Sigal Tifferet

Ruppin Academic Center · Business Administration

Misinformation endangers democracy, science, and rational behavior. Verifying information and recognizing misinformation are critical skills, but there are few measures of these abilities. To help close this gap, we developed and validated the Verifying Online Information (VOI) self-report scale, which assesses individual differences in online info...

Student tasks are assigned frequently in higher education to facilitate learning. For the students, the task grade is one of the motivating components for successfully performing a task. In this study, we presented students with a hypothetical task under different but equivalent grade computations (framings). Based upon principles derived from beha...

Social network sites (SNS) have become an increasingly popular platform for providing and receiving social support. Traditionally, females are believed to offer more social support. However, investigations of both the offline and online domains have revealed mixed findings. This meta-analysis attempts to assess the presence and magnitude of gender...

Based on evolutionary psychology, this paper investigates whether age preferences for ad models differ according to the model’s gender. The study is the first to experimentally document the double standard of ageing in consumer appraisals of advertisements. Fictitious advertisements were created for mineral water, chewing gum and energy bars, manip...

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network site in the world, designed for professional networking, job seeking, and recruitment. The current study explores visual self-presentation in LinkedIn user portraits. LinkedIn portraits serve alongside explicit data posted in users’ profiles as a tool for professional self-presentation, yet they h...

This study examines gift giving at Israeli weddings. In accordance with kin selection theory, we hypothesized that wedding guests possessing greater genetic relatedness to the newlyweds would offer greater sums of money as wedding gifts. We also hypothesized that family members stemming from the maternal side (where the genetic lineage has higher k...

Purpose People engage in green consumption for many reasons, both conscious and unconscious. This paper aims to draw on evolutionary psychology to propose that hard-wired mating strategies encourage both men and women to increase their green consumption in the presence of members of the opposite sex. Design/methodology/approach Observations were c...

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Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of...

The atmospherics of a store can affect the emotions and perceptions of consumers, and even their shopping behaviors. Despite a large body of literature on store atmospherics, only a few studies have specifically examined natural elements in this context. Following evolutionary logic, we hypothesized that introducing a potted plant to a service deli...

Conventional segmentation efforts usually focus on verbal or behavioral data while ignoring visual cues, which play a significant role in impression management. Drawing on theoretical work regarding motivations for impression management (need to belong and need for self-promotion), we propose that Facebook users differ from each other in the compos...

Psychological research has been criticized for its extensive use of American university students to make broad claims about human psychology and behavior. Critics recommend a broader base of participants because there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations, and North American and Western European psychology pool parti...

Using resemblance cues, people can identify highly related kin and treat them preferentially over less related or unrelated individuals, all else being equal. However, differences in degrees of resemblance can occur even within particular kin categories, such as siblings. We hypothesized that the level of perceived resemblance between siblings will...

Facebook is a popular social network that can be used for self-presentation. In the current study we examined gender differences in Facebook self-presentation by evaluating components of profile and cover photos. We used evolutionary psychology—a theory which holds many assumptions regarding gender differences—to draw hypotheses. In order to elimin...

A random international sample of 500 Facebook profile photos revealed substantial gender differences. Males' photos accentuated status and risk taking, while females' photos accentuated familial relations and emotional expression. The results are concordant with hypotheses derived from evolutionary psychology.

This paper suggests a new typology of web design strategies in the academic context, in terms of perceived service quality. A survey of the web pages of 500 high-ranking universities illustrates how academic service brands use different design strategies to communicate their intangible qualities. Differences found between the pages suggest that the...

ABSTCT Gender differences in consumer behavior are a neglected topic. Following mate selection theory, we expected males to portray higher levels of status consumption. In an observational study of 1,053 students, we found that among students who brought coffee to the classroom, 85% of the men brought branded coffee, in comparison to only 64% of th...

Men may have evolved to specialize in short-term "cad" and long-term "dad" mating strategies. We hypothesized that dog ownership would increase the long-term attractiveness of men, especially for cads, as this would signal nurturance and suggest tendencies for relationship commitment. Women read vignettes in an experiment with four conditions varyi...

