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(Im)moral Support: The Social Outcomes of Parallel Self-Control Decisions
Abstract
Although most consumer self-control decisions are made individually, they are rarely made in isolation. Temptations are often simultaneously encountered by multiple members of a group or dyad and thereby susceptible to social influence. However, little is known about these “parallel” self-control decisions or the resulting social consequences. In a series of studies spanning the domains of money, time management, and food consumption, consumers demonstrated a tendency to bond over matched self-control decisions through “coindulgence” or “coabstinence.” The perceived severity of choosing vice over virtue influenced when each of these matched outcomes produced greater affiliation. When indulgence threatened to seriously hinder goal progress, consumers bonded through moral support evidenced by joint abstention. When the consequences were perceived as relatively less severe, consumers found friendship through partnering in crime by both indulging. Throughout, guilt underlies the relationship between self-control behaviors and social outcomes, as peer compliance reduces guilt and thus improves affiliation.
... Indeed, research shows that matching (vs. mismatching) other people's portion size selections can increase affiliation Lowe and Haws 2014). For example, if another person chooses a medium (vs. ...
... small) portion size for yourself ). Additionally, two people who consume similar amounts of food are subsequently more bonded than two people who consume dissimilar amounts of food (Lowe and Haws 2014). ...
... Our work offers a notable contrast to work on resource allocation of money, which shows that people allocate more money to themselves than to others (Bolton et al. 1998). Additionally, our work also offers a contrast to work on matching other people's portion sizes (Cruwys, Bevelander, and Hermans 2015;Lowe and Haws 2014 Brown andLevinson 1978, 1987;Eelen 2014;Laplante and Ambady 2003;Stephan et al. 2010;Turnbull 1992). Some work has identified politeness norms on engaging in "appropriate" food consumption (Perianova 2011). ...
Consumers’ portion size choices are important, both as larger portion sizes can lead to overeating and as uneaten portions can contribute to food waste. Existing research has largely focused on consumers’ portion size choices for themselves—even though consumers often choose for others. Fourteen studies examine portion size choices for others, testing: Do consumers choose smaller, similar, or larger portion sizes for others, compared to various benchmarks—(1) how much they choose for themselves, (2) how much others want to receive, and (3) predictions about how much others actually want to eat? Studies show that consumers choose larger portion sizes for others across multiple choosing-for-others contexts, involving everyday favors, gift-giving, and joint consumption. Consumers’ goal to be considerate of others’ needs and desires given uncertainty about others’ consumption is one broad “baseline” driver of this multiply determined phenomenon. Consumers do not choose larger portion sizes for others when they lack a considerateness goal, when choosing larger portions is inconsiderate, or when a responsibility goal instead dominates (as in the choosing-for-others context of caregiving). This research offers theoretical implications for understanding choices for others and portion size choices and practical implications through identifying a potential cause of overeating and/or food waste.
... First, developmental psychology research notes a connection between rule breaking and interpersonal liking: Wentzel (1994) suggests a positive relationship between classroom rule breaking and peer liking, showing that rule-breaking students are typically liked more by their peers than more disciplined classmates. Second, recent research on individual behaviors finds that individuals who make sequential solo decisions intuit that matching others' "misbehaviors" can facilitate social bonding (Lowe and Haws 2014;Mead et al. 2011;Santor, Messervey, and Kusumakar 2000;Wentzel 1994). Lowe and Haws (2014) demonstrate that when indulgence does not hinder goal progress, matching the indulgent behavior of a partner leads to greater social affiliation. ...
... Second, recent research on individual behaviors finds that individuals who make sequential solo decisions intuit that matching others' "misbehaviors" can facilitate social bonding (Lowe and Haws 2014;Mead et al. 2011;Santor, Messervey, and Kusumakar 2000;Wentzel 1994). Lowe and Haws (2014) demonstrate that when indulgence does not hinder goal progress, matching the indulgent behavior of a partner leads to greater social affiliation. Similarly, succumbing to peer pressure to misbehave (e.g., skip classes, get drunk, do drugs) appears to raise popularity (Santor et al. 2000). ...
... First, prior research has examined only individual decisions made in response to others' behaviors; Mead et al. (2009) demonstrate that social exclusion leads consumers to adjust their spending patterns to those of their interaction partner, purchase an unappealing food item liked by the partner, and try an illegal drug if it increases their chances of creating social connections. Similarly, Lowe and Haws (2014) show that in certain circumstances (i.e., when indulgence does not threaten goal progress), matching the indulgent behavior of someone else leads to social affiliation. Thus, both of these articles looked at sequential individual decisions and their impact on social bonding. ...
While joint ethical violations are fairly common in the workplace, sports teams, and academic settings, little research has studied such collaborative wrongdoings. Our work examines whether people are more unethical when they make decisions jointly with a partner (i.e., reach one shared decision as a dyad) versus alone. Four experiments show that people use joint ethical violations (“partnering-in-crime”) strategically to generate social bonding. Thus, dyads make more unethical decisions than individuals only when social bonding is needed, that is, when the dyad members do not know each other. In such cases, joint unethical decisions offer an avenue for bonding. However, this effect is attenuated when dyad partners build rapport with each other prior to the joint decision-making. In such cases, dyads are equally ethical as individual decision-makers. Our findings offer insights into the social aspects of unethical behavior and have broad practical implications for enhancing ethicality in the workplace.
... Although it might be intuitive to assume that holding parallel goals would help each partner stick to their goal, research suggests that people are not always successful in self-control when faced with the opportunity to indulge together, despite their parallel goals. When co-indulgence is perceived as a relatively minor transgression against each other's goals, indulging together can make "partners in crime" feel closer together (Lowe & Haws, 2014). However, when the indulgence is perceived to be a relatively greater transgression, people instead feel closer when they both abstain together (Lowe & Haws, 2014). ...
... When co-indulgence is perceived as a relatively minor transgression against each other's goals, indulging together can make "partners in crime" feel closer together (Lowe & Haws, 2014). However, when the indulgence is perceived to be a relatively greater transgression, people instead feel closer when they both abstain together (Lowe & Haws, 2014). This implies that, depending on the perceived size of the transgression, people will be motivated to either co-indulge (e.g., eating cookies) or co-abstain in order to feel closer to one another. ...
... In a survey of American adults, over half reported making joint consumption choices more than three times per month, often in the food/drink or entertainment/activity domains (Wu, Moore, and Fitzsimons 2019). The frequency of making such choices in these domains is also reflected in considerable research on joint consumption (Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Liu et al. 2013;Lowe and Haws 2014;Ratner and Hamilton 2015;Woolley and Fishbach 2017;Wu, Moore, and Fitzsimons 2019). ...
... Such work could examine other consequences of adopting requestor versus responder roles. For instance, future work could examine how these roles, and whose preferences are followed, affect enjoyment (Kovacheva and Lamberton 2018;Raghunathan and Corfman 2006), affiliation (Lowe and Haws 2014;Min, Liu, and Kim 2018), and subsequent joint consumption decisions. In addition, future research may examine other relationships besides friendships (e.g., romantic or parent-child relationships; Canary, Cupach, and Messman 1995) in light of our framework. ...
This research introduces a framework wherein consumers take on “requestor” or “responder” roles in making joint consumption decisions. The authors document a robust preference expression asymmetry wherein “requestors” soliciting others’ consumption preferences (e.g., “Where do you want to go for dinner?”) desire preference expressions (e.g., “Let’s go to this restaurant”), whereas “responders” instead do not express preferences (e.g., “Anywhere is fine with me”). This asymmetry generalizes under a broad set of situations and occurs because the requestor and responder roles differ in their foci. Compared to responders, requestors are more focused on mitigating the difficulty of arriving at a decision, whereas compared to requestors, responders are more focused on conveying likability by appearing easygoing. Responders thus behave suboptimally, incurring a “preference cost” (when masking preferences) and a “social friction cost” (requestors favor responders who express preferences). Requestors can elicit preference expression by conveying their own dislike of decision-making, which increases responders’ focus on mitigating decision difficulty. The authors conclude by discussing the framework’s contributions to looking “under-the-hood” of joint consumption decisions.
... Anecdotally, celebrations often feature indulgent consumption. If indulgent or hedonic consumption frequently co-occurs with celebrations, then individuals should be cautioned about "too much" celebrating as it could have negative physical or financial consequences (e.g., decreased self-control(Lowe and Haws 2014), overconsumption and overspending(Parker, Umashankar, and Schleicher 2019), food waste(Block et al. 2016)). It is worth noting that we did not see any differences in the effects of healthy vs. indulgent consumption on perceived social support in study 5, which suggests that interventions could promote in a healthy way (e.g., emphasizing consumption of healthy foods) that would still build perceived social support but not involve excess calories or unhealthy eating.Capitalization celebrations offer positive benefits beyond those immediately involved in the experience. ...
Despite the ubiquity of celebrations in everyday life, very little is known about how they may contribute to consumer well-being. In the current work, the authors propose that celebrations promote perceived social support, which prior work has conceptualized as the belief that others will be there for you in future, negative life events. The authors further theorize that celebrations require three key characteristics which, in combination, are necessary for increasing perceived social support. Specifically, celebrations must 1) mark an individual’s separate positive event and 2) involve consumption 3) with others (i.e., social). They test this theory across eight studies and demonstrate a process mechanism for this effect—these characteristics lead to increases in enacted support and perceived responsiveness, which in turn, lead to increases in more general perceived social support. They then extend these findings by investigating virtually held celebrations, the individual’s role at the celebration, and a downstream pro-social outcome. By doing so, this work highlights the broader benefits of celebrations beyond the focal individual and the immediate experience. Finally, specific policy implications and suggestions for enhancing consumer well-being are provided.
... In contrast to shopping alone or with a friend, spouses have a long-term focus on each other's reaction regarding the purchased goods (Dzhogleva and Lamberton, 2014). Still, when shopping with a partner, self-control tendencies are reduced in favor of pro-relationship behavior (Dzhogleva and Lamberton, 2014), especially when the consequences are perceived as relatively mild (Lowe and Haws, 2014) -a characterization that also applies to our setting. These more recent results mirror early findings by Sommer et al. (1992, pp. ...
