The present research shows that when a confidently held self-view (e.g., "I am an exciting person") is temporarily cast in doubt, individuals are motivated to choose products that bolster their original self-view (e.g., choosing brands with exciting brand personalities). The findings across...

Can subtle wording changes in marketing communications, such as saying “you and [the brand]” as opposed to “we,” affect people’s evaluations of real-world brands? Despite their importance in interpersonal communication, the effects of such variations in relationship-implying language...

Research on priming effects has shown that primes with widely shared associations (i.e., stereotypes) affect the subsequent behavior of people in consistent ways (i.e., acting stereotypically). In this article, we present two experiments that show that the same primed construct can have...

Research indicates that messages or products matching individuals' self-schemata are viewed more favorably, but little is known about how or when such effects occur. Experiment 1 indicates that messages matched to participants' level of extroversion lead to larger argument quality effects on...

Consumer choice is often based on the relative visual appeal of competing products. Lay intuition, common marketing practice, and extant literature all suggest that more visual impressions help consumers distinguish products. This research shows that the opposite can occur. Rather than...

In this article we examine the impact of asking hypothetical questions on respondents' subsequent decision making. Across several experiments we find that even though such questions are purely hypothetical, respondents are unable to prevent a substantial biasing effect on their behavior....

This work examines the process through which thrift versus prestige goals can nonconsciously affect decisions in a choice task. Drawing upon research on nonconscious goal pursuit, we present a theoretical framework detailing how consumer choices are affected by incidentally activated goals. We...

We examine how making mortality salient affects consumer choices. We develop a new theoretical framework predicting when consumer behaviors will be more (less) indulgent when mortality is salient, arguing that individuals focus more of their limited self-regulatory resources on domains that are...

This article examines how consumer decision making is influenced by automatically evoked task-induced affect and by cognitions that are generated in a more controlled manner on exposure to alternatives in a choice task. Across two experiments respondents chose between two alternatives: one...

This article examines the effects of negative and positive framing of ad claims on consume~s choices and attitudes. Propositions about how the extent of processing before choice affects the relative impact of claims-related versus advertising tactics-related cognitions are tested in three...