Sex differences in consumer behavior are a neglected topic. Following mate selection theory, we expected males to portray higher levels of status consumption. In an observational study of 1,053 students, we found that among students who brought coffee to the classroom, 85% of the men brought branded coffee, in comparison to only 64% of the women.

Purpose: Gender is one of the most common forms of segmentation used by marketers. However, not enough data on gender differences has been collected in the field of consumer behavior. Based on tenets from evolutionary psychology, we hypothesized that in comparison to men, women will report higher levels of brand commitment, hedonic consumption, and...

Purpose Store branding has gained much attention from branding researchers, including studies of market segmentation. However, the psychological profile of the store brand consumer is still obscure. The present study investigated the role of “need for cognition” (NFC) in purchasing store brands. Design/methodology/approach Participants were 400 st...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between three personality traits (individualism, materialism and the “need for cognition”) and two characteristics of shoppers who buy private‐label brands (their predisposition to do so, and the importance they attach to the “brand dimensions”) across four member countries of th...

Music is a universal phenomenon that has genetic and brain-localized features. As such, it warrants adaptive evolutionary explanations. While some scholars believe that music arose as a by-product of other adaptations, others argue that music is likely to have served some adaptive function, for example in coalition signaling or mother-child bonding...

Evolution has created a spectrum of life history strategies that are linked to different personality profiles. People with low-K life history strategies display traits such as low parental investment, non-adherence to social rules, short-term planning, risk taking and impulsivity. We hypothesized that low-K strategists, who are characterized by thi...

claim that music is used in human sexual selection is prevalent but lacks empirical evidence. A Facebook experiment revealed initial support for the sexual selection theory of music. Women replied more positively to friendship requests from a man shown in a photo holding a guitar. . "Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it You play the guit...

The 'Tend-and Befriend' hypothesis claims that whereas the response of males to stress is Fight-or-Flight, females respond with Tend-and-Befriend. We tested this hypothesis with a sample of 110 couples whose children had undergone neurosurgery. Both mothers and fathers answered questionnaires measuring levels of tending, befriending, stress, anxiet...

Williams’ (1966) terminal investment hypothesis states that in species showing an age-related decline in reproductive value, reproductive effort should increase with age. Non-human primate studies have supported this hypothesis, though research in humans is lacking, likely due to the restricted age range of participants in typical studies in evolut...

Purpose – The present study has three aims: to find out whether individualism affects consumers' preference for private versus national brands; to assess the effect of individualism on the perceived importance of brand image dimensions (country‐of origin, packaging design and manufacturer reputation); and to assess the degree of cross‐cultural diff...

In comparison to genetic children, stepchildren receive less parental investment, in accordance with the theory of discriminative parental solicitude. The present study investigated this bias in parental funding of "The Great Journey" that many Israeli youths embark on after their military service – typically a backpacking tour in Asia or Latin Ame...

The aim of this study was to explain variability in maternal adaptation to pediatric illness using a structural equation model (SEM). The suggested Personal Vulnerability Model emphasizes personal vulnerability (high neuroticism and low optimism) and incorporates family support, emotion-focused coping, stress, and illness severity as predictors of...

To describe trajectories of change in maternal adaptation to chronic pediatric neurosurgical diagnosis and to identify variables predicting the level and rate of adaptation. One hundred and thirty seven mothers of children diagnosed with neurosurgical illness participated. Mothers reported socio-demographic variables, neuroticism, optimism, spouse...

An important dispute among web page designers regards the application of photos and images. In an experimental study 478 participants evaluated an academic web page differing only in the presence of images and the category of images presented. Feelings of pleasantness, perceived attractiveness of the web page, and perceived service quality were sig...

Parents do not invest their resources in their children equally. Three factors which elicit differential parental investment are the parent's reproductive value, the child's reproductive value (RV), and the impact of the investment on the child (II). As the child matures, his RV increases while the II may decrease. This raises a question regarding...

Purpose – This research is designed to characterize new generic consumers and assess their willingness to purchase generic brands in non-generic product categories. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 500 generic consumers participated in the study. Participants were customers of two large private chain stores in central Israel, known for thei...