Many purchase decisions take place in social relationships, and yet few studies have specifically investigated couples’ purchase decisions made during shopping about products for later joint consumption. We hypothesize that romantic partners purchase more when they shop together than individually and that this effect is strong for vice products, particularly those without an organic label. For our empirical study, we asked romantic partners shopping together in a real-life context to make purchase decisions together or individually (our main experimental condition) in a self-programmed web store that offered 88 product variants (differing in category [vice/virtue] and labeling [with/without organic label]). Participants then filled out an online questionnaire on site. Results of a sequence of nested generalized linear models show that making purchase decisions together increases purchase amount (number of items selected) and purchase value (quantities selected multiplied by the corresponding willingness to pay), especially for vice products without organic labeling. In a second study, we benchmark these effects by comparing them with the effects of individual decision making and varying consumption mode (joint vs. individual consumption), using data from an online survey that followed the same structure as the main study. These effects, again estimated through generalized linear models, are negligible. Our findings strongly support the “accomplice” (rather than the “minder”) role of romantic partners in shopping. Therefore, retailers should target couples, encourage them to shop together, and emphasize joint consumption as a shopping goal.
... For instance, shared consumption-which often involves food (Woolley & Fishbach, 2017)-can include dining together with other people, which increases closeness to one's companions, especially if dining together from shared rather than separate plates (Woolley & Fishbach, 2019). Additionally, engaging in the same consumption simultaneously with another person may boost closeness especially when coconsumers are either co-indulging or co-abstaining, provided that the costs of indulgence are not severe in the case of co-indulgence (Lowe & Haws, 2014). Finally, more extraordinary consumption experiences may be more effective at increasing closeness than more ordinary consumption experiences (e.g., shopping for festive light bulbs for a holiday event vs. shopping for light bulbs for a residence; shopping for black toilet paper vs. shopping for white toilet paper), especially among new acquaintances, as extraordinary consumption experiences can help distract consumers from the awkwardness of initial interactions (Min et al., 2018). ...
People often engage in shared consumption experiences with other people, including romantic partners, friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances. Although the field of consumer psychology has traditionally focused on the perspective of an individual consumer, researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance and relevance of studying shared consumption (also known as joint consumption, dyadic consumption, or group consumption). In this chapter, we first discuss common methodological paradigms for studying shared consumption, given that studying shared consumption poses unique methodological challenges relative to studying solitary consumption. We then discuss prior research on shared consumption, organizing our review around the potential benefits and potential costs involved in shared consumption as compared to solitary consumption. Finally, we delineate four main areas for future research on shared consumption that we view as particularly promising.
... Eating is connected with social and cultural norms, as shared plates (Woolley and Fishbach 2019), family meals (Hammons and Fiese 2011), and the importance of food at celebrations attest. Yet in "lab eating," participants are often in private cubicles; only rarely are there groups (see for an exception, Lowe and Haws 2014). Even then, others are often strangers-either fellow participants or research confederates. ...
Food consumption and its physiological, psychological, and social antecedents and outcomes have received considerable attention in research across many disciplines, including consumer research. Although researchers use various methods to examine food decision-making, many insights generated stem from observing eating choices in tightly controlled lab settings. Although much insight can be gained through such studies (or “lab eating”), it is apparent that many factors differ between such settings and everyday consumption (or “free-living eating”). This article highlights key differences between “lab eating” and “free-living eating,” discusses ways in which such differences matter, and provides recommendations for researchers regarding how and when to narrow the gap between them, including by enriching lab studies in ways inspired by free-living eating. Besides suggesting how researchers can conduct studies offering a deeper understanding of eating patterns, we also highlight practical implications for improving food consumption for consumers, marketers, and policymakers.
... Study 1 and 2 tested the H1 and H2 in a fast-food consumption context and demonstrated that consumers tend to make more indulgent food choices when ordering via a waiter, (Klesse et al., 2015;Mccarthy et al., 2017) or social presence (Lowe & Haws, 2014;McFerran et al., 2010) but can be extended to the ways of ordering setting (i.e., ordering by electronic device or waiter). Thus, the possibility that restaurant ordering settings can influence the psychological process that governs the healthy eating decision broadens the scope of what can be considered "contextual influence." ...
With the advancement of technology and the widespread of coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, catering operators have favored electronic ordering due to its convenience and safety. However, little research has examined whether the change from traditional waiter ordering to electronic device ordering would affect consumers' healthy eating. Based on previous research of self‐control, this article explores whether ordering by electronic device or waiter prompts healthier food choices. Through four experimental studies conducted in China, our findings demonstrated that whether ordering by electronic device or waiter is also one determinant of healthy eating. Compared to waiter ordering, consumers would make healthier food choices through electronic ordering, because it relives the time pressure brought on by the interpersonal waiter interaction. Whereas electronic ordering may be effective only if there is no waiting line or only for consumers who have a relatively low degree of trait self‐control. The findings advance the understanding of determinants of healthy eating, as well as enrich the literature that explores the difference between human and electronic service.
... We adopted items of established scales from the literature (see Table 2) except for the short-lived surprise deal as this was conceptualized originally for the present study. We followed the approach adopted by Lowe and Haws (2014) in their study to determine measures of this construct. Additionally, an influence of the potential confounding variable-brand knowledge was measured to control for its effect (Mitchell & Jolley, 2014). ...
Offering frequent, attractive promotional offers is one of the most effective and practiced marketing strategies used to achieve competitive advantage through the generation of consumer repurchase intentions (RI). Our experimental study investigates the impact of short-lived surprise deals (SLSD) offered on aspirational out-group brands on consumer repurchase intentions. It also tests the moderating role of self-enhancement goals (SEG) on the impact of the SLSD on the purchase of such aspirational brands from the deal and on th5e mediating paths through peak-transcendent customer experience (TCE) and hope of coming across such short-lived surprise deals on the website again. Our findings reveal that hope is a critical factor in generating repurchase intentions through online short-lived surprise deals. By employing the suggested promotional strategy, online firms would be able to provide a positive consumer experience and generate repurchase intentions. Our findings have significant managerial and theoretical implications.
... Moreover, consumers may anticipate that social consumption experiences with friends and family in particular will provide heightened enjoyment associated with aspects outside of consuming the product itself. For instance, consumers may anticipate that social consumption experiences can provide enjoyable conversation and companionship (Bastos and Brucks 2017) and thus facilitate bonding (Lowe and Haws 2014;Pinel et al. 2006;Woolley and Fishbach 2017). Building on this literature, I predict that framing a consumption indulgence as a social activity, which one thinks of engaging in with friends or family, versus a solitary activity that one does on one's own, will lower interest in cutting frequency (vs. ...
Many consumers engage in frequent consumption indulgences. Because such indulgences accumulate resource costs (e.g., money, calories), consumers are often prompted or need to cut back, posing questions for how to design cut-back programs with consumer appeal. This research distinguishes between frequent indulgences that consumers think of as social (vs. solitary), demonstrating that thinking of an indulgence as social (vs. solitary) decreases preferences to cut “frequency” (how often the indulgence occasion occurs) and increases preferences to cut “intensity” (choosing a within-category substitute that involves lower resource expenditure). These effects are explained by differentiating between enjoyment from the product itself versus enjoyment from aspects outside the product. Thinking of an indulgence as social (vs. solitary) heightens anticipated enjoyment particularly for aspects outside of the product, decreasing interest in cutting the number of occasions (cutting frequency) and increasing interest in cutting back on the product itself via a within-category substitute (cutting intensity). This divergence in cut-back preferences for social (vs. solitary) experiences is thus eliminated: 1) when consumers think of social experiences with distant (vs. close) others, which involve lower enjoyment outside of the product, or 2) when solitary experiences primarily involve heightened enjoyment for aspects outside of the product.
... By demonstrating that consumer decision making in interpersonal contexts and across dyads can have beneficial downstream consequences for the relationship, we contribute to the literature on social influences in consumer behavior (e.g., Arora et al., 2011;Caprariello & Reis, 2013;Dzhogleva & Lamberton, 2014;Etkin, 2016;Halevy & Chou, 2014;Hasford et al., 2017;Lamberton, 2016;Lowrey, Otnes, & Ruth, 2004;McFerran et al., 2009;Nikolova et al., 2017;Ordabayeva & Chandon, 2010). Additionally, we show that choosing for and with others has different effects on the relationship, thereby contributing to the growing literature in this area (Liu, Dallas, & Fitzsimons, 2019;Lowe & Haws, 2014;Lowe, Nikolova, Miller, & Dommer, 2019;de Melo, Carnevale, Read, & Gratch, 2014;Polman, 2012;Polman & Vohs, 2016;Steffel & Le Boeuf, 2014). ...
Shared consumer decisions, particularly those made with a relationship partner, can be very different from decisions that are made alone. Across multiple studies, we investigate how shared consumer decision making affects perceptions of power and relationship satisfaction. We integrate two streams of research to create a novel theory about consumer decision making and perceived power. Specifically, we suggest that shared consumer decision making combines two necessary components of power—an individual’s influence over and a partner’s engagement in the decision—and that these combined components drive power perceptions. In other words, individuals who relinquish some control and make a decision with their partner, ironically, perceive having greater power than if they had made the decision alone. We further find that shared decision making and greater perceived power lead to greater satisfaction with the relationship in which the decisions are made. By focusing on consumer decision making within relationships, the current research contributes to the literatures on decision making, social influences in consumer behavior, close relationships, consumer well‐being, and power.
... A relationship-signaling account might also relate to a self-presentation account to the extent that people may care more about self-presentation to people that they value more (with whom they want to foster a close relationship). Future research may thus vary relational goals and also gauge the relational consequences of receiving quality versus quantity options, building on a separate literature on the closeness consequences of receiving choices in gift-giving (Chan & Mogilner, 2017;Rim et al., 2019)-or sharing in choices with others (Lowe & Haws, 2014;Min et al., 2018). ...
The trade-off between quality and quantity pervades many domains of life, including that of making product choices for ourselves and others, whether as gifts or as everyday favors. In five studies (four pre-registered), participants preferred quality over quantity when choosing for a friend versus for themselves. We demonstrate that one reason why this difference in choice for self and other arises is because of heightened self-presentation concerns: People choosing for friends (vs. self) are more concerned about conveying poor taste, thus increasing choice of quality (vs. quantity). Consistent with this process, the effect is mitigated when choosing for a nonjudgmental friend or when choosing for a person whom one does not highly value. Finally, this effect is particular to quality-quantity trade-offs; it does not occur for flavor-quantity trade-offs, indicating that the effect is driven by the quality aspect rather than by the quantity aspect or by cost-per-unit considerations.
