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Although an overabundance of possessions—called “clutter”—is both pervasive and maladaptive, understanding how possessions can accumulate remains understudied. In the present research, we s...

Some cultural products (e.g., books and movies) catch on and become popular, while others fail. Why? While some have argued that success is unpredictable, we suggest that period-to-period shifts in sentiment—what we term sentiment volatility—enhance engagement. Automated sentiment analysis of over 4,000 movies demonstrates that more volatile movies are evaluated more positively. Consistent with the notion that sentiment volatility makes experiences more stimulating, the effect is stronger in genres where evaluations are more likely to be driven stimulation (i.e., thrillers rather than romance). Further, analysis of over 30,000 online articles demonstrate that people are more likely to continue reading more volatile articles. By manipulating sentiment volatility in follow-up experiments, we underscore its causal impact on evaluations, and provide evidence for the role of stimulation in these effects. Taken together, the results shed light on what drives engagement, the time dynamics of sentiment, and cultural analytics or why some cultural items are more successful.

Why do some advertisements get shared more than others? Using scalable automated facial coding algorithms, the authors quantified the facial expressions of thousands of individuals in response to hundreds of video advertisements. Results suggest that not all emotions increase sharing and that the relationship between emotion and transmission is more complex than mere valence alone. Facial actions linked to positive emotions, (e.g., smiles) were associated with increased sharing. Although some actions associated with negative emotion (e.g., lip depressor associated with sadness) were linked to decreased sharing, others (e.g., nose wrinkles) associated with disgust were linked to increased sharing.

Consumers are often frustrated by customer service. But could a simple shift in language help improve customer satisfaction? We suggest that linguistic concreteness—the tangibility, specificity, or imaginability of words employees use when speaking to customers—can shape consumer attitudes and behaviors. Five studies, including text analysis of over 1,000 real consumer–employee interactions in two different field contexts, demonstrate that customers are more satisfied, willing to purchase, and purchase more when employees speak to them concretely. This occurs because customers infer that employees who use more concrete language are listening (i.e., attending to and understanding their needs). These findings deepen understanding of how language shapes consumer behavior, reveal a psychological mechanism by which concreteness impacts person perception, and provide a straightforward way that managers could help enhance customer satisfaction.

Research has examined persuasive language, but relatively little is known about how persuasive people are when they attempt to persuade through paralanguage, or acoustic properties of speech (e.g., pitch and volume). People often detect and react against what communicators say, but might they be persuaded by speakers' attempts to modulate how they say it? Four experiments support this possibility, demonstrating that communicators engaging in paralinguistic persuasion attempts (i.e., modulating their voice to persuade) naturally use paralinguistic cues that influence perceivers' attitudes and choice. Rather than being effective because they go undetected, however, the results suggest a subtler possibility. Even when they are detected, paralinguistic attempts succeed because they make communicators seem more confident without undermining their perceived sincerity. Consequently, speakers' confident vocal demeanor persuades others by serving as a signal that they more strongly endorse the stance they take in their message. Further, we find that paralinguistic approaches to persuasion can be uniquely effective even when linguistic ones are not. A cross-study exploratory analysis and replication experiment reveal that communicators tend to speak louder and vary their volume during paralinguistic persuasion attempts, both of which signal confidence and, in turn, facilitate persuasion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Why do some cultural items succeed and others fail? Some scholars have argued that one function of the narrative arts is to facilitate feelings of social connection. If this is true, cultural items that activate personal connections should be more successful. The present research tested this possibility in the context of second-person pronouns. We argue that rather than directly addressing the audience, communicating norms, or encouraging perspective taking, second-person pronouns can encourage audiences to think of someone in their own lives. Textual analysis of songs ranked in the Billboard charts ( N = 4,200), as well as controlled experiments (total N = 2,921), support this possibility, demonstrating that cultural items that use more second-person pronouns are liked and purchased more. These findings demonstrate a novel way in which second-person pronouns make meaning, how pronouns’ situated use (object case vs. subject case) may shape this meaning, and how psychological factors shape the success of narrative arts.

