Nicole Mead

York University · Schulich School of Business

According to decades of research, whether negotiations succeed depends on how much of the stake each person will get. Yet, real-world stakes often consist of resources that vary on quality, not just quantity. While it may appear obvious that people should reject qualitatively inferior offers, just as they reject quantitatively unequal offers, it is...

Over the past several decades, scholars have highlighted the obligations and opportunities for marketing as a discipline to play a role in creating a better world-or risk becoming irrelevant for the largest problems facing consumers and society. This paper provides a framework to enhance the relevance and rigor of research in marketing that not onl...

Finding meaning in life is a fundamental human motivation. Along with pleasure, meaning is a pillar of happiness and well-being. Yet, despite the centrality of this motive, and despite firms’ attempts to appeal to this motive, scant research has investigated how the pursuit of meaning influences consumer choice, especially in comparison to the stud...

People seek meaning in the marketplace, but can meaning be bought? We review emerging evidence and suggest that the typical association between meaning and well-being is weakened in consumption contexts. We outline two lay beliefs that help explain this gap: the belief that purchases are extrinsic pursuits whereas meaning should come from intrinsic...

People around the world are not saving enough money. We propose that one reason people under-save is because they hold the positive illusion of being financially responsible. If this conjecture is correct, then deflating this inflated self-view may increase saving, as people should become motivated to restore perceptions of financial responsibility...

We conducted a preregistered multi-laboratory project (k = 36; N = 3531) to assess the size and robustness of ego depletion effects using a novel replication method, termed the paradigmatic replication approach. Laboratories implemented one of two procedures that intended to manipulate self control and tested performance on a subsequent measure of...

It has long been argued that people become attached to objects because objects help people to define, reflect, and communicate the self. In this article we consider whether objects not only help to “know thyself” but also to “fuel thyself”. In other words, whether objects can contribute to self-regulation. We review past research to consider whethe...

The idea that consumers use products to feel good about themselves is a basic tenet of marketing. Yet, in addition to the motive to self-enhance, consumers also strive to confirm their self-views (i.e., self-verification). Although self-verification provides self-related benefits, its role in consumer behavior is poorly understood. To redress that...

The idea that consumers use products to feel good about themselves is a basic tenet of marketing. Yet, in addition to the motive to self-enhance, consumers also strive to confirm their self-views (i.e., self-verification). Although self-verification provides self-related benefits, its role in consumer behavior is poorly understood. To redress that...

The corrosive effects of power have been noted for centuries, but the self-related changes responsible for those effects have remained somewhat elusive. Narcissists tend to rise to-and abuse-positions of power, so we considered the possibility that positions of power may corrupt because they inflate narcissism. Two pathways were considered: Powerho...

Method and materials for manipulating power and measuring narcissism and corruption.

Despite the explosion of research on goal pursuit, relatively little is known about the shaping of goal progress by the simple experiences that characterize everyday life. Two literatures furnish competing predictions about the relationship between pleasant daily experiences (simple pleasures), unpleasant daily experiences (small annoyances), and d...

The present research tested two competing hypotheses: (1) as money cues activate an exchange orientation to social relations, money cues harm prosocial responses in communal and collectivistic settings; (2) as money can be used to help close others, money cues increase helping in communal or collectivistic settings. In a culture, characterized by s...

The present investigation began with the conjecture that people may do better by saying "some other time" instead of "no, not ever" in response to temptations. Drawing from learning theories, we hypothesized that people interpret unspecific postponement ("I can have it some other time") as a signal that they do not strongly value the postponed temp...

Money is a complex phenomenon: it has the potential to unite people from opposite corners of the globe but it can also be the source of strife and suffering. Understanding when, why, and how money changes interpersonal processes is thus an important endeavor for many academic disciplines. To shed light on these questions, this chapter reviews a gro...

Does the cue of money lead to selfish, greedy, exploitative behaviors or to fairness, exchange, and reciprocity? We found evidence for both, suggesting that people have both sets of meaningful associations, which can be differentially activated by exposure to clean versus dirty money. In a field experiment at a farmers' market, vendors who handled...

Throughout evolutionary history, intergroup competition has been an influential part of social life. Although the topic has received substantial empirical attention among social psychologists, the majority of that work has focused on how ingroup and outgroup members regard one another. Only recently have researchers begun examining how intergroup r...

Scholars long have examined self-control strategies through the lens of resistance, emphasizing that willpower is the primary psychological resource that humans use to suppress hardwired visceral responses. However, resistance is often fallible because it draws from limited resources while simultaneously increasing desire for the forbidden good. Th...

Throughout history, humans have had to detect and deflect myriad threats from their social and physical environment in order to survive and flourish. When people detect a threat, the most common response is avoidance. In the present research, the authors provide evidence that ingroup power threats elicit a very different response. Three experiments...

When people's deeply ingrained need for social connection is thwarted by social exclusion, profound psychological consequences ensue. Despite the fact that social connections and consumption are central facets of daily life, little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how belongingness threats impact consumer behavior. In four expe...

When leaders perform solitary tasks, do they self-regulate to maximize their effort, or do they reduce effort and conserve their resources? Our model suggests that power motivates self-regulation toward effective performance-unless the task is perceived as unworthy of leaders. Our 1st studies showed that power improves self-regulation and performan...

Throughout human history, leaders have been responsible for helping groups attain important goals. Ideally, leaders use their power to steer groups toward desired outcomes. However, leaders can also use their power in the service of self-interest rather than effective leadership. Five experiments identified factors within both the person and the so...

People break diets, procrastinate in the face of looming deadlines, imbibe too much alcohol the night before a midterm, struggle to save money, and lash out at loved ones and family members. They do all these things despite their best intentions not to. Why do people engage in such personally, interpersonally, and socially destructive behaviors? Th...

People tend to view members of their own political group more positively than members of a competing political group. In this article, we demonstrate that political partisanship influences people's visual representations of a biracial political candidate's skin tone. In three studies, participants rated the representativeness of photographs of a hy...

The opportunity to profit from dishonesty evokes a motivational conflict between the temptation to cheat for selfish gain and the desire to act in a socially appropriate manner. Honesty may depend on self-control given that self-control is the capacity that enables people to override antisocial selfish responses in favor of socially desirable respo...

Money plays a significant role in people's lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants' minds using methods that minimized participants' conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one...

IT TAKES a constant stream of interpersonal decision making for people to be liked by others and to like themselves at the same time. Although often being liked and liking oneself go hand in hand, at times people make choices to give up on being liked in order to restore a positive self-image or to temporarily have a less positive self-image to pre...

Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to re...