... Future research could examine various other predictors of preferences between the two kinds of lower-calorie options, including individual difference factors besides dietary restraint, as well as social factors, such as whether consumers are choosing for themselves or for others (e.g., young children, whom parents and other caregivers often want to eat healthier) (Liu, Dallas, and Fitzsimons 2019;Mukhopadhyay and Yeung 2010) and whether consumers are alone or eating in others' company (Liu, McFerran, and Haws 2020;Lowe and Haws 2014). Such future research might examine whether such factors operate alongside dietary restraint or interact with dietary restraint to influence choices. ...
The marketplace includes many attractive high-calorie indulgent food offerings. Despite their appeal, consumers may often be prompted to consider lower-calorie-package offerings instead (e.g., 100-calorie packs). The question thus arises: What predicts consumers’ preferences between different kinds of lower-calorie offerings? The authors conceptualize two different routes to lower-calorie versions of indulgent foods: a lower-caloric-density version (e.g., baked potato chips) or a smaller-portion-size version (e.g., a smaller bag of potato chips). The authors examine how such versions are differentially preferred and why, focusing on the key role of dietary restraint. The authors show that as dietary restraint increases, the preference for a lower-calorie version created via lower caloric density (vs. a smaller portion size) increases. Differential weights placed on health and fullness goals help explain differing preferences across dietary restraint (as the lower-caloric-density version is perceived as healthier and more filling, albeit less tasty, than the smaller-portion-size version). This framework offers theoretical implications for understanding two routes to cutting calories, practical implications for food marketers, and methodological implications for studying food choices.
... Satisfaction from consuming with others. Prior research has demonstrated how joint consumption, even when the decisions are made independently, affects evaluation of experiences (Lowe and Haws 2014). For example, experiencing something in the presence of others can lead to emotional contagion, whereby individuals share more consonant emotions than when experiencing the same thing independently, leading to enhanced enjoyment or dissatisfaction (Ramanathan and McGill 2007). ...
When customers journey from a need to a purchase decision and beyond, they rarely do so alone. This article introduces the social customer journey, which extends prior perspectives on the path to purchase by explicitly integrating the important role that social others play throughout the journey. The authors highlight the importance of “traveling companions,” who interact with the decision maker through one or more phases of the journey, and they argue that the social distance between the companion(s) and the decision maker is an important factor in how social influence affects that journey. They also consider customer journeys made by decision-making units consisting of multiple individuals and increasingly including artificial intelligence agents that can serve as surrogates for social others. The social customer journey concept integrates prior findings on social influences and customer journeys and highlights opportunities for new research within and across the various stages. Finally, the authors discuss several actionable marketing implications relevant to organizations’ engagement in the social customer journey, including managing influencers, shaping social interactions, and deploying technologies.
... The result was comparable with a study conducted in Mali [39], where women's healthseeking and utilization behaviour towards maternal care use was significantly influenced by the care-seeking practices of the surrounding people in their areas of residence. Friends are often connected through providing moral support to one another which influences the decision either to refuse or accept a temptation [43]. Women are more likely to adopt unhealthy/healthy behaviours from their best friends than strangers [44], especially in regard to gendered issues they experience in common, such as pregnancy or birthing. ...
Background
Skilled delivery care utilization in Ethiopia is still very low compared with the goal set by the global community for countries with the highest maternal mortality. As a result, the country is overburdened with high maternal morbidity and mortality. We aimed to explore the predisposing, enabling, and need factors associated with skilled delivery care utilization among reproductive-aged women in Kersa district, eastern Ethiopia.
Methods
A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted with a total of 1294 women. The participants were selected using systematic sampling techniques. An interviewer-administered structured questionnaire aided by an electronic survey tool was used to collect data. Univariate analyses were conducted to describe the study sample. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were carried out to elicit the association of predisposing, enabling, and need factors associated with skilled delivery care utilization. Separate multivariate models were fitted for primiparous and multiparous women categories. Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were used to assess statistical significance.
Results
More than a quarter (30.8%) of the women surveyed used skilled delivery care for their most recent birth. Significant predisposing factors were as follows: presence of educated family member; receiving education on maternal health; previous use of skilled delivery care; and best friend’s use of maternal care. Place of residence was the enabling factor that predicted skilled delivery care use. Antenatal care attendance and pregnancy intention were significant need factors associated with skilled delivery care utilization.
Conclusion
The findings of the study highlight the need for a concerted effort to establish community-based peer education programs; improve access to family planning services (to reduce unintended pregnancies); increase antenatal care uptake; and facilitate access to skilled delivery care in rural areas.
... Table 1 summarizes the discussion of different categories and gives the count and specific references from within these 130 papers. 3. Choice of shopping center is influenced by the retailer being a place for congregation with friends (Landry et al. 2005), or due to initial-trust-image coming from friends (Kaul et al. 2010) 4. Gifting to friends (Joy 2001;Broniarczyk 2011, 2016) 5. Joint consumption decisions (Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Lowe and Haws 2014) 6. Joint advertisement exposure (Coker et al. 2013) 7. Risk taking in financial decisions (Trump et al. 2015) 8. Friend's influence on brand consciousness (Nelson and McLeod 2005) 9 2. Developing and protecting profitable customer relationships (Turnbull and Wilson 1989) 3. Not all closely interacting customers are considered as friends (Bäckström et al. 2009) 4. Mixing business with friendship relationships can lead to potential problems (Grayson 2007) Five papers from the 135 that were arrived at the 'Final inclusion' stage in Fig. 1 cannot be put on a consumption timeline (Arnold et al. 2011;Jancic and Zabkar 2002;Johar 2005;Li and Zhang 2014;Small and Simonsohn 2008). ...
The concept of friendship remains important from societal, academic, and practitioner perspectives. We find that there is a proliferation of research in the marketing discipline on the utilization and applicability of the concept of friendship, but the literature is fragmented. By fragmentation, we refer to the fact that the notion of friendship is tapped in multiple, independent research streams. As a result, there is a lack of an organized and holistic view of friendship-related research in the marketing domain. Drawing on an extensive literature review of 130 papers in more than 30 peer-reviewed scholarly journals across a 37-years time span (1980–2017), this paper synthesizes the extant friendship research in the domain of marketing through a taxonomy, which categorizes the different types of friendship conceptualizations based on two underlying characteristics, or dimensions, the formation of friendship, and consumption timeline. The proposed taxonomy shows the differences as well as the interrelationships between the different publications, giving a systematic view of the research landscape. We suggest future research avenues as well, for further research in the area of marketing-related friendships and highlight why the research is relevant from a real-world perspective.
... A different stream of research explores gift-giving behavior among friends and finds out that individuals may make product choices that are different from their own identities to be consistent with the intended recipient (Ward and Broniarczyk 2011), and that a friend giving a gift balances different sets of goals in her gifting choices depending on how close the recipient is (Ward and Broniarczyk 2016). There are other papers as well in this cell which focus on niche areas of investigation, for example, those related to self-control decisions in dyads (Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Lowe and Haws 2014), impact of joint television viewing on the attitudes developed as a result of brand placement (Coker et al. 2013), risktaking in financial decisions where a friend's money is involved , and a friend's influence on brand consciousness (Nelson and McLeod 2005), to name a few. ...
The concept of friendship remains important from societal, academic, and practitioner perspectives. We find that there is a proliferation of research in the marketing discipline on the utilization and applicability of the concept of friendship, but the literature is fragmented. By fragmentation, we refer to the fact that the notion of friendship is tapped in multiple, independent research streams. As a result, there is a lack of an organized and holistic view of friendship-related research in the marketing domain. Drawing on an extensive literature review of 130 papers in more than 30 peer-reviewed scholarly journals across a 37-year time span (1980-2017), this paper synthesizes the extant friendship research in the domain of marketing through a taxonomy, which categorizes the different types of friendship conceptualizations based on two underlying characteristics, or dimensions, the formation of friendship, and consumption timeline. The proposed taxonomy shows the differences as well as the interrelationships between the different publications, giving a systematic view of the research landscape. We suggest future research avenues as well, for further research in the area of marketing-related friendships and highlight why the research is relevant from a real-world perspective.
... Indeed, the idea that consumers use the quantity of food others choose as a strong input into their own choice is well-established (Vartanian et al. 2015). In addition, dyads are shown to match each other's quantity of candy consumption or financial indulgence in an effort to enhance affiliation (Lowe and Haws 2014). We propose that portion size is an ordinal attribute and suggest that the well-established portion size finding may represent a broader phenomenon whereby consumers match on ordinal attributes more generally. ...
The authors propose a new conceptual basis for predicting when and why consumers match others’ consumption choices. Specifically, they distinguish between ordinal (“ranked”) versus nominal (“unranked”) attributes and propose that consumers are more likely to match others on ordinal than on nominal attributes. Eleven studies, involving a range of different ways of operationalizing ordinal versus nominal attributes, collectively support this hypothesis. The authors’ conceptualization helps resolve divergent findings in prior literature and provides guidance to managers on how to leverage information about prior customers’ choices and employees’ recommendations to shape and predict future customers’ choices. Further, the authors find process evidence that this effect is driven in part by consumers’ beliefs that a failure to match on ordinal (but not nominal) attributes will lead to social discomfort for one or both parties. Although the primary focus is on food choices, the effects are also demonstrated in other domains, extending the generalizability of the findings and implications for managerial practice and theory. Finally, the conceptual framework offers additional paths for future research.
... By contrast, we will argue that consumer behavior theory would predict that Emily is more likely to select the group experience and maybut only in some circumstancesenjoy it more. While most of the consumer psychology literature on social consumption has focused on two main streams: 1) individual behaviors in public settings (e.g., Argo, Dahl, & Morales, 2006;Ariely & Levav, 2000;McFerran & Argo, 2014;McFerran et al. 2010;Ratner & Hamilton, 2015;Ratner & Kahn, 2002) and 2) differences in choices for oneself vs. others (Laran 2010;Leonhardt, Keller, & Pechmann, 2011;Steffel & Le Boeuf, 2014;Polman 2012;Stone et al., 2013;Polman & Vohs, 2016), an emerging literature on joint consumption behaviors has looked at the decision-making process associated with joint experiences and shared goal pursuit (Etkin 2016;Dzhogleva & Lamberton, 2014;Huang, Broniarczyk, Zhang, & Beruchashvili, 2014;Lowe & Haws, 2014) and the affective outcomes obtained from joint experiences (Bhargave & Montgomery, 2013;Caprariello & Reis, 2013;Raghunathan & Corfman, 2006;Ramanathan & McGill, 2007). In analyzing this latter research, the present chapter identifies the drivers and effects of preferences for shared consumption experiences. ...