Trickle-down theories suggest that status symbols and fashion trends originate from the elites and move downward, but some high-end restaurants serve lowbrow food (e.g., potato chips, macaroni and cheese), and some high-status individuals wear downscale clothing (e.g., ripped jeans, duct-taped shoes). Why would high-status actors adopt items traditionally associated with low-status groups? Using a signaling perspective to explain this phenomenon, the authors suggest that elites sometimes adopt items associated with low-status groups as a costly signal to distinguish themselves from middle-status individuals. As a result, signals sometimes trickle round, moving directly from the lower to the upper class, before diffusing to the middle class. Furthermore, consistent with a signaling perspective, the presence of multiple signaling dimensions facilitates this effect, enabling the highs to mix and match high and low signals and differentiate themselves. These findings deepen the understanding of signaling dynamics, support a trickle-round theory of fashion, and shed light on alternative status symbols.

Word of mouth is both frequent and important. But might the way consumers communicate (i.e., speaking versus writing) shape the language they use? And, as a result, the impact of what they share? While a great deal of research has begun to examine the behavioral drivers of word of mouth, there has been less attention to how communication modality might shape what consumers share. Five studies demonstrate that compared to writing, speaking increases the emotionality of communication. Speaking often involves less time to deliberate about what to say, so consumers use more emotional language. This difference in language produced, in turn, can lead to greater persuasion. This work sheds light on drivers of word of mouth, effects of communication modality, and role of language in communication.

Why do some cultural items (e.g., songs, stereotypes, and ideas) catch on while others fail? While researchers have long been interested in cultural dynamics and cultural success, quantification has been challenging. It’s difficult to get data over time or to extract psychological features of cultural items that might contribute to their success. We suggest that natural language processing can help. The digitization of information has made more textual data available, and the emergence of new tools provide novel ways to extract behavioral insight from text. We discuss the dual role that language serves, review some useful approaches that psychologists may be less familiar with (e.g., topic modeling and embeddings), and describe how these approaches can help unlock a range of novel questions. By focusing on culture, we highlight a specific place natural language tools can be applied, while also illuminating how they can address a broader range of psychological science topics.

Variety-seeking is a fundamental aspect of choice. But given circadian rhythms in chronobiology, might variety-seeking vary by time of day? Four studies, including an empirical analysis of millions of purchases, demonstrate diurnal variation in variety-seeking. Variety-seeking is lower in the morning than other times of day. People pick less varied flavors of yogurt, for example, when choosing in the morning. Further, the results demonstrate the underlying role of circadian changes in physiological stimulation and arousal. The effect is mediated by a physiological measure of arousal (i.e., body temperature) and moderated by factors that shape physiological arousal (i.e., sunlight and individual differences in circadian preferences). These findings shed light on drivers of variety-seeking and the biological basis of consumer behavior more generally.

Photos are a ubiquitous mode of social communication. Analysis of thousands of online profiles finds that people overwhelmingly post posed photos of themselves. But might candids actually lead observers to react more favorably? Five studies test this possibility. Compared to posed photos, candids made observers feel more connected to the poster, feel more interested in getting to know or date them, and like them more. This was driven by candids making people seem more genuine, which made others react more favorably. Furthermore, consistent with the hypothesized role of genuineness, the benefits of candids were diminished when observers learned that the poster realized their photo was being taken. These finding highlight the role of authenticity in person perception and a potential disconnect between photo posters and viewers. Although posters seem to post mostly posed photos, observers may prefer candids because they provide a more authentic sense of who the poster really is.

Word of mouth affects consumer behavior, but how does the language used in word of mouth shape that impact? Might certain types of consumers be more likely to use certain types of language, affecting whose words have more influence? Five studies, including textual analysis of more than 1,000 online reviews, demonstrate that compared to more implicit endorsements (e.g., “I liked it,” “I enjoyed it”), explicit endorsements (e.g., “I recommend it”) are more persuasive and increase purchase intent. This occurs because explicit endorsers are perceived to like the product more and have more expertise. Looking at the endorsement language consumers actually use, however, shows that while consumer knowledge does affect endorsement style, its effect actually works in the opposite direction. Because novices are less aware that others have heterogeneous product preferences, they are more likely to use explicit endorsements. Consequently, the endorsement styles novices and experts tend to use may lead to greater persuasion by novices. These findings highlight the important role that language, and endorsement styles in particular, plays in shaping the effects of word of mouth.

