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The research examines how the attractiveness of children in need affects the empathy they evoke and the subsequent help they receive from unrelated adults. The authors find that attractive children are attributed desirable characteristics related to social competence, which is consistent with the "beautiful is good" stereotype. Ironically, the authors find that these attributions reduce the empathy evoked by attractive children and the help they receive from unrelated adults as long as their need is not severe. These effects are demonstrated in four experiments. The research identifies a significant cost of being beautiful and an important exception to the beautiful is good stereotype. The results also have practical implications for how children are portrayed in promotional materials for disaster relief agencies, children's hospitals, and other charities.

The research examines viewers' actual responses to four televised fund-raising drives by a public television station over a 2-year period. The 584 pledge breaks we studied contain 4,868 individual appeals that were decomposed into two underlying dimensions based on the empathy-helping hypothesis: the appeal beneficiary (self versus other) and emotional valence (positive versus negative). We find that the most effective fund-raising appeals communicate the benefits to others rather than to the self and evoke negative rather than positive emotions. Appeals that emphasize benefits to the self significantly reduce the number of calls to the station, particularly when they have a positive emotional valence.

Two studies examine gender differences in responses to advertising with emotional content that varies on agency—a fundamental component of the male, but not female, stereotype. As hypothesized, males reported a less pleasant viewing experience and a less favorable attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) when a low‐agency emotion (i.e., stereotype‐incongruent) ad was viewed with another male, while their responses were not affected by the presence of another person when they were exposed to a high‐agency emotion (i.e., stereotype‐congruent) ad. Males’ and females’ private responses were not significantly different, and females’ responses were invariant across social contexts and type of ad.

The significance of volunteering for both individuals and society has lead to numerous studies on this behavior across the social sciences. However, virtually no prior research has evaluated how and to what extent organizations can effectively encourage individuals to contribute time to a worthy cause. The present research uses a social norm perspective to examine the conditions under which promotional appeals based on group need and promises of recognition affect volunteerism. The perspective suggests that norm compliance can be expected only when the prescribed behavior is both important to the group's welfare and subject to group-mediated rewards. Consequently, we hypothesize that promotional appeals based on group need and promised recognition are effective only when they are used in combination. Results of a laboratory and a field experiment are consistent with this hypothesis and provide insights into the process by which the appeals affect individuals' decisions to help. The results also have implications for understanding and promoting other socially desirable behaviors such as recycling, energy conservation, litter reduction, and the purchase of "green" products. Copyright 1998 by the University of Chicago.

Indirect (i.e., structured projective) questioning has been employed frequently in marketing and other social sciences to reduce social desirability bias, that is, systematic error in self-report measures resulting from the desire of respondents to avoid embarrassment and project a favorable image to others. Yet little is known about the validity of indirect questioning in reducing social desirability bias. This article reports on three studies that examine indirect questioning as a technique to reduce social desirability bias on self-report measures. The effects of asking indirect (i.e., structured, projective) questions were compared with direct (i.e., structured, personal) questions. The pattern of results indicates that indirect questioning reduces social desirability bias on variables subject to social influence and has no significant effect on socially neutral variables. The social nature of the differences between direct and indirect questioning groups, and the attribution of an undesirable trait to an out-group but not an in-group target, supports the view that subjects projected their beliefs and evaluations in the indirect response situation. These results are consistent across several product categories and indirect question wordings.

The social context of new product adoption behavior is a key aspect of the diffusion of innovations. Yet little is known about the process by which social contextual factors influence individual adoption decisions. This research develops and tests a model of the effects of perceived consumption visibility and superorder group influence on new product intention formation. A structural equation model is used in an experimental design to provide a comprehensive view of variable interval and to incorporate measurement error. Key findings indicate that (1) perceived visibility of consumption significantly affects consumers' predictions of normative outcomes (i.e., social approval from referents) and (2) superorder group influence has a direct effect on consumers' perceptions of consumption visibility and expectations of both personal (i.e., intrinsically valued product benefits) and normative outcomes from early adoption. The results have important implications for understanding the role of consumption symbols as mechanisms for social differentiation and integration. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.

Although consumer researchers have investigated impulse buying for nearly 50 years, almost no research has empirically examined its normative aspects. This article presents conceptual and empirical evidence that consumers' normative evaluations (i.e., judgments about the appropriateness of engaging in impulse buying behavior) moderate the relationship between the impulse buying trait and consumers' buying behaviors. Specifically, the relationship between the buying impulsiveness trait and realted buying behaviors is significant only when consumers believe that acting on impulse is appropriate. The findings from two studies across student and retail customer samples converge and support the hypothesized moderating role of consumers' normative evaluations. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.