Every day people engage in numerous shared experiences – from having lunch with colleagues to going on a vacation with family. Despite the ubiquity of such experiences, little is known about how consumers organize and manage such experiences. In this chapter, we review past literature as well as our own research to answer two main questions: (1) why do consumers choose to share ownership over an experience by co-creating it with others, and (2) how could shared experiences be managed by the group in order to maximize the satisfaction obtained for all participants?
... By connecting this consumer construct to a well-established marker of psychological well-being, our findings support the importance of consumer behavioral constructs to the health and well-being literature (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2002;Fredrickson and Joiner 2002). Second, we explore how brand preferences intersect with relationship contexts, contributing to burgeoning efforts to understand how consumer behavior both shapes and is shaped by social relationships (Corfman and Lehmann 1987;Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Lowe and Haws 2014;Luo 2005;Park 1982;Raghunathan and Corfman 2006;Steffel and Le Boeuf 2014). Third, our findings illustrate the importance of brand preferences in relationships. ...
Individuals often evaluate, purchase, and consume brands in the presence of others, including close others. Yet relatively little is known about the role brand preferences play in relationships. In the present research, the authors explore how the novel concept of brand compatibility, defined as the extent to which individuals have similar brand preferences (e.g., both partners prefer the same brand of soda), influences life satisfaction. The authors propose that when brand compatibility is high, life satisfaction will also be high. Conversely, because low brand compatibility may be a source of conflict for the relationship, the authors propose that it will be associated with reduced life satisfaction. Importantly, the authors predict that the effects of brand compatibility on conflict and life satisfaction will depend upon relationship power. Across multiple studies and methodologies, including experimental designs (studies 2, 3, 5) and dyadic data from real-life couples (studies 1, 4, 6), the authors test and find support for their hypotheses. By exploring how a potentially unique form of compatibility influences life satisfaction, including identifying a key moderator and an underlying mechanism, the current research contributes to the literatures on branding, close relationships, consumer well-being, and relationship power. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
... This self-control task represents an implicit tradeoff between an immediate reward (chocolate) and a long-term reward (better health). Resisting tempting food such as M&Ms is a commonly used self-control task in the existing literature (e.g., Lowe & Haws, 2014;McFerran, Dahl, Fitzsimons, & Morales, 2010). We hypothesized (H2) that both naïfs and sophisticates would eat more chocolate than time-consistents. ...
... Previous research on parallel self-control decisions (i.e., when a temptation is faced simultaneously by multiple people but each person makes an independent choice) supports this notion. Specifically, individuals express greater affiliation toward someone when they both indulge or abstain together versus situations where one person indulges and the other abstains (Lowe and Haws 2014). The implication is that two spenders may bond over partnering in crime (i.e., "let's splurge!"), whereas two savers may bond over moral support (i.e., "at least we won't feel guilty"). ...
The past five years have witnessed a surge of interdisciplinary research aimed at understanding and improving consumer financial decision making. Scholars in this area attempt to enhance consumer welfare by uncovering and altering situational and contextual factors that drive individuals to make financially suboptimal decisions. Naturally, most research in this nascent field has focused on how individuals approach financial decisions. However, financial decisions are often subject to social influence and are made within the context of existing relationships (e.g., between spouses). Moreover, the outcomes of such decisions can be important determinants of relationship satisfaction. Thus, my dissertation provides a more complete understanding of consumer financial decision making by examining how financial decisions influence the development of relationships (Essay 1) and how relationship dynamics influence financial decisions (Essay 2). I find that others??? chronic spending habits shape the inferences we draw about them (e.g., their perceived general self-control), which ultimately influences initial romantic and physical attraction. I also find that couples make more optimal debt repayment decisions working together than individual couple members working on their own. Unlike stranger-pairs who lack information about each other???s relative strengths and weaknesses, established couples benefit from placing greater weight on the preferences of the partner with greater financial expertise. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.
... For instance, pro-relationship motivations trump self-control preferences such that pairs indulge more in order to affiliate [56 ]. Additionally, consumers may bond over matched self-control decisions made in parallel, choosing co-indulgence or co-abstinence based on whichever produces the greatest affiliation [57]. Within committed close relationships, perceiving more (vs. ...
... Importantly, this work echoes the increasing interest in exploring shared goal pursuit decisions (e.g., Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Lowe and Haws 2014). In this stream of work, researchers examined how individual factors (e.g., self-control tendency) could influence one's self-control decisions in pairs, as well as the downstream effects of joint decisions (e.g., coindulgence and co-abstinence) on their relationship. ...
... Importantly, this work echoes the increasing interest in exploring shared goal pursuit decisions (e.g., Dzhogleva and Lamberton 2014;Lowe and Haws 2014). In this stream of work, researchers examined how individual factors (e.g., self-control tendency) could influence one's self-control decisions in pairs, as well as the downstream effects of joint decisions (e.g., coindulgence and coabstinence) on their relationship. ...
This research examines how individuals’ relationship with others sharing the pursuit of the same individual goal may change from the early to later stages of the pursuit. In one qualitative field study, one lab study, and a 7-day field experiment, consumers demonstrated a tendency to view others in shared pursuit as “friends” to seek support from and alleviate uncertainties during the early stage of the pursuit; however, once they reached the advanced stage and felt more certain about how to approach and complete the goal, this closeness significantly reduced. This shift in the relationship further influenced consumers’ interaction with others, such as the sharing of helpful tips and information. The findings provide insights into the autonomous information-sharing behaviors of consumers in shared goal pursuit and the key drivers behind the effectiveness of shared-pursuit programs (e.g., Weight Watchers, AA).
Much can be learned from studying the effectiveness of consumers’ justifications for their behavior across multiple sequential choice occasions, but research on this topic is scarce. In response, the present research puts forth a conceptual framework for addressing vice-virtue dilemmas through the lens of repeated justifications for indulgent choice based on the notion of perceived exceptionality over time and the salient prior decisions that help to determine this exceptionality. The authors discuss their framework for a broader understanding of indulgent choice and decision-making patterns, as well as possible process mechanisms and specific avenues for future research.
This research investigates when and why consumers purchase products with social costs (e.g., environmental harm). Six studies demonstrate that upper-class consumers are more likely to purchase a product with social costs when it has a higher price due to experiencing greater entitlement, which we term ‘the price entitlement effect,’ allowing for purchase justification. In contrast, lower-class consumers do not feel entitled to purchase a product with social costs when it is higher-priced. This effect occurs because upper-class consumers tend to have a greater self-focus with a higher price entitling them to more resources than others. Consistent with the entitlement mechanism, when egalitarian values are made salient, the price entitlement effect is mitigated, reducing upper-class consumers’ purchase of socially costly products. Notably, the price entitlement effect occurs only when products have social costs rather than for all higher-priced products. However, when the social costs of a product are severe, price entitlement does not sufficiently justify product purchase. This research provides theoretical and practical insights regarding when and why higher price entitles purchase of socially costly products, contributing to research on social class and socially responsible (vs. costly) consumption as well as choice justification.
Food manufacturers recently started labeling certain multi‐portion packages of indulgent goods as meant for sharing. This type of labeling is, at face value, an indicator that the product is not intended entirely for personal consumption. While this packaging strategy aims to assist consumers in modulating their food intake, empirical evidence does not exist to support such a claim. Across four studies, we present and test a conceptual framework to explain why sharing labels may ironically encourage (rather than reduce) personal consumption of high‐appeal foods by eliciting consumption threat, or a sense of competitive urgency to consume the food because other humans pose a threat to one’s own consumption. Our work contributes to the literature by documenting the indulgent consequence of sharing labels and providing evidence of a psychological link between sharing‐cues and perceptions of consumption‐related competition. Our findings also caution marketers and policy makers on the use of sharing‐related labels.
Licensing is a well-documented form of justifying individual indulgent choices, but less is known about how licensing affects food decision-making patterns over time. Accordingly, we examine whether consumers incorporate licensing strategically and deliberately in their long-term consumption patterns and identify reward programs as a context in which strategic licensing is likely to occur. We propose that members with lower-calorie consumption patterns strategically indulge more on reward purchase occasions, and that forethought is required for such an effect to occur. A longitudinal study analyzing 272,677 real food purchases made by 7,828 consumers over a 14-month period provides striking evidence of our key proposition. An exploration of the inter-purchase time-related aspect of purchase acceleration suggests that forethought on behalf of consumers is necessary for strategic licensing to occur. A subsequent experimental study (N = 605) comprising five consecutive choice occasions provides additional evidence of forethought by demonstrating that strategic licensing occurs only when expected (but not windfall reward) occasions are involved, and by showing that anticipated negative affect for not indulging is the driving mechanism. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for consumers, managers, and public policy makers.
Research has demonstrated that after making high goal progress consumers feel liberated to engage in goal-inconsistent behaviors. But what happens after consumers make high progress in the context of joint goal pursuit? We examine how jointly-made progress towards a joint goal pursued by couples affects subsequent individually-made goal-relevant decisions. Across five experiments with both lab-created couples and married participants and financial data from a couples' money management mobile app, we show that after making high progress on a joint goal (vs. low or no progress), higher relationship power partners are more likely to disengage from the joint goal to pursue personal concerns (e.g., indulge themselves or pursue individual goals), whereas lower relationship power partners do not disengage from the joint goal and continue engaging in goal-consistent actions that maintain its pursuit. We elucidate the underlying mechanism, providing evidence that the joint goal progress boosts the relational self-concept of high (but not low) relationship power partners and this drives the effects. Importantly, we demonstrate the effectiveness of two theory-grounded and easily implementable interventions which promote goal-consistent behaviors among high relationship power consumers in the context of joint savings goals.
