter the off-street sector.
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The Social Utility of Feature Creep
Debora Thompson & Michael Norton
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research shows that consumers frequently choose products with too many features that they later find difficult to use. In this research, the authors show that this seemingly suboptimal behavior may in fact confer benefits when factoring in the social context of consumption. The results demonstrate that choosing products with more capabilities (i.e., feature-rich products) provides social utility over and above inferences of wealth, signaling consumers' technological skills and openness to new experiences, and that consumers' beliefs about the social utility of feature-rich products are predictive of their choices of such products. Further, the authors examine when impression management concerns increase consumers' likelihood of choosing feature-rich products. They find that public choices in which participants display their preferences to others encourage feature-seeking behavior, but that the anticipation of having to use a product in front of others provides an incentive to avoid additional features.