Self-control is an important driver of choice, but might it also change choice’s meaning, making it seem less indicative of preference? Decades of research suggest that preference and choice are often intertwined. Choice often originates from one’s preferences. As a result, choice is often seen as a reflection of preference, leading people to infer their preferences by observing their own choices. We suggest that self-control attenuates this process. Because self-control often overrides personal desires in favor of external constraints, norms, and long-term considerations, we propose that self-control is associated with a sense of attenuated correspondence between choice and individual preference. Five experiments suggest that when the notion of self-control is salient, people are less likely to see their choices as reflecting their preferences or to infer preference from previous choices. As a result, evoking the notion of self-control attenuates the tendency to view choice as indicative of preference, even in contexts unrelated to where self-control was originally evoked. Thus, self-control shapes not only choice itself, but also the perceived meaning of choice.

How does something’s temporal location—that is, whether it occurred in the past or will occur in the future—affect whether people talk about it? Seven studies demonstrate that two factors, affective arousal and self-presentation, interact to shape time’s impact on word of mouth. Future experiences are more affectively arousing than equivalent past ones. Whether this heightened arousal increases or decreases sharing, however, depends on how the topic potentially being discussed reflects on the sharer. For topics that reflect well on the sharer, arousal increases sharing such that people are more likely to talk if the event is happening in the future (vs. the past). When topics make the sharer look bad, however, this is no longer the case. These findings shed light on when people talk about and deepen understanding of the psychological drivers of word of mouth.

Temporal orientation refers to individual differences in the relative emphasis one places on the past, present, or future, and is related to academic, financial, and health outcomes. We propose and evaluate a method for automatically measuring temporal orientation through language expressed on social media. METHOD: Judges rated the temporal orientation of 4,302 social media messages. We trained a classifier based on these ratings, which could accurately predict the temporal orientation of new messages in a separate validation set (accuracy/mean sensitivity = .72; mean specificity = .77). We used the classifier to automatically classify 1.3 million messages written by 5,372 participants (50% female, aged 13-48). Finally, we tested whether individual differences in past, present, and future orientation differentially related to gender, age, Big Five personality, satisfaction with life, and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Temporal orientations exhibit several expected correlations with age, gender, and Big Five personality. More future-oriented people were older, more likely to be female, more conscientious, less impulsive, less depressed, and more satisfied with life; present orientation showed the opposite pattern. CONCLUSION: Language-based assessments can complement and extend existing measures of temporal orientation, providing an alternative approach and additional insights into language and personality relationships.

Why do some cultural items become popular? Although some researchers have argued that success is random, we suggest that how similar items are to each other plays an important role. Using natural language processing of thousands of songs, we examined the relationship between lyrical differentiation (i.e., atypicality) and song popularity. Results indicated that the more different a song’s lyrics are from its genre, the more popular it becomes. This relationship is weaker in genres where lyrics matter less (e.g., dance) or where differentiation matters less (e.g., pop) and occurs for lyrical topics but not style. The results shed light on cultural dynamics, why things become popular, and the psychological foundations of culture more broadly.

People often share word of mouth with others, and such social sharing is an integral part of everyday life. But the content (e.g., stories, news, information) that people transmit can be acquired in different ways. Sometimes people find content themselves, and other times people receive content from others (e.g., via email or conversation). Might these different acquisition methods impact subsequent sharing, and if so, how? Six studies demonstrate that acquisition method can impact transmission through changing how content is processed. Compared to received content, people are more likely to associate found content with themselves, which decreases processing. Reduced processing, in turn, lowers sensitivity to diagnostic content characteristics (e.g., whether content is interesting or well written), which reduces these characteristics’ impact on sharing. Thus while receivers are more likely to share interesting (than boring) content, the difference is attenuated (and in some cases, disappeared) among finders. These findings deepen insights into the psychological drivers of word of mouth and shed light on how contextual factors, content characteristics, and the self interact to drive social transmission.