Historically, wisdom has been considered a leading character strength for guiding personal well‐being and the greater good. It has also been routinely considered domain‐specific. Hence, consumer researchers should not just borrow conceptualizations or measures of general wisdom from the social sciences or measures of specific wisdom from non‐consumption contexts. Drawing from recent exploratory research on consumer wisdom by Luchs and Mick (2018), we use survey data to test and refine their multi‐dimensional framework as we develop a Consumer Wisdom Scale (CWS). Across five studies we demonstrate the discriminant, nomological, predictive, and incremental validity of our CWS. We show that it explains unique variance across a variety of indicators of well‐being (e.g., satisfaction with life) in comparison to other measures previously associated with well‐being (e.g., relationship support). Further, we show that our CWS, versus a general wisdom measure, is more associated with select behaviors relevant to personal well‐being and the greater good (e.g., exercise, healthy eating, and financial savings). Closing discussion summarizes our findings and limitations, and suggests future research.
Consumers frequently make choices for family members they take care of or from whom they receive care (e.g., their children or partner), yet marketing research has given little attention to how these other-oriented choices might impact the chooser’s self-indulgence. In this research we consider familial caregiving relationships as a relevant and ubiquitous context of other-oriented choices and identify the role of the chooser (i.e., caregiver versus care-receiver) as an important moderator that determines when virtuous other-oriented choices within caregiving relationships lead to licensing and when they encourage consistent virtuous consumption behaviors.
Three studies demonstrate that making virtuous food choices for others affect the chooser’s subsequent self-regulatory behavior in two ways: After making a virtuous choice for a care-receiving other (e.g., a young child), caregivers (e.g., parents) are more likely to license, and thus to subsequently self-indulge (Study 1, 3). In contrast, care-receivers are more likely to act consistently with an initial virtuous choice for the caregiver and thus are less likely to self-indulge (Study 2, 3).
Our findings extend research on moral licensing and consistency effects by demonstrating that—within familial caregiving relationships—the degree to which one receives and provides care may determine when choosers engage in licensing and when they act consistently with an initial virtuous other-oriented choice.
While joint ethical violations are fairly common in the marketplace and in workplace, sports-team, and academic settings, little research has studied such collaborative wrongdoings. This work compares the joint ethical decisions of pairs of people (i.e., dyads) to those of individual decision makers. Four experiments demonstrate that dyads in which the partners do not share a social bond with each other behave less ethically than individuals do. The authors propose that this effect occurs because joint ethical violations offer a means to socially bond with others. Consistent with this theory, they demonstrate that the dyads’ subethicality relative to individuals is attenuated (1) if the dyad partners establish rapport prior to the joint decision making, and (2) in decision-making contexts in which social bonding goals are less active—namely, making a decision with an out-group versus in-group member. Taken together, this research provides novel theoretical insights into the social aspects of unethical behavior, offers suggestions to improve ethicality in joint decisions, and raises important questions for future research.
Purpose
The topic of impulsive buying has been studied by researchers for nearly 70 years and made a large number of valuable discoveries. However, most of the existing research studies focused on the impulse buying behavior in the context of single person shopping from the perspective of individuals and lack of research on impulse buying behavior in the context of shopping with others from the perspective of communities. Given that consumers' decision-making in the presence of others is significantly different from that when they are alone, it is necessary to probe into the internal mechanism of impulse purchase behavior in the context of shopping with others.
Design/methodology/approach
In total three experiments were used to test the hypothesis. Study 1 examines the differences in the motivation of impulsive desire among consumers with different impulsive traits. A total of 240 undergraduates were recruited to participate in the study. The purpose of study 2 is to examine the effect of external attribution on consumer guilt, which leads to the failure of self-control. A total of 256 undergraduate students participated in the study 2. The purpose of study 3 was to test the moderating effect of the intensity of ties on the impact of goal on impulse purchase intention. A total of 240 subjects participated in study 3.
Findings
When shopping with companions, consumers with different impulse traits have different initial impulses in the face of temptation, but they may have a similar higher willingness to buy on impulse. There are two reasons: on the one hand, consumers with high-impulsive traits produce a higher desire to buy on impulse driven by hedonistic motivation. In contrast, consumers with low-impulse traits will also have a higher impulse purchase desire driven by prosocial motivation. On the other hand, external attribution can lead to the failure of self-control and impulse purchase behavior. However, the above effects only occur when there is a strong connection between consumers.
Research limitations/implications
First, this paper simulates the phenomenon of impulse purchase in the relational situation through experimental methods; if the research based on the real consumption scenario can be carried out, the research results will be more convincing. Second, whether there are other intermediary mechanisms, such as whether external attribution can affect consumers' self-control through perceived social support, need to be further tested. Finally, it is also necessary to examine the role of other regulatory variables, such as consumers' sense of power, the type of self-construct, etc., and these research clues will further enrich the research on impulsive buying in the context of relationship.
Practical implications
First, businesses can launch more accurate marketing strategies for consumers who are shopping together, find ways to reduce consumers' attention to their own responsibility or fault and guide them to conduct external attribution to their impulsive consumption behavior. The findings also have implications for consumers to control their own impulse purchase behavior. In addition, the results of this study can provide new insights into the government to prevent social crisis and carry out consumer education.
Originality/value
The key contribution of the current research is that, unlike existing studies that focus on the exploration of impulsive buying in the context of single person shopping, this study explores the internal mechanism and causal process on how consumers' impulsive buying behavior occurs when shopping with others. The authors further make a contribution to a self-control theory by demonstrating that external attribution has a negative effect on self-control in relational situations. Finally, this study also finds that the intensity of ties can moderate the impacts of focus goals on impulsive buying behavior.
Self‐control is a prominent topic in consumer research, where it is often conceptualized as the abstinence from hedonic consumption. We examine whether this conceptualization accurately captures consumers’ experiences of self‐control conflicts/failures in light of seminal self‐control theories in economics and psychology. Rejecting that notion, we argue that self‐control failures are choices in violation of superordinate long‐term goals accompanied by anticipated regret, rather than choices of hedonic over utilitarian consumption. This conceptualization has important methodological, theoretical, and practical implications. Methodologically, it highlights the need for experimental paradigms with higher construct validity. Theoretically, it helps elucidate how self‐control is distinct from impatience and self‐regulation. Practically, it provides a rich set of implications for deducing interventions on the individual and public policy level to help consumers exert self‐control.
We examine how the interplay of two partners’ interpersonal orientations (selfish vs. altruistic) in a decision‐making dyad impacts the extent to which the joint decision matches each partners’ individual a priori preferences. Two experiments, in which we manipulate and measure interpersonal orientations, as well as examine real consumption decisions, demonstrate the benefit of mismatching interpersonal orientations (selfish‐altruistic) in dyadic decisions. Specifically, altruistic and selfish consumers reach joint decisions that better reflect their individual preferences when working with a partner who has the opposite interpersonal orientation (heterogeneous dyad) versus a matching one (homogeneous dyad). Initial evidence suggests that this effect occurs because homogeneous dyads are more prone to engage in negotiation (communication that involves departure from one's initial position to a mutually‐serving position) than heterogeneous dyads. This leads homogeneous dyads to focus more on equally preferred options than on their own most preferred options, which pushes them further down both partners’ preferences lists. This research contributes to the literature on joint decision‐making and has important implications for consumer well‐being.
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In empirical marketing research that does not rely on fully randomized experiments, control variables are an important tool to rule out rival alternative explanations for the observed relationships. Despite their importance for causal inference, control variables often receive little attention from either applied researchers or methodologists. At the same time, overviews of control variable practices in neighboring disciplines demonstrate that researchers struggle with selecting, analyzing, and interpreting control variable results. In response, this article combines a synthesis of the theoretical knowledge on control variables with a review of control variable practices. Against this background, we develop and discuss sixteen recommendations for control variable use in marketing research. © 2018 Marketing, Zeitschrift fur Forschung und Praxis. All Rights Reserved.
Consumers nowadays have easy and rich access to information about
social others who are pursuing goals similar to their own (e.g., through a Fitbit device, the Endomondo mobile app, stickK.com). This research focuses on objective social information during goal striving (e.g., performance data and progress information of others) and shows that this information may not always be welcome. The author finds that when people are in the middle of a goal pursuit journey (vs. when they have just begun or are about to complete their goal), to circumvent potentially negative comparisons, they avoid information about social referents who are relevant (pursuing the same goal), proximal (in the same stage of goal pursuit), and superior. Head turn frequency, eye movements, and consumers’ direct choices in the lab and in the field are used to document a U-shaped pattern of information avoidance behavior, which
paradoxically contributes to the phenomenon whereby goal pursuers become “stuck in the middle” of their pursuits. These findings connect the information avoidance literature with the psychophysics of goal pursuit and shed light on the questions of when and why people may be undermining their goal striving by avoiding relevant, motivating social information.
Researchers from many disciplines have studied the underlying processes of self-control in which one must override an immediate desire or urge in order to reach longer-term goals. Within consumer behavior, such decisions often involve the domains of spending and eating. In this review, I discuss recent research on strategies and interventions that have been tested to help enhance self-control, organizing these around their primary temporal perspective (i.e., future-, present-, or past-focused). I suggest possibilities for future research and emphasize that situational and individual differences (particularly in self-control) can interact to determine the effectiveness of consumer self-control strategies.
Researchers studying decisions about food utilize a wide variety of measures to assess self-control outcomes in experimental studies. However, it is often unclear whether or not the chosen dependent variables truly implicate self-regulatory mechanisms in decision making. In the present research, we provide a conceptual framework for evaluating self-control outcome measures, concentrating specifically on the domain of food and eating self-control decisions. We propose and empirically examine the essential characteristics [i.e., (i) recognized as self-control relevant by study population, (ii) related to individual differences in self-control, and (iii) recognized as self-control relevant by individual] of good self-control outcome measures and provide specific methodological recommendations (including the "rank-then-choose" method) for capturing exhibited self-control in the domain of food decision making. Our conceptual developments and recommendations seek to enhance the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of food-related decision research.
The escalating obesity crisis has resulted in a wide range of efforts to develop more effective prevention approaches. This review article explores the potential for the concept of food pleasure to take centre stage in social marketing programs that aim to encourage healthy eating. Literature relating to food motivations is reviewed and the various strategic phases involved in developing social marketing programs are outlined in the context of incorporating a food pleasure focus.
With friends, family members, romantic partners, and coworkers, people form interdependent units, shaping each other's everyday experiences. According to the Transactive Goal Dynamics model, goal pursuit occurs within these units, not apart from them. As a result, a great deal of goal pursuit is interpersonally driven and influenced. Although historically, social psychological research has focused on the intrapersonal drivers of goal pursuit, recent research has also highlighted the interpersonal drivers. In this article, we review research that goes beyond the independent agent view of goal pursuit, exploring how people possess and pursue goals that are affected by and oriented toward their relationship partners.
