What to Expect
Shepard Siegel
Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 2011, Pages 357-362
Abstract:
There have been recent reports of mass hospitalizations for alcohol intoxication following consumption of fruit-flavored, caffeinated, alcoholic drinks - especially concerning one brand in particular: Four Loko. Caffeine was quickly determined to be the culprit. In accordance with a directive by the Food and Drug Administration, caffeine was removed from Four Loko and similar beverages. However, the evidence that caffeine played a prominent role in widespread displays of intoxication is far from clear. Rather, it is likely that Four Loko-type drinks are especially effective as intoxicants because they provide alcohol in an unusual context. It has been known for many years that drug tolerance partially results from an association between drug-paired stimuli and the drug effect. When these stimuli are altered, the drug-experienced individual does not display the expected tolerant response to the drug - rather, an enhanced (i.e., nontolerant) response is seen. Four Loko and similar beverages may be especially effective intoxicants because they provide a very novel flavor context for alcohol. A recent announcement by the manufacturer of Four Loko suggests (either by design or happenstance) appreciation of the contribution of alcohol-associated cues to alcohol tolerance.
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Starting high and ending with nothing: The role of anchors and power in negotiations
Martin Schweinsberg et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Much research suggests that negotiators gain value by making first offers in negotiations. The current research examines the proposition that extreme first offers offend their recipients and cause them to walk away, resulting in an impasse. Results across two experiments support this proposition. As a result, extreme offers can be risky: even though they can anchor counteroffers and final outcomes, bringing benefit to the offerer, they only do so when impasses are avoided. In addition, we find support for the proposition that power moderates the relationship between extreme offers and impasses: although low- and high-power negotiators are equally offended by extreme offers, it is the low-power negotiators who walk away from the negotiation.
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Initiating Salary Discussions With an Extreme Request: Anchoring Effects on Initial Salary Offers
Todd Thorsteinson
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, July 2011, Pages 1774-1792
Abstract:
Two studies were conducted to examine the effects of implausible anchors on initial salary offers. Participants provided a salary offer to a candidate after receiving a relevant anchor and an implausible anchor. The results of Study 1 indicated that a high implausible anchor influenced salary offers, even in the presence of the relevant anchor. Study 2 examined whether a more extreme implausible anchor would also affect salary offers. The results indicated that both the high anchor and the extremely high anchor led to higher salary offers than did the control condition.
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Doing Poorly by Doing Good: Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Concepts
Carlos Torelli, Alokparna Basu Monga & Andrew Kaikati
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although the idea of brand concepts has been around for a while, very little research addresses how brand concepts may influence consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Four studies reveal that communicating the CSR actions of a luxury brand concept causes a decline in evaluations, relative to control. A luxury brand's self-enhancement concept (i.e., dominance over people and resources) is in conflict with the CSR information's self-transcendence concept (i.e., protecting the welfare of all), which causes disfluency and a decline in evaluations. These effects do not emerge for brands with openness (i.e., following emotional pursuits in uncertain directions) or conservation (i.e., protecting the status quo) concepts that do not conflict with CSR. The effects for luxury brand concepts disappeared when the informativeness of the disfluency was undermined but were accentuated in an abstract (vs. concrete) mind-set. These findings implicate brand concepts as a key factor in how consumers respond to CSR activities.
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The art and science of guessing
Luxi Shen et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examined how one affectively reacts to others' guesses at a value one cares about, such as one's income. Conventional wisdom suggests that people will feel happier upon receiving more favorable guesses (e.g., higher income) than less favorable guesses. We found the opposite pattern. We propose a model to explain the effect and identify its boundaries and report experimental evidence for the model. This research enriches existing literature on self-enhancement and yields practical implications for how to approach guessing in interpersonal communications.
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Expecting the unexpected: An N400 study of risky sentence processing in adolescents
Jillian Grose-Fifer et al.
Psychophysiology, September 2011, Pages 1184-1191
Abstract:
Teens often engage in risk taking. Avoiding risk may be aided by rapid access to cognitive models for danger. This study investigated whether these schemata are immature in adolescence. An N400 sentential priming paradigm compared risky, predictable, and incongruent sentence processing in adolescents and adults. Adults and teens processed predictable sentences similarly, as evidenced by equivalent N400 priming. However, in adults, more activation was required to access final words in a risky sentence than when the situation was predictable and benign. Conversely, teens showed little difference in N400s generated by risky or expected sentences. This suggests that risky scenario final words were unexpected for adults but not for adolescents because of age-related differences in world knowledge and risk-related schemata. This study may help to explain why teenagers engage in risky activities when there is little time for deliberative thought.