Consumers prefer brands positioned around identities they possess. Accordingly, the consumer identity literature emphasizes the importance of a clear fit between brands and target identities, suggesting that identity marketing that explicitly links brands to consumer identity should be most effective. In contrast, five studies demonstrate that explicit identity-marketing messages can backfire. Messages that explicitly connect a particular brand to consumer identity increase the salience of external determinants of behavior, reducing consumers' perceptions of agency in identity expression. Hence, compared to messages that merely reference consumer identity, messages that explicitly define identity expression reduce purchase likelihood, despite more clearly conveying identity relevance. These findings highlight the need to consider consumers' need for agency in addition to their drive for self-definition and expression through consumption, offering a foundation to examine both the risks and the rewards of identity marketing.

Does the number of people with whom someone communicates influence what he or she discusses and shares? Six studies demonstrate that compared with narrowcasting (i.e., communicating with just one person), broadcasting (i.e., communicating with multiple people) leads consumers to avoid sharing content that makes them look bad. Narrowcasting, however, encourages people to share content that is useful to the message recipient. These effects are driven by communicators’ focus of attention. People naturally tend to focus on the self, but communicating with just one person heightens other-focus, which leads communicators to share less self-presenting content and more useful content. These findings shed light on the drivers of word of mouth and provide insight into when the communication sender (vs. receiver) plays a relatively larger role in what people share.

People often share opinions and information with their social ties, and word of mouth has an important impact on consumer behavior. But what drives interpersonal communication and why do people talk about certain things rather than others? This article argues that word of mouth is goal driven and serves five key functions (i.e., impression management, emotion regulation, information acquisition, social bonding, and persuasion). Importantly, I suggest these motivations are predominantly self- (rather than other) serving and drive what people talk about even without their awareness. Further, these drivers make predictions about the types of news and information people are most likely to discuss. This article reviews the five proposed functions and well as how contextual factors (i.e., audience and communication channel) may moderate which functions play a larger role. Taken together, the paper provides insight into the psychological factors that shape word of mouth and outlines additional questions that deserve further study.

How does controversy affect conversation? Five studies using both field and laboratory data address this question. Contrary to popular belief, controversial things are not necessarily more likely to be discussed. Controversy increases likelihood of discussion at low levels, but beyond a moderate level of controversy, additional controversy actually decreases likelihood of discussion. The controversy-conversation relationship is driven by two countervailing processes. Controversy increases interest (which increases likelihood of discussion) but simultaneously increases discomfort (which decreases likelihood of discussion). Contextual factors such as anonymity and whether people are talking to friends or strangers moderate the controversy-conversation relationship by impacting these component processes. Our framework sheds light on how, when, and why controversy affects whether or not things are discussed.

Consumers share word of mouth face to face, over social media, and through a host of other communication channels. But do these channels affect what people talk about and, if so, how? Laboratory experiments, as well as analysis of almost 20,000 everyday conversations, demonstrate that communicating via oral versus written communication affects the products and brands consumers discuss. Compared to oral communication, written communication leads people to mention more interesting products and brands. Further, this effect is driven by communication asynchrony and self-enhancement concerns. Written communication gives people more time to construct and refine what to say, and self-enhancement motives lead people to use this opportunity to mention more interesting things. These findings shed light on how communication channels shape interpersonal communication and the psychological drivers of word of mouth more broadly.

The Internet has had a huge impact on human behavior. From meeting spouses and purchasing cars to interacting with friends and watching movies, the web has changed almost every facet of life. Along...

"Companies are relying more and more on online communication to reach consumers. While some viral campaigns are tremendously successful, others remain far below expectations. But why are certain pieces of online content more viral than others? An analysis conducted on the New York Times’ most-emailed list, along with further experimental evidence, showed that positive content is more viral than negative content. However, the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is driven, in part, by activation and arousal. Content that evokes either high-arousal positive emotions (awe) or negative emotions (anger or anxiety) tends to be more viral. Content that evokes low arousal or deactivating emotions (e.g., sadness) tends to be less viral. These results were also true when examining how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content is featured). Taking the effect of emotions into account helps to design effective viral marketing campaigns. "

