This paper experimentally examines image motivation—the desire to be liked and well regarded by others—as a driver in prosocial behavior (doing good), and asks whether extrinsic monetary incentives ...(doing well) have a detrimental effect on prosocial behavior due to crowding out of image motivation. Using the unique property of image motivation—its dependency on visibility—we show that image is indeed an important part of the motivation to behave prosocially, and that extrinsic incentives crowd out image motivation. Therefore, monetary incentives are more likely to be counterproductive for public prosocial activities than for private ones. (JEL D64, L31, Z13)
The application of neuroimaging methods to product marketing - neuromarketing - has recently gained considerable popularity. We propose that there are two main reasons for this trend. First, the ...possibility that neuroimaging will become cheaper and faster than other marketing methods; and second, the hope that neuroimaging will provide marketers with information that is not obtainable through conventional marketing methods. Although neuroimaging is unlikely to be cheaper than other tools in the near future, there is growing evidence that it may provide hidden information about the consumer experience. The most promising application of neuroimaging methods to marketing may come before a product is even released - when it is just an idea being developed.
People like to think of themselves as honest. However, dishonesty pays—and it often pays well. How do people resolve this tension? This research shows that people behave dishonestly enough to profit ...but honestly enough to delude themselves of their own integrity. A little bit of dishonesty gives a taste of profit without spoiling a positive self-view. Two mechanisms allow for such self-concept maintenance: inattention to moral standards and categorization malleability. Six experiments support the authors' theory of self-concept maintenance and offer practical applications for curbing dishonesty in everyday life.
Despite the tremendous resources devoted to marketing on Facebook, little is known about its actual effect on customers. Specifically, can Facebook page likes affect offline customer behavior, and if ...so, how? To answer these questions, the authors conduct a field experiment on acquired Facebook page likes and find them to have a positive causal effect on offline customer behavior. Importantly, these likes are found to be most effective when the Facebook page is used as a platform for firm-initiated promotional communications. No effect of acquired page likes is found when customers interact organically with the firm's page, but a significant effect is found when the firm pays to boost its page posts and thus uses its Facebook page as a platform for paid advertising. These results demonstrate the value of likes beyond Facebook activity itself and highlight the conditions under which acquiring likes is most valuable for firms.
Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates, by ...asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a better America" by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.
The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love Norton, Michael I.; Mochon, Daniel; Ariely, Dan
Journal of consumer psychology,
July 2012, Letnik:
22, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of ...self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts' creations, and expected others to share their opinions. We show that labor leads to love only when labor results in successful completion of tasks; when participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the IKEA effect dissipated. Finally, we show that labor increases valuation for both “do-it-yourselfers” and novices.
Sets of similar objects are common occurrences--a crowd of people, a bunch of bananas, a copse of trees, a shelf of books, a line of cars. Each item in the set may be distinct, highly visible, and ...discriminable. But when we look away from the set, what information do we have? The current article starts to address this question by introducing the idea of a set representation. This idea was tested using two new paradigms: mean discrimination and member identification. Three experiments using sets of different-sized spots showed that observers know a set's mean quite accurately but know little about the individual items, except their range. Taken together, these results suggest that the visual system represents the overall statistical, and not individual, properties of sets.
Modern humans live in an "exploded" network with unusually large circles of trust that form due to prosociality toward unfamiliar people (i.e. xenophilia). In a set of experiments we demonstrate that ...semi-free ranging bonobos (Pan paniscus) - both juveniles and young adults - also show spontaneous responses consistent with xenophilia. Bonobos voluntarily aided an unfamiliar, non-group member in obtaining food even when he/she did not make overt requests for help. Bonobos also showed evidence for involuntary, contagious yawning in response to videos of yawning conspecifics who were complete strangers. These experiments reveal that xenophilia in bonobos can be unselfish, proactive and automatic. They support the first impression hypothesis that suggests xenophilia can evolve through individual selection in social species whenever the benefits of building new bonds outweigh the costs. Xenophilia likely evolved in bonobos as the risk of intergroup aggression dissipated and the benefits of bonding between immigrating members increased. Our findings also mean the human potential for xenophilia is either evolutionarily shared or convergent with bonobos and not unique to our species as previously proposed.
Across four experimental studies, individuals who were depleted of their self-regulatory resources by an initial act of self-control were more likely to “impulsively cheat” than individuals whose ...self-regulatory resources were intact. Our results demonstrate that individuals depleted of self-control resources were more likely to behave dishonestly (Study 1). Depletion reduced people’s moral awareness when they faced the opportunity to cheat, which, in turn, was responsible for heightened cheating (Study 2). Individuals high in moral identity, however, did not show elevated levels of cheating when they were depleted (Study 3), supporting our hypothesis that self-control depletion increases cheating when it robs people of the executive resources necessary to identify an act as immoral or unethical. Our results also show that resisting unethical behavior both requires and depletes self-control resources (Study 4). Taken together, our findings help to explain how otherwise ethical individuals predictably engage in unethical behavior.
Every day, billions of us receive smartphone notifications. Designed to distract, these interruptions capture and monetize our time and attention. Though smartphones are incredibly helpful, their ...current notification systems impose underappreciated, yet considerable, mental costs; like a slot machine, they exploit our inherent psychological bias for variable rewards. With an app that we developed, we conducted a randomized field experiment (n = 237) to test whether batching notifications—delivering notifications in predictable intervals throughout the day—could improve psychological well-being. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment groups to either receive notifications as usual, batched, or never. Using daily diary surveys, we measured a range of psychological and health outcomes, and through our app system, we collected data on phone use behaviors. Compared to those in the control condition, participants whose notifications were batched three-times-a-day felt more attentive, productive, in a better mood, and in greater control of their phones. Participants in the batched group also reported lower stress, lower productivity, and fewer phone interruptions. In contrast, participants who did not receive notifications at all reaped few of those benefits, but experienced higher levels of anxiety and “fear of missing out” (FoMO). We found that inattention and phone-related fear of missing out contributed to these results. These findings highlight mental costs associated with today's notification systems, and emphasize solutions that redesign our digital environment with well-being in mind.
•We modified smartphone users' default notification systems.•We assigned people to control or 3 distinct schedules of batching notifications.•Batching alerts hourly produced little change compared to control (use as usual).•Batching notifications 3 times a day reduced stress and increased well-being.•Completely switching off alerts produced, instead, more anxiety and FoMO.
PDF
