How can changes in degrees of group affiliation or identity change one’s decision to cooperate or defect in a dilemma? According to the logic of appropriateness, decision changes result from changes in answer to the question, “what does a person like me do in a situation like this?” In two...

In two studies, time preferences for financial gains and losses at delays of up to 50 years were elicited using three different methods: matching, fixed-sequence choice titration, and a dynamic ``staircase'' choice method. Matching was found to create fewer demand characteristics and to produce...

The level of congruity is determined by the degree of match or mismatch between an object and its associated attribute. Product evaluations are positively influenced when there is moderate incongruity between a product and its association; this finding is termed the moderate schema incongruity...

Recent empirical research for municipal water consumption has uncovered a variety of interesting growth patterns. This study examines municipal water usage over time for Halifax, Nova Scotia, the thirteenth largest metropolitan economy in the Canada. Results from a dynamic error correction...

Prior research offers competing predictions regarding whether an initial token display of support for a cause (such as wearing a ribbon, signing a petition, or joining a Facebook group) subsequently leads to increased and otherwise more meaningful contributions to the cause. The present research...

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,...

Past research finds that consumers exhibit weak self-brand connections to brands associated with out-groups. We extend this work by demonstrating that products associated with dissociative reference groups have a greater impact on consumers' negative self-brand connections, product evaluations,...

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...

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...