Consumer researchers have recognized for a long time that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Levy 1959; Sirgy 1982). Important thought leaders in our field have described and documented that consumers use possessions and brands to create their self-identities and communicate these selves to others and to themselves (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998; McCracken 1989). Although early research tended to focus on broad conceptual issues surrounding consumers and their sense of self, recent research takes a more granular approach, breaking down the relationship between identity concerns and consumption to look at the effects of specific self-related goals and of different aspects of self-identity on consumer behavior. For example, why would someone drive his Prius to work but drive his BMW to a blind date? Impression management? Value expression? Need for affiliation? The current collection of articles on self-identity and consumer behavior (appearing over the last two years) complements and adds to a growing body of work that has already appeared in JCR. Five of these six articles focus on specific relationships between self-identity-related goals and consumer behavior, exploring needs such as affiliation and distinctiveness, self-verification, and self-affirmation. The sixth paper explores the effect of identity activation on memory. The experiments in these articles fall into two paradigms. First, researchers threaten an aspect of self-identity to investigate how consumers engage in restorative behavior. In this paradigm, researchers may also allow consumers to bolster an aspect of selfidentity to mitigate the need for self-repair. Second, researchers measure or manipulate (prime) a particular aspect of self-identity or a particular identity-related goal to examine the effect on subsequent consumer behavior. Taken altogether, the papers in this collection provide us with a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior as it relates to self-identity. While this collection of recent articles moves us forward, the wide variety of self-identity goals and countless aspects of self-identity make this an extremely fruitful area for future research. The first article, by White, Argo, and Sengupta, finds that consumers respond differently to self-threats depending on their self-construal. When independent selves are salient, a threat to the self activates the need to bolster self-worth through dissociation from identity-linked products, lowering preferences for such products. When interdependent selves are active, self-threat activates the need to belong, which manifests itself in an increased association with identity-linked products, enhancing product preferences. These findings persist across many different operationalizations of self-construal. Thus, how consumers restore their sense of self after a threat depends on which self-goal is activated, which in turn depends on the consumers’ self-construal. Next, the article by Townsend and Sood explores how the choice of an aesthetically pleasing product can affirm a consumer’s threatened sense of self. Rather than identify a specific social identity, the researchers link aesthetics to personal values. The choice of a highly aesthetic product can boost one’s self-esteem by confirming one’s value for beauty. The researchers show that the choice of a highly aesthetic product meets consumers’ needs to self-affirm after a self-threat by replicating the positive effects of selfaffirmation on a variety of downstream variables established in psychological research. For example, choosing a well-designed product increased openness to counterarguments and reduced commitment toward a failing course of action. The third article, by Ward and Broniarczyk, also falls into the self-threat paradigm. Here, the threat arises from a naturally occurring consumer setting: gift giving. Identity-incongruent gifts to close friends threaten consumers’ sense of self, while incongruent gifts to distant friends do not. Close friends are

New car purchases are among the largest and most expensive purchases consumers ever make. While functional and economic concerns are important, the authors examine whether visual influence also plays a role. Using a hierarchical Bayesian probability model and data on 1.6 million new cars sold over nine years, they examine how visual influence affects purchase volume, focusing on three questions: Are people more likely to buy a new car if others around them have recently done so? Are these effects moderated by visibility, the ease of seeing others’ behavior? Do they vary according to the identity (e.g., gender) of prior purchasers and the identity relevance of vehicle type? The authors perform an extensive set of tests to rule out alternatives to visual influence and find that visual effects are (1) present (one additional purchase for approximately every seven prior purchases), (2) larger in areas where others’ behavior should be more visible (i.e., more people commute in car-visible ways), (3) stronger for prior purchases by men than by women in male-oriented vehicle types, (4) extant only for cars of similar price tiers, and (5) subject to saturation effects.

People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people may draw the reverse inference that it is also important and consequently increase the amount of time and effort they expend. Ironically, this process is particularly likely for decisions that initially seemed unimportant because people expect them to be easier (whereas important decisions are expected to be difficult to begin with). Our studies demonstrate that unexpected difficulty not only causes people to get caught up in unimportant decisions but also to voluntarily seek more options, which can increase decision difficulty even further.

Why are certain pieces of online content (e.g., advertisements, videos, news articles) more viral than others? This article takes a psychological approach to understanding diffusion. Using a unique data set of all the New York Times articles published over a three-month period, the authors examine how emotion shapes virality. The results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. These results hold even when the authors control for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured). Experimental results further demonstrate the causal impact of specific emotion on transmission and illustrate that it is driven by the level of activation induced. Taken together, these findings shed light on why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns.