Can we rely on our high self-control friends to help us make better joint spending and diet decisions? The current research reports seven studies showing that in joint decisions, homogeneous high self-control pairs make less indulgent choices than both homogeneous low self-control and mixed pairs. However, there is no difference in the self-regulatory patterns of the latter two dyad types: having one high self-control partner in a dyad does not lead to more restraint than having none. The authors argue that this pattern exists because higher self-control individuals tend to prioritize prorelationship behaviors over their personal preference for restraint. Therefore, they assent to the lower self-control partner’s more indulgent preferences. Consistent with this explanation, results suggest that interventions that change individuals’ prorelationship motivation can alter this pattern. Given the range of decisions consumers may make in couples or pairs, this research has implications for consumers, marketers, and public-policy makers.
Why do millions of consumers in the United States struggling with the consequences of overconsumption believe that membership in a support group is crucial to their well-being? We examine how Weight Watchers, the world’s largest support group, aids its members’ attempts at managing their overweight condition. This article advances the view that in the United States, support groups that are organized around issues of overconsumption, such as Weight Watchers, resonate with members’ quest for well-being in light of the spiritual-therapeutic model. The spiritual-therapeutic model denotes the understanding of well-being inscribed within the contemporary American cultural milieu. We find that among Weight Watchers members in the United States, the support group acts as a venue for angst-alleviating therapeutic confession, fosters the enactment of the support group as a benevolent system of therapeutic oversight, and facilitates a revitalizing practice of autotherapeutic testimonial.
It is common for authors discovering a significant interaction of a measured variable X with a manipulated variable Z to examine simple effects of Z at different levels of X. These “spotlight” tests are often misunderstood even in the simplest cases, and it appears that consumer researchers are unsure how to extend them to more complex designs. We explain the general principles of spotlight tests, show that they rely on familiar regression techniques, and provide a tutorial showing how to apply these tests across an array of experimental designs. Rather than following the common practice of reporting spotlight tests at one standard deviation above and below the mean of X, we recommend that when X has focal values, researchers report spotlight tests at those focal values. When X does not have focal values, we recommend researchers report ranges of significance using a version of Johnson and Neyman’s (1936) test we call a “floodlight”.
Asked 20 female and 38 male 1st-yr college students to maintain a daily record of their social interactions for 2 wks early in the fall semester and for 2 wks late in the spring semester. Across all interactions, females decreased time per day in interaction more than males did, primarily by reducing the length of interactions, and reported decreased satisfaction with these interactions. In interactions with 3 best same-sex friends, females also decreased length more than males did but maintained a higher level of satisfaction. Number of interactions with same-sex best friend decreased markedly for females but not for males. Results show that females socialize more intensely in a new environment than males and make use of the same-sex best friend to deal with the social stimulation. Differences between the sexes on interaction measures in the spring were minimal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the customer is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers. This paper delves ethnographically into a brand community and tests key findings through quantitative methods. Conceptually the study reveals insights that differ from prior research in four important ways. First, it expands the definition of a brand community to entities and relationships neglected by previous research. Second, it treats vital characteristics of brand communities, such as geo-temporal concentrations and the richness of social context, as dynamic rather than static phenomena. Third, it demonstrates that marketers can strengthen brand communities by facilitating shared customer experiences in ways that alter those dynamic characteristics. Fourth, it yields a new and richer conceptualization of customer loyalty as integration in a brand community.
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 experiments, we tested the hypothesis that social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation. Relative to controls, excluded participants were more likely to buy a product symbolic of group membership (but not practical or self-gift items), tailor their spending preferences to the preferences of an interaction partner, spend money on an unappealing food item favored by a peer, and report being willing to try an illegal drug, but only when doing so boosted their chances of commencing social connections. Overall, results suggest that socially excluded people sacrifice personal and financial well-being for the sake of social well-being.
Since many hedonic stimuli (e.g., movies, vacations, food, etc.) are consumed with others, it is important to know how social influence affects the enjoyment of shared experiences. Extrapolation from informational and normative influences suggests that enjoyment is enhanced when others offer positive opinions, and diminished when they offer negative opinions about shared stimuli. We propose an alternative model. Building on the need to belong (cf. Baumeister and Leary 1995) and the need for accuracy (cf. Trope 1975), we predict that enjoyment from sharing stimuli depends on consumer's perceived interpersonal agreement about the shared stimuli - with congruence of opinions enhancing, and incongruence diminishing, enjoyment of the shared experience. Results from three experiments support our predictions and indicate that, under some circumstances, social influence can operate in opposite directions on judgments of shared stimuli and on the enjoyment of sharing them.
The actor–partner interdependence model (APIM) is a model of dyadic relationships that integrates a conceptual view of interdependence with the appropriate statistical techniques for measuring and testing it. In this article we present the APIM as a general, longitudinal model for measuring bidirectional effects in interpersonal relationships. We also present three different approaches to testing the model. The statistical analysis of the APIM is illustrated using longitudinal data on relationship specific attachment security from 203 mother–adolescent dyads. The results support the view that interpersonal influence on attachment security is bidirectional. Moreover, consistent with a hypothesis from attachment theory, the degree to which a child’s attachment security is influenced by his or her primary caregiver is found to diminish with age.
Existing measures of peer pressure and conformity may not be suitable for screening large numbers of adolescents efficiently, and few studies have differentiated peer pressure from theoretically related constructs, such as conformity or wanting to be popular. We developed and validated short measures of peer pressure, peer conformity, and popularity in a sample (n = 148) of adolescent boys and girls in grades 11 to 13. Results showed that all measures constructed for the study were internally consistent. Although all measures of peer pressure, conformity, and popularity were intercorrelated, peer pressure and peer conformity were stronger predictors of risk behaviors than measures assessing popularity, general conformity, or dysphoria. Despite a simplified scoring format, peer conformity vignettes were equal to if not better than the peer pressure measures in predicting risk behavior. Findings suggest that peer pressure and peer conformity are potentially greater risk factors than a need to be popular, and that both peer pressure and peer conformity can be measured with short scales suitable for large-scale testing.
This study was designed to examine ongoing close friendships among same-sex adults. An analysis of frequency and depth of conversational topics was undertaken. The self-reports of female participants showed that they converse more frequently than the male participants about intimate topics and daily and shared activities. Sex differences on depth of topic discussion also emerged, with females reporting greater depth in topics involving personal and family matters. Sports was the only topic for which males, rather than females, reported both more frequent discussion and conversation in greater depth. The topic frequency data were factor analyzed for each sex group. The factor analyses indicated patterns for the males on personal issues, sociocultural issues, and activity and patterns for females on domestic matters, personal issues, and worldly issues. The results of the study generally support sex-stereotypical assumptions about the nature of male-male and female-female conversations.
The present research tested the hypothesis that perception of others' self-control is an indicator of their trustworthiness. The authors investigated whether, in interactions between strangers as well as in established relationships, people detect another person's self-control, and whether this perception of self-control, in turn, affects trust. Results of 4 experiments supported these hypotheses. The first 2 experiments revealed that participants detected another person's trait of self-control. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that participants also detected the temporary depletion of another person's self-control. Confirming the authors' predictions, perceived trait and state self-control, in turn, influenced people's judgment of the other person's trustworthiness. In line with previous research, these findings support the positive value of self-control for relationships and highlight the role of perceived self-control for the development of a fundamental relationship factor: trust.
In the present research, we examined why some people have more difficulty than others in staying faithful to their romantic partners. Three studies supported our main prediction that executive control is associated with romantically involved individuals' ability to stay faithful. Study 1 showed that participants with a higher level of executive control reported less difficulty in staying faithful to their partners than did those with lower levels of executive control. In Study 2, romantically involved male participants were placed in a waiting room together with an attractive female confederate. Results showed that participants with a higher level of executive control showed less flirting behavior with the confederate than did those with lower levels of executive control. Study 3 demonstrated that a higher level of executive control was related to a lower expressed desire to meet an attractive other, but only for romantically involved participants. Together, these studies showed that executive control helps romantically involved individuals to deal with the lure of attractive alternatives.
This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of the other consumer. We find that people choose a larger portion following another consumer who first selects a large quantity but that this portion is significantly smaller if the other is obese than if she is thin. We also find that the adjustment is more pronounced for consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem and that it is attenuated under cognitive load. (c) 2009 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
In this article, we examine how the shifting motivational priority of personal goals affects relationship closeness. We hypothesize that people will draw closer to significant others who are instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) for a goal that has not been progressing well-a goal that is thus high in motivational priority. Once the goal has progressed successfully, we predict that people will cease to draw closer to instrumental others. Five studies support these predictions by showing that the impact of goal progress on reduced preference for instrumental others (Experiment 1) depends on the framing of progress as partial attainment (vs. greater commitment, Experiment 2) and the intention to balance across goals (vs. focus on one goal; Experiments 3-4). We find that moving away from instrumental others post progress is functional, in that it allows for drawing closer to those who are instrumental for alternative goals (Experiment 5).
To establish what it takes to forgive, the present research focused on the cognitive underpinnings of the forgiveness process. We conducted four studies that examined and supported the prediction that executive functioning (a set of cognitive control processes) facilitates forgiveness. First, a correlational study revealed a positive relation between executive functioning and dispositional forgiveness (Study 1). Second, a longitudinal study demonstrated that executive functioning predicts the development of forgiveness over a period of 5 weeks after the offense (Study 2). Finally, two experiments examined when and why executive functioning facilitates forgiveness. Specifically, and in line with predictions, Studies 3 and 4 showed that executive functioning facilitates forgiveness only in the case of relatively severe (as compared with mild) offenses. Furthermore, Study 4 provided evidence for a psychological mechanism underlying the relation between executive functioning and forgiveness by demonstrating the mediating role of rumination about the offense. Implications of these findings for the literature on forgiveness and the role of executive functioning in interpersonal relationships more generally are discussed.
The current work examined how social factors influence self-control. Current conceptions of state self-control treat it largely as a function of regulatory capacity. The authors propose that state self-control might also be influenced by social factors because of regulatory accessibility. Studies 1 through 4 provide evidence that individuals' state self-control is influenced by the trait and state self-control of salient others such that thinking of others with good trait or state self-control leads to increases in state self-control and thinking of others with bad trait or state self-control leads to decreases in state self-control. Study 5 provides evidence that the salience of significant others influences both regulatory accessibility and state self-control. Combined, these studies suggest that the effects of social influences on state self-control occur through multiple mechanisms.
