Kelley J. Main

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Head of Faculty at University of Manitoba

Flow is touted for the enjoyment it provides and for its relationship with concurrent task performance. But what happens when flow ends, and you move on to your next task? Our research demonstrates that there is a cost to being in flow in this regard. Specifically, the findings of three studies with 746 participants demonstrate that a person who ju...

The payday lending industry has been characterized as predatory, which has led to tougher government interventions. However, research on how stricter consumer protection regulations affect actual vulnerable consumers' lived experiences remains seriously underdeveloped. Following in‐depth interviews with financially excluded and therefore vulnerable...

Purpose Product trials are an effective way to influence consumer attitudes. While research has established several factors that influence whether consumers will try a product or not, it is less understood how marketers can optimize the trial experience itself. The purpose of this paper is to explore flow as an optimal state and the factors that gi...

This research advances the conceptualization and measurement of flow. The results of six studies ( N = 2809) reveal that flow has two dimensions: “fluency,” which is comprised of experiences related to fluent thought and action; and “absorption,” which is based on sustained full attention. The results also demonstrate that the two dimensions have n...

As virtual reality (VR) technology enters mainstream markets, it is imperative that we understand its potential impacts on users, both positive and negative. In the present paper, we build on the extant literature’s focus on the physical side effects of VR gameplay (e.g., cybersickness) by focusing on VR’s potential to intensify users’ experiences...

Preservice tips are becoming increasingly common in the marketplace (e.g., online food delivery, quick-service restaurants). While prior research has investigated how the practice of preservice tipping is perceived by customers, how preservice tipping impacts the perceptions and behaviors of employees remains unexplored. Does tipping early actually...

Purpose This study aims to introduce the concept of dissociative threat, which is the fear of being associated with an undesirable (dissociative) group as a result of demonstrating ability in a domain that is stereotypically linked to that group. Consumers experiencing dissociative threats use inability signaling as a self-presentational strategy i...

en Online social networks are widely used methods of communication. This research examines gender differences in people's tendency to post charity‐related messages. In general, compared to males, females show more empathic concerns with online charity‐related messages, which increases their willingness to post messages on their online social networ...

en This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences features four articles using various methodologies to explore the interplay of technology and consumption. Through an exploration of identity expression in virtual reality to the consumption of fashion media and culture to inspiring the use of wearables, we learn that although...

This research explores relatively short, low‐intensity flow states, called microflow and demonstrates that they differ from their longer, more complex deepflow variants with regards to antecedents. As an advancement to flow theory, we demonstrate that the ideal condition to elicit microflow is when skills are slightly higher than the difficulty of...

Product safety warnings are pervasive in the marketplace. The frequency and, in some cases, content of such warnings has led some to speculate that the cumulative effects may undermine the efficacy of warnings in general—including that of different warnings for other products. According to the generalized desensitization hypothesis, numerous past w...

Evolutionary psychology has established that humans have a fundamental motive for mating, and that men buy luxury products to attract mates. Absent from this body of work is an investigation of how nature-related variables influence mating motivations, and thus affect preferences for luxury products. Using an evolutionary lens, our research examine...

The current research compares sole-identity versus dualidentity consumers in their responses to different retail persuasion attempts that occur in situations with low versus high ulterior motives. We examine different consumer responses (e.g., interaction time, perceived friendliness, future interaction intentions, and actual purchase behavior). We...

Despite being well-known for its positive consequences, the psychological state of flow has raised some concerns. In this research, we advanced our understanding of the relationships that flow has in the context of online gambling. Across two studies, in which participants played blackjack and slots, we demonstrated that flow is associated with an...

Beliefs about stability and change are captured by individuals’ implicit theories. Incremental‐theorists believe that human traits and world‐dispositions are malleable and can change through effort, whereas entity‐theorists believe that human traits and world‐dispositions are fixed. In this research we find that the implicit theory an individual ho...

This research examines how heterosexual consumers react to advertising featuring same-sex couples. Across three studies, we find that heterosexual consumers report higher levels of disgust in response to advertising featuring same-sex couples in comparison to mixed-sex couples, which results in more negative attitudes toward the advertisement and t...

This research examines the interactive effects of two negative experiences that consumers can face: feelings of distrust generated by deceptive advertising and social exclusion. Our findings reveal a previously undocumented positive effect of social exclusion. Across two experiments, our findings demonstrate that social exclusion prevents the negat...

The present research demonstrates how the ownership and authenticity of the money can affect people's behavior to accept or provide help. Through three experiments (N = 260), this research illustrates novel explanations of some inconsistencies in the literature on money and helping behavior. In particular, this research shows that ownership increas...

Across three experiments, we show that a change in the levels of physical activity increases creative thinking, whereas inactivity or repetitive activity lowers it. Participants walking forward were more creative the first few minutes of initiating physical activity than those sitting, or those merely watching changing scenery, and these effects di...

Social interaction with other people is an important part of everyday life for human beings. It is rare to find individuals who appreciate having no interactions with other people including friends, family, and colleagues. However, for many reasons, people may find that they are excluded from their desired group.