Word of mouth (WOM) affects diffusion and sales, but why are certain products talked about more than others, both right after consumers first experience them and in the months that follow? This article examines psychological drivers of immediate and ongoing WOM. The authors analyze a unique data set of everyday conversations for more than 300 products and conduct both a large field experiment across various cities and a controlled laboratory experiment with real conversations. The results indicate that more interesting products get more immediate WOM but, contrary to intuition, do not receive more ongoing WOM over multiple months or overall. In contrast, products that are cued more by the environment or are more publicly visible receive more WOM both right away and over time. Additional analyses demonstrate which promotional giveaways in WOM marketing campaigns are associated with increased WOM. overall, the findings shed light on psychological drivers of WOM and provide insight into designing more effective WOM campaigns.

Can negative information about a product increase sales, and if so, when? Although popular wisdom suggests that “any publicity is good publicity”, prior research has only revealed downsides to negative press. Negative reviews or word-of-mouth, for example, have been found to harm product evaluations and sales. This research flashlight (page 50) considers this matter from a fresh perspective. The authors examine contexts in which negative publicity about a product will have positive or negative effects.

Can negative information about a product increase sales, and if so, when? Although popular wisdom suggests that “any publicity is good publicity,” prior research has demonstrated only downsides to negative press. Negative reviews or word of mouth, for example, have been found to hurt product evaluation and sales. Using a combination of econometric analysis and experimental methods, we unify these perspectives to delineate contexts under which negative publicity about a product will have positive versus negative effects. Specifically, we argue that negative publicity can increase purchase likelihood and sales by increasing product awareness. Consequently, negative publicity should have differential effects on established versus unknown products. Three studies support this perspective. Whereas a negative review in the New York Times hurt sales of books by well-known authors, for example, it increased sales of books that had lower prior awareness. The studies further underscore the importance of a gap between publicity and purchase occasion and the mediating role of increased awareness in these effects.

This research examines how identity-based interventions can improve consumer health. Results of laboratory and field experiments reveal that associating risky health behaviors with a social identity people do not want to signal can contaminate the behaviors and lead consumers to make healthier choices. College freshman reported consuming less alcohol (experiment 2), and restaurant patrons selected less fattening food (experiment 3), when drinking alcohol and eating junk food were presented as markers of avoidance groups. These findings demonstrate that identity-based interventions can shift the identities associated with real-world behaviors, thereby improving the health of populations.

Little empirical research has examined the implicit effects of environmental cues on consumer behavior. Across six studies using a combination of field and laboratory methods, the authors find that products are more accessible, evaluated more favorably, and chosen more frequently when the surrounding environment contains more perceptually or conceptually related cues. The findings highlight the impact of frequent—in addition to recent—priming in shaping product evaluation and choice: More frequent exposure to perceptually or conceptually related cues increases product accessibility and makes the product easier to process. In turn, this increased accessibility influences product evaluation and choice, which are found to vary directly with the frequency of exposure to conceptually related cues. These results support the hypothesis that conceptual priming effects can have a strong impact on real-world consumer judgments.

People often diverge from members of other social groups: They select cultural tastes (e.g., possessions, attitudes, or behaviors) that distinguish them from outsiders and abandon tastes when outsiders adopt them. But while divergence is pervasive, most research on the propagation of culture is based on conformity. Consequently, it is less useful in explaining why people might abandon tastes when others adopt them. The 7 studies described in this article showed that people diverge to avoid signaling undesired identities. A field study, for example, found that undergraduates stopped wearing a particular wristband when members of the "geeky" academically focused dormitory next door started wearing them. Consistent with an identity-signaling perspective, the studies further showed that people often diverge from dissimilar outgroups to avoid the costs of misidentification. Implications for social influence, identity signaling, and the popularity and diffusion of culture are discussed.

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 different effects on the subsequent choices of different groups of people. These differences in effects are attributable to the groups having different prime associations. These results highlight the importance of understanding unique, personal associations to primes and suggest that segmentation is also important for predicting nonconsciously influenced choices.

We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of other social groups, in product domains that are seen as symbolic of identity (e.g., music or hairstyles, rather than backpacks or stereos). In identity domains, participants avoided options preferred by majorities and abandoned preferences shared with majorities. The social group associated with a product influenced choice more in identity domains and when a given product was framed as identity relevant. People diverge, in part, to avoid communicating undesired identities.