This research explores goal-related categorization processes as part of a three-phase model encompassing both antecedents (goal selection) and consequences (purchase likelihood). In each phase, we identify conditions under which self-control goals (indulgence or restriction goals) and trait self-control may either correspond or conflict. Three experiments demonstrate that when no trait-goal conflict occurs, categorization patterns and purchase intentions are consistent with self-control tendencies. However, when conflicts exist between trait self-control and goals, individuals engage in motivated categorization or revert to behaviors consistent with trait self-control. Interestingly, results suggest that either conflict resolution mechanism may undermine the likelihood of goal attainment. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
This article explores the phenomenon of "hyperopia," or an aversion to indulgence, as introduced by Kivetz and Keinan ( 2006 ) and Kivetz and Simonson ( 2002 ). We first develop a measure to capture hyperopia as an individual difference. Three empirical studies use this measure to demonstrate that hyperopia and high self-control are both conceptually and empirically distinct. Further, we show that altering the level at which an action or item is construed can make an indulgent goal or luxury product more appealing to the high hyperopia consumer by influencing its value in terms of an attractive long-term outcome. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
This article proposes that supposedly farsighted (hyperopic) choices of virtue over vice evoke increasing regret over time. We demonstrate that greater temporal separation between a choice and its assessment enhances the regret (or anticipated regret) of virtuous decisions (e.g., choosing work over pleasure). We argue that this finding reflects the differential impact of time on the affective determinants of self-control regrets. In particular, we show that greater temporal perspective attenuates emotions of indulgence guilt but accentuates wistful feelings of missing out on the pleasures of life. We examine alternative explanations, including action versus inaction regrets and levels of construal. (c) 2006 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
The purpose of this article is to determine whether the positive association between social support and well-being is attributable more to an overall beneficial effect of support (main- or direct-effect model) or to a process of support protecting persons from potentially adverse effects of stressful events (buffering model). The review of studies is organized according to (a) whether a measure assesses support structure or function, and (b) the degree of specificity (vs. globality) of the scale. By structure we mean simply the existence of relationships, and by function we mean the extent to which one’s interpersonal relationships provide particular resources. Special attention is paid to methodological characteristics that are requisite for a fair comparison of the models. The review concludes that there is evidence consistent with both models. Evidence for a buffering model is found when the social support measure assesses the perceived availability of interpersonal resources that are responsive to the needs elicited by stressful events. Evidence for a main effect model is found when the support measure assesses a person’s degree of integration in a large social network. Both conceptualizations of social support are correct in some respects, but each represents a different process through which social support may affect well-being. Implications of these conclusions for theories of social support processes and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.
A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.
182 undergraduates described personal embarrassment, shame, and guilt experiences and rated these experiences on structural and phenomenological dimensions. Contrary to popular belief, shame was no more likely than guilt to be experienced in "public" situations; all 3 emotions typically occurred in social contexts, but a significant proportion of shame and guilt events occurred when respondents were alone. Analyses of participants' phenomenological ratings clearly demonstrated that shame, guilt, and embarrassment are not merely different terms for the same affective experience. In particular, embarrassment was a relatively distant neighbor of shame and guilt, and the differences among the 3 could not be explained simply by intensity of affect or by degree of moral transgression. Finally, participants generally were their own harshest critics in each type of event, evaluating themselves more negatively than they believed others did.
A 2-system framework is proposed for understanding the processes that enable--and undermine--self-control or "willpower" as exemplified in the delay of gratification paradigm. A cool, cognitive "know" system and a hot, emotional "go" system are postulated. The cool system is cognitive, emotionally neutral, contemplative, flexible, integrated, coherent, spatiotemporal, slow, episodic, and strategic. It is the seat of self-regulation and self-control. The hot system is the basis of emotionality, fears as well as passions--impulsive and reflexive--initially controlled by innate releasing stimuli (and, thus, literally under "stimulus control"): it is fundamental for emotional (classical) conditioning and undermines efforts at self-control. The balance between the hot and cool systems is determined by stress, developmental level, and the individual's self-regulatory dynamics. The interactions between these systems allow explanation of findings on willpower from 3 decades of research.
Research and theory on the role of emotion and regulation in morality have received considerable attention in the last decade. Much relevant work has concerned the role of moral emotions in moral behavior. Research on differences between embarrassment, guilt, and shame and their relations to moral behavior is reviewed, as is research on the association of these emotions with negative emotionality and regulation.
Recent issues concerning the role of such empathy-related responses as sympathy and personal distress to prosocial and antisocial behavior are discussed, as is the relation of empathy-related responding to situational and dispositional emotionality and regulation. The development and socialization of guilt, shame, and empathy also are discussed briefly. In addition, the role of nonmoral emotions (e.g. anger and sadness), including moods and dispositional differences in negative emotionality and its regulation, in morally relevant behavior, is reviewed.
Do self-control situations pit controlled reason against impulsive emotion, or do some emotions support the controlled choice? A pilot study of self-control attitudes found ambivalence between hedonic affect associated with short-term perspectives and self-conscious affect associated with the long term. In Study 1, negative self-conscious affect accompanied higher self-control among delayed-cost dilemmas ("guilty pleasures") but not delayed-benefit dilemmas ("grim necessities"). Study 2 showed that hedonic affect was more accessible than was self-conscious affect, but this difference was less among high self-control dilemmas. In Study 3. unobtrusively primed self-conscious emotion words caused dieters to eat less if the emotions were negative, more if positive. Hedonic positive and negative emotion words had the opposite effect. Self-conscious emotional associations, then, can support self-control if brought to mind before the chance to act.
Relations of social goal pursuit to (a) social acceptance by teachers and peers, (b) prosocial and irresponsible classroom behavior, and (c) perceived support from teachers and peers were examined. Ss were 475 6th and 7th graders. Students' pursuit of academic prosocial goals (to help classmates with academic problems) was related positively to peer acceptance. Pursuit of academic responsibility goals (adhering to classroom rules) was related negatively to peer acceptance but positively to teacher acceptance. These findings reflected in part, significant relations between social goal pursuit and displays of social behavior. Perceived support from teachers and peers was also related positively to social goal pursuit, although findings differed as a function of type and source of support.
The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively rind unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. The authors suggest that the mechanism involved is the perception-behavior link, the recently documented finding (e.g., J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996) that the mere perception of another' s behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself Experiment 1 showed that the motor behavior of participants unintentionally matched that of strangers with whom they worked on a task. Experiment 2 had confederates mimic the posture and movements of participants and showed that mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners. Experiment 3 showed that dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people.
The study reports a factor analytic investigation of the interpersonal attraction construct. Two‐hundred and fifteen subjects completed 30 Likert‐type, seven‐step scales concerning an acquaintance. Factor analysis indicated three dimensions of the interpersonal attraction construct which were labeled “task” “social” and “physical.” The results of this study and four replications suggest that the resulting 15‐item instrument can be expected to measure reliably three dimensions of interpersonal attraction.
The prevalence of obesity has increased substantially over the past 30 years. We performed a quantitative analysis of the nature and extent of the person-to-person spread of obesity as a possible factor contributing to the obesity epidemic.
We evaluated a densely interconnected social network of 12,067 people assessed repeatedly from 1971 to 2003 as part of the Framingham Heart Study. The body-mass index was available for all subjects. We used longitudinal statistical models to examine whether weight gain in one person was associated with weight gain in his or her friends, siblings, spouse, and neighbors.
Discernible clusters of obese persons (body-mass index [the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters], > or =30) were present in the network at all time points, and the clusters extended to three degrees of separation. These clusters did not appear to be solely attributable to the selective formation of social ties among obese persons. A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% (95% confidence interval [CI], 6 to 123) if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval. Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40% (95% CI, 21 to 60). If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37% (95% CI, 7 to 73). These effects were not seen among neighbors in the immediate geographic location. Persons of the same sex had relatively greater influence on each other than those of the opposite sex. The spread of smoking cessation did not account for the spread of obesity in the network.
Network phenomena appear to be relevant to the biologic and behavioral trait of obesity, and obesity appears to spread through social ties. These findings have implications for clinical and public health interventions.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT Much of the recent media attention on issues such as obesity in children and adults (Brownell and Yach 2005), rising bankrupt-cies caused by overextension of credit (Fetterman 2005), and the lack of savings by Americans (Colvin 2005), focuses on individu-als' inability to regulate their own behavior. That is, many people seem to repeatedly give in to temptations in an impulsive manner (Baumeister 2002). While this lack of control may well account for many societal ills, lack of control alone does not tell the full story. Rather, failure to properly categorize alternatives is likely a contrib-uting factor to the problems associated with such issues as obesity and consumer debt. In fact, the road to addressing many of the dark issues associated with today's society begins with individual con-sumers setting goals and creating plans to achieve those goals. One of the first steps in creating such plans is to define the category of goal-consistent options and behaviors. For example, a consumer embarking on a dieting plan needs to determine if buying a McDonald's hamburger should be categorized as a goal-consistent alternative or not. Similarly, a consumer creating a plan to reduce personal debt will need to determine if "buying groceries" using credit should be categorized as an appropriate expenditure that constitutes an acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Ill-defined plans in this early categorization phase can contribute to self-control failure in a variety of consumption domains. Categorization theory provides insight into the ways that individuals define and group stimuli in their environment. How-ever, despite the realization that self-control goals are contingent upon delineation of target behaviors and outcomes (Gollwitzer 2003), little research has focused on the goal-consistent and goal-inconsistent option categorization process as it relates to goal pursuit. Specifically, category width has long been viewed as an individual difference factor (Huang 1981; Pettigrew 1958), such that individuals are chronically either broad or narrow categorizers of various stimuli in their environments. In this tradition, neither goals nor beliefs about one's own self-control ability should norma-tively impact the way in which a given set of options is categorized. More recent research has demonstrated that category width can be altered by situational factors (Ulkümmen, Morwitz and Chakravarti 2006). In the present research, we are primarily interested in explor-ing the relationship between self-control goals, individuals' per-ceptions of their ability to meet self-control goals, and the widths of their categories of goal-consistent and goal-inconsistent alterna-tives. Importantly, we are interested in the ways that categories of goal-consistent and goal-inconsistent options are subjectively de-fined by individuals. Options included in the goal-consistent cat-egory are, conceptually, those alternatives the individual feels will facilitate the accomplishment of her/his goal(s). On the contrary, goal-inconsistent options are potential choices that hamper efforts toward goal achievement, based on the individual's interpretation. Our research illuminates issues involving category construction and self-control by showing that variation in the construction of goal-consistent and goal-inconsistent option categories can be explained by examining individuals' trait level self-control as well as their particular consumption goals. Furthermore, we demon-strate that the construction of these categories can differentially impact subsequent choice behavior.
