Three studies investigate the influence of empathy and the level of fictionality of short stories on consumers' evaluations of emotional melodramatic entertainment. We find that high empathizers' evaluations are more favorable when the story is low in fictionality (i.e., real) versus high. In...

Four experiments demonstrate that self-threatening social comparison information motivates consumers to lie. Factors related to self-threat, including relevance of the social comparison target (i.e., the importance of the comparison person), comparison discrepancy (i.e., the magnitude of the...

This research focuses on understanding when low body esteem consumers are most likely to engage in negative social comparisons and examines how this process influences product evaluations. In a series of three studies, we find that two pieces of social information are needed for negative...

Norm violations disrupt social order, and according to prior research, social order can be restored through the punishment of norm violators. Based on this conceptual framework, the current research examines a prevalent yet overlooked behavior in the consumer literature by showing that consumers...

This paper explores how individual characteristics of age, need for cognition (NFC), and affective intensity (AI) interact with each other and with advertising appeal frames (i.e., rational, positive-emotional, negative-emotional) to influence ad attitudes, involvement, and recall. The mixed...

Across a series of studies conducted in both the field and the laboratory, the authors demonstrate that the presence of others (i.e., an entourage) alters a VIP’s personal feelings of status. Specifically, the authors show that VIPs feel higher levels of status when they are able to experience...

In a series of four experiments, the authors examine the implications of one consumer’s possession being mimicked by another consumer. The results demonstrate that when distinctiveness concerns are heightened, greater dissociation responses (i.e., possession disposal intentions,...

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

The current research examines the conditions under which consumers demonstrate associative versus dissociative responses to identity-linked products as a consequence of a social identity threat. Across four studies, the authors test the notion that reactions to social identity threat may be...