The results of 5 studies showed that people see others as more conforming than themselves. This asymmetry was found to occur in domains ranging from consumer purchases to political views. Participants claimed to be less susceptible than their average peers to broad descriptions of social influences, and they also claimed to be less susceptible than specific peers to specific instances of conformity. These studies further demonstrated that this asymmetry is not simply the result of social desirability, but it is also rooted in people's attention to introspective versus behavioral information when making conformity assessments. The participants displayed an introspection illusion, placing more weight on introspective evidence of conformity (relative to behavioral evidence) when judging their own susceptibility to social influence as opposed to someone else's. Implications for self-other asymmetries, implicit social influence, and interpersonal conflict are discussed.

Why do some cultural items catch on and become more popular than others? Language is one of the basic foundations of culture. But what leads some phrases to become more culturally successful? There are multiple ways to convey the same thing and phrases with similar meanings often act as substitutes, competing for usage. A not so friendly person, for example, can be described as unfriendly or cold. We study how the senses shape cultural success, suggesting that compared with their semantic equivalents (e.g., unfriendly person), phrases which relate to senses in metaphoric ways (e.g., cold person) should be more culturally successful. Data from 5 million books over 200 years support this prediction: Sensory metaphors are used more frequently over time than are their semantic equivalents. Experimental evidence demonstrates that sensory metaphors are more memorable because they relate more to the senses and have more associative cues. These findings shed light on how senses shape language and the psychological foundations of culture more broadly. (

We investigate 1 factor that influences the success of ideas or cultural representations by proposing that they have a habitat, that is, a set of environmental cues that encourages people to recall and transmit them. We test 2 hypotheses: (a) fluctuation: the success of an idea will vary over time with fluctuations in its habitat, and (b) competition: ideas with more prevalent habitats will be more successful. Four studies use subject ratings and data from newspapers to provide correlational support for our 2 hypotheses, with a negative factoid, positive rumor, catchphrases, and variants of a proverb. Three additional experimental studies manipulate the topic of actual conversations and find empirical support for our theory, with catchphrases, proverbs, and slang. The discussion examines how habitat prevalence applies to a more extensive class of ideas and suggests how habitats may influence the process by which ideas evolve.

Word of mouth is thought to help consumers make better choices. But could the way different types of consumers endorse products sometimes lead word of mouth recipients to make worse choices than they would have otherwise? Five studies, including textual analysis of almost 1,000 online reviews, demonstrate that the language more and less knowledgeable consumers tend to use when endorsing products shapes word of mouth’s impact. Because novices are less aware that others have heterogeneous product preferences, they tend to use more explicit “I recommend” language when endorsing products. Compared to more implicit endorsements (e.g., “I liked it” or “I enjoyed it”), explicit recommendations are more persuasive and increase purchase intent. Because novices also tend to choose inferior products, word of mouth recipients may unintentionally tend to follow the advice of novices, and make sub-optimal choices as a result.

Options are often presented incidentally in a sequence, but does serial position impact choice after delay, and if so, how? We address this question in a consequential real-world choice domain. Using 25 years of citation data, and a unique identification strategy, we examine the relationship between article order (i.e., position in a journal issue) and citation count. Results indicate that mere serial position affects the prominence that research achieves: Earlier-listed articles receive more citations. Furthermore, our identification strategy allows us to cast doubt on alternative explanations (i.e., editorial placement) and instead indicate that the effect is driven by psychological processes of attention and memory. These findings deepen the understanding of how presentation order impacts choice, suggest that subtle presentation factors can bias an important scientific metric, and shed light on how psychological processes shape collective outcomes.

How do psychological processes shape how culture evolves? We investigated how a cultural item's popularity is shaped by the recent popularity of other items with features in common. Specifically, using more than 100 years of first-names data, we examined how a name’s popularity is influenced by the popularity of that name’s component phonemes in other names in the previous year. Building on mere-exposure research, we found that names are more likely to become popular when similar names have been popular recently. These effects are nonlinear, however, and overpopularity hurts adoption. In addition, these effects vary with phoneme position. We demonstrate the causal impact of similarity on cultural success in a natural experiment using hurricane names. An exogenous shock to a phoneme’s frequency, due to the presence of the phoneme in the names of prominent hurricanes, boosts the popularity of names that share that phoneme. Taken together, our results suggest how the similarity between cultural items affects how popular they become and how culture evolves more broadly.