Most choice research has studied how people make decisions within a narrowly defined choice context and has not paid sufficient attention to the role of social context. We commend Simpson, Griskevicius, and Rothman for directing the attention of choice researchers to the study of joint decision making and current theories on relationships. Building on SGR, we propose that a relationship partner's influence varies with the type of decision at hand and with situational factors. We propose four possible types of decision episodes, defined by whether the decision stage and the consumption stage each occur singly or jointly, and explore how the decision type impacts the extent to which a decision maker will take a partner's preferences into account. We further discuss how situational factors, such as the environment in which the decision is made, as well as the mindset and cognitive resources of the decision maker, are likely to influence decision outcomes.
Most research on consumer choice assumes that decisions are usually made by individuals, and that these decisions are based on an individual's personal attitudes, beliefs, and preferences. Yet, much consumer behavior—from joint decisions to individual choices—is directly or indirectly shaped by people with whom we have some relationship. In this target article, we examine how each member in a relationship can affect how consumer decisions are made. After reviewing foundational work in the area, we introduce a powerful and statistically sophisticated methodology to study decisions within relationships—a dyadic framework of decision-making. We then discuss how the study of consumer decisions in relationships can be informed by different theories in the relationships field, including attachment, interdependence, social power, communal/exchange orientations, relationship norms, and evolutionary principles. By building on the seminal foundations of prior joint-decision making research with theories and methods from contemporary relationship science, we hope to facilitate the integration of the consumer and relationships literature to better understand and generate novel hypotheses about consumer decisions in relationships.
Two studies explored interpersonal and action-control aspects of guilt. Both spontaneous and partner-induced guilt were studied using first-person accounts of interpersonal transgressions and guilt manipulations. Guilt was associated with transgressions against valued partners in close relationships, especially involving interpersonal neglect, unfilled obligations, and selfish actions. Feeling guilty was associated with higher rates of learning lessons, changing subsequent behavior, apologizing, confessing the transgression, and recognizing how a relationship partner's standards and expectations differ from one's own. Inducing guilt also appears to be a costly but effective way of influencing the behavior of relationship partners. The results support the view of guilt as a mechanism that alters behavior in the service of maintaining good interpersonal relationships.
In "Losing Control," the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reinforcement principles have been widely accepted as predictive of "liking" between individuals. The present paper takes the position that other diverse forms of attraction, including human "love" and infrahuman bonding, are likewise best explained in reinforcement terms. Although research that demonstrates increased romantic attraction under aversive circumstances has been interpreted as contradictory to reinforcement principles and, instead, consistent with a Schachterian misattribution view of romantic attraction, difficulties with the misattribution explanation are seen to exist. The studies reviewed did not attempt to disguise the actual sources of arousal and failed to take into account the possibility that the presence of the rated person may have reduced fear or anxiety. Several aspects of the data support a fear-reduction model over the misattribution model. An alternative formulation, consistent with reinforcement principles, is proposed as more parsimonious in explaining all available data. Literature on emotional bonding in subhumans is also reviewed to support the position taken in the present paper, and the potential adaptive significance of increased bonding under aversive circumstances is discussed. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Proposes a theory of social impact specifying the effect of other persons on an individual. According to the theory, when other people are the source of impact and the individual is the target, impact should be a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number of other people. Furthermore, impact should take the form of a power function, with the marginal effect of the
Nth other person being less than that of the (
N–2)th. When other people stand with the individual as the target of forces from outside the group, impact should be divided such that the resultant is an inverse power function of the strength, immediacy, and number of persons standing together. The author reviews relevant evidence from research on conformity and imitation, stage fright and embarrassment, news interest, bystander intervention, tipping, inquiring for Christ, productivity in groups, and crowding in rats. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Relations of social goal pursuit to (1) social acceptance by teachers and peers, (2) prosocial and irresponsible classroom behavior, and (3) perceived support from teachers and peers were examined. Ss were 475 6th and 7th graders. Students' pursuit of academic prosocial goals (to help classmates with academic problems) was related positively to peer acceptance. Pursuit of academic responsibility goals (adhering to classroom rules) was related negatively to peer acceptance but positively to teacher acceptance. These findings reflected in part, significant relations between social goal pursuit and displays of social behavior. Perceived support from teachers and peers was also related positively to social goal pursuit, although findings differed as a function of type and source of support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Consumers’ purchase decisions can be influenced by others’ opinions, i.e., word-of-mouth (WOM), and/or others’ actions, i.e., observational learning. While information technologies are creating increasing opportunities for firms to facilitate/manage these two types of social interaction, researchers so far have encountered difficulty in disentangling their competing effects and have provided limited insights into how these two social influences may differ from and interact with each other. Based on a unique natural experimental setting resulting from information policy shifts at the online seller Amazon.com, we design three longitudinal, quasi-experimental field studies to examine three issues regarding the two types of social interaction: (1) their differential impact on product sales, (2) their lifetime effects, and (3) their interaction effects. An intriguing finding is that, while negative WOM is more influential than positive WOM, positive observational learning information significantly increases sales but negative observational learning information has no effect. This suggests that reporting consumer purchase statistics can help mass-market products without hurting niche products. Our results also reveal that the sales impact of observational learning increases with WOM volume.
This article presents a new model for understanding the role of the self in cognitive dissonance processes. We focus on the controversies among three major theories of how cognitions about the self mediate dissonance processes: Self-consistency (Aronson, 1992), Self-affirmation (Steele, 1988), and the New Look perspective (Cooper & Fazio, 1984). It is argued that each of these contemporary revisions of dissonance theory assumes that dissonance begins when people commit a behavior and then assess the meaning of the behavior against a standard for judgment. However, each approach makes different predictions for how self-knowledge mediates dissonance because each assumes different self-attributes and standards are used to assess the psychological meaning of a given behavior. The proposed model suggests that the basis of dissonance motivation and the role played by cognitions about the self depend on the type of self-standards made accessible in the context of discrepant behavior. By examining the ways in which people use self-standards to assess the social appropriateness or personal quality of their behavior and use self-attributes to reduce their discomfort, the proposed model can predict the conditions under which each of the contemporary views of the self in dissonance is the most accurate explanation of the process of dissonance arousal and reduction.
Why do consumers sometimes act against their own better judgment, engaging in behavior that is often regretted after the fact and that would have been rejected with adequate forethought? More generally, how do consumers attempt to maintain self-control in the face of time-inconsistent preferences? This article addresses consumer impatience by developing a decision-theoretic model based on reference points. The model explains how and why consumers experience sudden increases in desire for a product, increases that can result in the temporary overriding of long-term preferences. Tactics that consumers use to control their own behavior are also discussed. Consumer self-control is framed as a struggle between two psychological forces, desire and willpower. Finally, two general classes of self-control strategies are described: those that directly reduce desire, and those that overcome desire through willpower. Copyright 1991 by the University of Chicago.
Acts of self-control may deplete an individual's self-regulatory resources. But what are the consequences of perceiving other people's use of self-control? Mentally simulating the actions of others has been found to elicit psychological effects consistent with the actual performance of those actions. Here, we consider how simulating versus merely perceiving the use of willpower can affect self-control abilities. In Study 1, participants who simulated the perspective of a person exercising self-control exhibited less restraint over spending on consumer products than did other participants. In Study 2, participants who took the perspective of a person using self-control exerted less willpower on an unrelated lexical generation task than did participants who took the perspective of a person who did not use self-control. Conversely, participants who merely read about another person's self-control exerted more willpower than did those who read about actions not requiring self-control. These findings suggest that the actions of other people may either deplete or boost one's own self-control, depending on whether one mentally simulates those actions or merely perceives them.
Two studies examine differences in participants' moment-to-moment and retrospective evaluations of an experience depending on whether they are alone or in the presence of another person. Findings support our hypotheses that joint consumption leads to similar patterns or "coherence" in moment-to-moment evaluations and that greater coherence leads to more positive retrospective evaluations. We trace the emergence of coherence to processes of mimicry and emotional contagion in experiment 1 by comparing evaluations for pairs of participants who could see each other's expression with pairs who could not do so and in experiment 2 by coding participants' facial expressions and head movements for direct evidence of contagion. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes--that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, whereas the motivation to arrive at particular conclusions enhances use of those that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion. There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions. These ideas can account for a wide variety of research concerned with motivated reasoning.
Describes a program of research on the conditions under which a supportive counselor can help people to arrive at and adhere to stressful decisions, especially those pertaining to health practices such as reducing cigarette smoking or overeating. The hypotheses investigated derive from analysis of critical phases in an effective helping relationship. These involve (1) acquiring motivational power as a significant "reference person" by becoming a dependable enhancer of the client's self-esteem, (2) avoiding impairment of the supportive relationship when making recommendations the client may perceive as demands entailing contingent acceptance and rejection, and (3) counteracting the client's disappointment and resentment when direct contact with the supportive helper is terminated. Investigation of variables specified for the 1st phase of a successful supportive relationship tended to confirm the following 2 hypotheses. Adherence to the counselor's recommendations is significantly increased if the counselor (1) gives consistently positive feedback conveying acceptance, and (2) elicits a moderate level of self-disclosure rather than a very low or a very high level. Preliminary results for certain variables for the 2nd and 3rd phases, such as building confidence about succeeding without the continued aid of the counselor, appear to be sufficiently promising to warrant full-scale field experiments. (74 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. The authors suggest that the mechanism involved is the perception-behavior link, the recently documented finding (e.g., J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996) that the mere perception of another's behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself. Experiment 1 showed that the motor behavior of participants unintentionally matched that of strangers with whom they worked on a task. Experiment 2 had confederates mimic the posture and movements of participants and showed that mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners. Experiment 3 showed that dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people.