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Wendy Liu & David Gal
Journal of Consumer Research, August 2011, Pages 242-259
Abstract:
This research examines a novel process by which soliciting consumer input can affect subsequent purchase and engagement, namely, by changing consumers' subjective perception of their relationship with the organization. We contrast different types of consumer input and propose that, relative to no input, soliciting advice tends to have an intimacy effect whereby the individual feels closer to the organization, resulting in increases in subsequent propensity to transact and engage with the organization. However, soliciting expectations tends to have the opposite effect, distancing the individual from the organization. We demonstrate these relationship effects of consumer input in four studies involving both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Implications for theory and practice of brand relationship as well as consumer judgment and decision making are discussed.
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Feeling bad about being sad: The role of social expectancies in amplifying negative mood
Brock Bastian et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our perception of how others expect us to feel has significant implications for our emotional functioning. Across 4 studies the authors demonstrate that when people think others expect them not to feel negative emotions (i.e., sadness) they experience more negative emotion and reduced well-being. The authors show that perceived social expectancies predict these differences in emotion and well-being both more consistently than-and independently of-personal expectancies and that they do so by promoting negative self-evaluation when experiencing negative emotion. We find evidence for these effects within Australia (Studies 1 and 2) as well as Japan (Study 2), although the effects of social expectancies are especially evident in the former (Studies 1 and 2). We also find experimental evidence for the causal role of social expectancies in negative emotional responses to negative emotional events (Studies 3 and 4). In short, when people perceive that others think they should feel happy, and not sad, this leads them to feel sad more frequently and intensely.
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Shall I Tell You Now or Later? Assimilation and Contrast in the Evaluation of Experiential Products
Keith Wilcox, Anne Roggeveen & Dhruv Grewal
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research demonstrates that the effect of product information on the evaluation of an experiential product depends on the order with which such information is presented. In a series of experiments, we find that when information is presented before consuming an experiential product, the information results in an assimilation effect such that consumers evaluate the same experience more positively when the product information is favorable compared to when it is unfavorable. More interestingly, we demonstrate that when such information is presented after consuming an experiential product, it results in a contrast effect such that consumers evaluate the same experience more negatively when the product information is favorable compared to when it is unfavorable. These findings have important implications for marketers in a host of experiential categories.
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The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies
Camiel Beukeboom, Catrin Finkenauer & Daniel Wigboldus
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2010, Pages 978-992
Abstract:
Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and are thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. We examined whether these findings extend to the use of negations (e.g., not smart instead of stupid). We hypothesized that people use more negations in descriptions of stereotype-inconsistent behavior than in descriptions of stereotype-consistent behavior. In 3 studies, participants either judged the applicability of experimentally controlled person descriptions or spontaneously produced person descriptions themselves. Results provided support for this hypothesis. Moreover, a 4th study demonstrated that negations have communicative consequences. When a target person's behavior was described with negations, message recipients inferred that this behavior was an exception to the rule and that it was more likely caused by situational circumstances than by dispositional factors. These findings indicate that by using negations people implicitly communicate stereotypic expectancies and that negations play a subtle but powerful role in stereotype maintenance.
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Paying With Money or With Effort: Pricing When Customers Anticipate Hassle
Anja Lambrecht & Catherine Tucker
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
For many services, customers subscribe to long-term contracts. Standard economic theory suggests that customers evaluate a contract as the sum of benefits and payments. We suggest that rather than evaluating multi-period service contracts at the contract-level, customers use period-level bracketing. They evaluate the distinct per-period loss or gain they incur from choosing this contract. This has important consequences when benefits vary over the course of the contract, for example due to "hassle costs." If customers use period-level bracketing, they will value a lower price more in periods where they have hassle than in other periods. We explore this using data from a field experiment for web hosting services. The field experiment had 2 hassle cost priming conditions (present, absent) x 2 discount conditions (offered, not offered). We find that a lower price in the initial period is more attractive to customers when they expect their hassle costs to be high at setup. In five lab experiments, we support and extend the field experiment's findings. We find evidence for period-level bracketing when customers have hassle costs, independently of whether hassle costs occur in the first, an intermediate or the last period of a contract. We rule out alternative explanations, such as hyperbolic discounting. Our findings suggest that in setting prices, firms should consider the timing of hassle costs faced by customers.
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Elliot Ludvig & Marcia Spetch
PLoS ONE, June 2011, e20262
Abstract:
When faced with risky decisions, people tend to be risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses (the reflection effect). Studies examining this risk-sensitive decision making, however, typically ask people directly what they would do in hypothetical choice scenarios. A recent flurry of studies has shown that when these risky decisions include rare outcomes, people make different choices for explicitly described probabilities than for experienced probabilistic outcomes. Specifically, rare outcomes are overweighted when described and underweighted when experienced. In two experiments, we examined risk-sensitive decision making when the risky option had two equally probable (50%) outcomes. For experience-based decisions, there was a reversal of the reflection effect with greater risk seeking for gains than for losses, as compared to description-based decisions. This fundamental difference in experienced and described choices cannot be explained by the weighting of rare events and suggests a separate subjective utility curve for experience.