Why do people use online social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) and what are the implications of this behavior for well-being? While emotionally unstable individuals experience emotions more intensely, they are less adept at regulation. Consequently, we suggest they may rely on others more to help them deal with their emotions. Further, given they tend to be socially apprehensive they may be particularly likely to rely on online expression because it is less threatening. Consistent with this perspective, we find that emotional unstable individuals are more likely to post self-relevant information online and write about their emotions when doing so – a tendency not observed offline. Further, such emotional writing, paired with the potential to receive social support helps them repair well-being after negative experiences. These results shed light on a motivator for, and benefit of, online social networking, while also demonstrating how the social sharing of emotion can boost well-being.

Social transmission is everywhere. Friends talk about restaurants, policy wonks rant about legislation, analysts trade stock tips, neighbors gossip, and teens chitchat. Further, such interpersonal communication affects everything from decision making and well-being (Asch, 1956; Mehl, Vazire, Holleran, & Clark, 2010) to the spread of ideas, the persistence of stereotypes, and the diffusion of culture (Heath, 1996; Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001; Kashima, 2008; Schaller, Conway, & Tanchuk, 2002; Schaller & Crandall, 2004). But although it is clear that social transmission is both frequent and important, what drives people to share, and why are some stories and information shared more than others?

Car purchases are among the largest and most expensive purchases consumers ever make. While functional and economic concerns are obviously important, we examine whether social influence also plays a role. Using a Bayesian probability model along with data on over 1.6 million cars sold over a nine-year period, we examine how social influence affects car purchase volume. In particular, we investigate three questions: (1) Are people more likely to buy a car if others around them have recently done so? (2) Do these effects vary based on the identity (e.g., age and gender) of the prior purchasers? (3) Are they moderated by visibility, the ease of seeing others' behavior? After subjecting our estimates to an extensive set of tests (a quasi-experimental design using distance, matching, and dosage; model- and covariate-based controls; permutation re-sampling; and out-of-sample tests) to assess whether they might be due to something other than social influence, we find that social effects are (1) present (one additional purchase is made for every seven to ten prior purchases made locally by a given subgroup), (2) stronger for prior purchases by men than by women, and (3) larger in areas where others behavior should be more visible (i.e., more people commute in car visible ways).

Can losing during a competitive task motivate individuals and teams to exert greater effort and perform better overall? Analysis of over 45,000 collegiate and 18,000 professional basketball games illustrates that being slightly behind at halftime leads to a discontinuous increase in winning percentage. Teams that are losing by a small amount win approximately 2 (NCAA) and 6 (NBA) percentage points more often than expected. In the NBA, this psychological effect is roughly half the size of the proverbial home-team advantage. Additional experimental evidence corroborates the field test and casts doubt on alternative explanations.

American voters are assigned to vote at a particular polling location (e.g., a church, school, etc.). We show these assigned polling locations can influence how people vote. Analysis of a recent general election demonstrates that people who were assigned to vote in schools were more likely to support a school funding initiative. This effect persisted even when controlling for voters' political views, demographics, and unobservable characteristics of individuals living near schools. A follow-up experiment using random assignment suggests that priming underlies these effects, and that they can occur outside of conscious awareness. These findings underscore the subtle power of situational context to shape important real-world decisions.

The notion of conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899) suggests that consumers spend lavishly on goods to that symbolize status and visibly communicate wealth and status to others. Analysis of multiple product categories, however, indicates an inverted-U relationship between price and the presence of logos or brand names: High-end products are actually less likely to contain such clear brand markers. Further, experimental studies show that high-end products which use more subtle markers are harder for observers to recognize, more likely to be perceived as cheaper generic equivalents, and less likely to be perceived as status symbols. This research explains this seeming inconsistency through social identity and distinction. Mainstream consumers prefer explicitly marked products which are widely recognizable symbols of prestige. Consequently, insiders prefer subtle markers that differentiate them from the mainstream and thus facilitate communication with others in the know. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the communication of identity, brand management, and the success of cultural products.