Debt has reached staggering levels among North Americans. Unfortunately, there is deficiency of research that investigates effective means of helping consumers control their debt. We examine how control priming changes consumers’ irresponsible financial behavior. We show that control priming reduces credit card spending and intentions to take credi...

Purpose Adaptive selling can help build positive relationships between salespeople and consumers. The literature shows that consumers respond positively to salespeople under approach but not avoidance motivations. This paper aims to demonstrate a circumstance under which consumers with avoidance motivations can also respond positively, something n...

Although people generally prefer persuasive messages that align with their self-construal, the present research explores a seemingly paradoxical situation wherein mismatched message that does not align with people's self-construal is positively received. Given sufficient cognitive capacity to trigger persuasion knowledge-the knowledge of persuasion...

This research investigates how members of ethnic minority groups react to advertisements featuring members of other ethnic minority groups. The results of five experiments show that ethnic minority consumers feel more ostracized by advertisements featuring other ethnic minority groups, which consequently leads to a less favorable attitude towards t...

This research demonstrates how the directness of a persuasion attempt by a sales agent, in this case flattery, changes how source cues influence consumers’ evaluation of the shopping experience. When the persuasion attempt is direct, source cues do not influence consumer evaluations. However, when an indirect persuasion attempt is used, it is only...

Despite a vast amount of research in the areas of academic cheating and academic achievement, students’ cheating “biological laws” (e.g., taking cognitive enhancement drugs to increase cognitive ability) to improve academic performance has yet to be fully understood. We begin to address this by investigating potential positive (i.e., pride) and neg...

While many parts of pharmaceutical advertisements are regulated, each advertisement also contains a promotional component in which the advertiser conveys information to the consumer. The purpose of this research is to examine the promotional portion of pharmaceutical advertisements to determine whether factual information and rational arguments are...

People are generally defense motivated during interactions with salesclerks. In this research, we demonstrate that defense motivation can make consumers vulnerable to a less stereotypical persuasion attempt as compared to a more stereotypical one. The consequence is that consumers are willing to pay a higher price and exhibit greater trust in a sal...

This article explores the hypothesis that third parties are motivated to seek information about agents who have behaved unethically in the past, even if the agent and available information are irrelevant to the third parties’ goals and interests. We explored two possible motives for this information seeking behavior: deonance, or the motive to care...

Previous research in the product failure literature shows that such failures have important implications for evaluations of the target product, and even for evaluations of closely related products. The current studies identify distrust as an additional byproduct of negative expectancy disconfirmation and show that such perceptions are capable of pr...

The present research establishes that the innocuous behavior of coupon redemption is capable of eliciting stigma by association. The general finding across four studies shows that the coupon redemption behavior of one consumer results in a second non-coupon-redeeming shopper being stigmatized by association as cheap when a low as compared to a high...

Both marketers who use covert marketing tactics and those who seek to help consumers deal with them assume that people will be less amenable to covert marketing appeals if they are alerted to such appeals because their theories and beliefs about persuasion tactics-that is, their persuasion knowledge-will be activated. However, there has been little...

This research explores perceptions of interpersonal influence in the form of flattery that occurs in a consumer retail setting. Across 4 experiments, results demonstrate empirical evidence of a sinister attribution error (Kramer, 1994), as consumer reactions to flattery were more negative than warranted by the situation. Results across 3 experiment...

The authors use a series of meta-analyses to demonstrate the impact of warning labels across five dimensions of effectiveness: attention, reading and comprehension, recall, judgments, and behavioral compliance. Subsequent moderator analyses indicate that attention is moderated by vividness-enhancing characteristics, warning location, and familiarit...

A cued activation procedure was used to examine the hypothesis that social anxiety involves an expectation of being rejected or evaluated negatively by others, combined with a concern about impression management. Participants underwent a conditioning procedure in which distinctive computer tones were paired with thoughts of social rejection and acc...

Six experiments demonstrated that dominant group members readily frame intergroup interaction in terms of how they themselves are evaluated. The authors used indirect measures of meta-stereotype activation to assess dominant group members' inclination to spontaneously consider an out-group member's (ostensible) stereotypic expectations about them....

Six experiments demonstrated that dominant group members readily frame intergroup interaction in terms of how they themselves are evaluated. The authors used indirect measures of meta-stereotype activation to assess dominant group members' inclination to spontaneously consider an out-group member's (ostensible) stereotypic expectations about them....

Three studies demonstrated that meta-stereotypes held by members of dominant groups about how their group is viewed by a lower status group have important implications for intergroup relations. Study 1 confirmed that White Canadians hold a shared negative meta-stereotype about how they are viewed by Aboriginal Canadians; Studies 2 and 3 extended th...

Three studies demonstrated that meta-stereotypes held by members of dominant groups about how their group is viewed by a lower status group have important implications for intergroup relations. Study 1 confirmed that White Canadians hold a shared negative meta-stereotype about how they are viewed by Aboriginal Canadians; Studies 2 and 3 extended th...