Chairs: Lauren Cheatham, Stanford University, USA Zakary Tormala, Stanford University, USA Paper #1: Finding vs . Receiving: How Content Acquisition
Affects Sharing
Zoey Chen, University of Miami, USA
S. Jonah Berger, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Paper #2: When is Saying Believing? Sharing Sensations after Tasting New Products
Salvador Ruiz de Maya, University of Murcia, Spain Inés López López, University of Murcia, Spain Sarah Moore, University of Alberta, Canada
Paper #3: The Curvilinear Relationship between Attitude Certainty and Attitudinal Advocacy
Lauren Cheatham, Stanford University, USA Zakary Tormala, Stanford University, USA
Paper #4: The Power Matching Effect: The Dynamic Interplay of Communicator and Audience Power in Persuasion
Derek Rucker, Northwestern University, USA David Dubois, INSEAD, France
Adam Galinsky, Columbia University, USA SESSION OVERVIEW
Although considerable research has explored the psychological antecedents and consequences of persuasion, very little attention has been paid to when, why, and how consumers choose to advocate on behalf of their own beliefs regarding issues or products. In this ses-sion, we define advocacy as either: (A) sharing or expressing one’s opinion about an issue or product, or (B) making an explicit effort to persuade others toward one’s opinion about an issue or product.
Across four papers, we attempt to answer when, why, and how peo-ple choose to share their opinions, make recommendations, or per-suade others, and we explore how those exposed to such advocacies react in a variety of contexts.
The current session will provide insight into the fundamental drivers of consumer advocacy and the myriad ways in which con-sumers respond to information sharing and persuasion attempts.
Chen and Berger focus on sharing and word of mouth. They find important differences in the effects of receiving content from oth-ers voth-ersus finding it themselves: When people receive content from others, they share interesting but not boring content; however, when they find the content themselves, they do not discriminate and end up sharing both interesting and boring content. Moore, López, and De Maya focus primarily on how learning others’ opinions influences consumers’ product evaluations. Specifically, they investigate when and why consumers are influenced by others’ opinions. They show that exposure to others’ opinions impacts subsequent evaluations and purchase intentions of products, even when a participant has direct experience with the product and shows initial dislike. Interestingly, they also find that the type of information consumers receive shapes these effects: receiving more information in the form of an expla-nation reduces reliance on others’ opinions compared to receiving relatively little explanation. Cheatham and Tormala explore the cur-vilinear relationship between attitude certainty and advocacy. Their findings suggest that being very high or very low in certainty can foster advocacy relative to having moderate certainty. The unex-pected relationship between uncertainty and advocacy is attenuated by self-affirmation, suggesting that consumers express advocacy intentions as a way to compensate for feeling threatened by a lack
of certainty. Finally, Rucker, Dubois, and Galinsky demonstrate a power-matching effect in message generation and recipient respon-siveness. Participants induced to high/low power are more convinc-ing in their argument generation – and also more persuaded by oth-ers – when source-recipient power matches rather than mismatches.
Their results offer a framework for understanding how power affects the communication and reception of persuasive messages.
Taken together, these papers provide deeper understanding of the specific experiential and social drivers of consumer advocacy. In so doing, this session offers new insight into an extremely important yet understudied topic. Consumer advocacy is a crucial component of the marketing mix and we expect that this session will attract a diverse audience, including researchers interested in persuasion, in-fluence, advocacy, word of mouth, and power, among other topics.
In addition, each paper will discuss practical applications, giving the session both theoretical and managerial importance.
Finding vs . Receiving:
How Content Acquisition Affects Sharing EXTENDED ABSTRACT
People often share online content with others. They email vid-eos, forward new stories, and post status updates. Consistent with the importance of this phenomenon, a great deal of recent research has begun to examine what people share and why (Berger and Milk-man 2012; Chen and Berger 2013). But might how people acquire content also influence whether or not they share it? Sometimes peo-ple find content themselves (e.g., coming across it while browsing a website), while other times people receive content from others (e.g., email forwards and retweets). Might these different methods of con-tent acquisition impact sharing, and if so, how?
We theorize that one way acquisition method impacts sharing is by affecting how people evaluate content. People tend to associ-ate found content with themselves and received content with others.
Further, people tend to hold themselves in positive regard (e.g., high self-esteem, positive illusions about themselves) and tend to be less critical of things associated with the self. Consequently, compared to received content, people should be less likely to critically pro-cess found content and thus be less attuned to underlying content characteristics (e.g., whether it is interesting or well-written). Taken together, this suggests that when people find (vs. receive) content, characteristics of the content itself should have less of an impact on whether it gets shared.
In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to either find or receive a more or less interesting article (2x2 between subjects design). Those in the receiving condition were told to “Imagine that someone emailed you the following article.” Those in the finding condition went onto a mock online news website and flip through the newspaper by clicking the Next button located on the bottom of the page. After flipping through a couple of filler pages (which only displayed the messages “Article A[/B/C]”), participants were shown either a low or highly interesting article (pretested). After reading the content, participants indicated (1) how likely they would be to share the article and (2) how interesting they found the article.
Participants said they would be more likely to share the more interesting article, but this was moderated by acquisition method.
While receivers were much more willing to share the high than the
low interest article, finders were less discriminating between the two.
Moderated mediation confirms that this is driven by sensitivity to un-derlying content quality (interestingness in this case): While receiv-ers were highly sensitive to content interestingness, and were thus more likely to share the high than the low interest content, finders saw less of a difference between the articles and their willingness to share was driven less by the content itself.
Study 2 provides further evidence for our theorizing in a more controlled setting. We selected one article and created high and low quality versions by adding typos. Participants followed the same finding versus receiving procedures used in study 1. Instead of rating the article on interestingness, participants indicated how well-writ-ten they found the article. Consiswell-writ-tent with study 1, receivers were more likely to share the article without typos than the one with typos, finders were less discriminating and were equally likely to share the two. Moderated mediation shows that this is driven by finders being less sensitive to how well-written the articles were and thus mak-ing sharmak-ing decisions that are less dependent on underlymak-ing content characteristic. If our results – that finders are less sensitive to content characteristics– are indeed driven by people being less critical of things associated with themselves as we have theorized, then this effect should be attenuated among people who are more self-critical.
Studies 3 and 4 test this idea.
Study 3 employs a 2 (Content quality: low vs. high interest) x self-esteem (measured) design. All participants imagined finding content and followed the same procedures used in study 1 with the addition of an implicit self-esteem measure (Bosson, Swann Jr., and Pennebaker, 2000). Not surprisingly, participants (in this case, all finders) were more willing to share the high than the low interest content, but importantly this is moderated by self-esteem. Moderated mediation shows that as finders’ self-esteem decreases (i.e., as they become more critical of themselves), they become more sensitive to the underlying content characteristic (interestingness in this case), which in turn drives sharing.
Our last study further tests the role of self-esteem using a 2 (self-esteem: high vs. low) x 2(Acquisition method: receiving vs. finding) x 2(Content quality: low vs. high interest) between-subjects design.
We manipulated self-esteem by giving participants positive or nega-tive feedback on their performance on an unrelated task (adapted from Baumeister and Tice 1985; Forgas 1991). The rest of the study is identical to study 1. For participants in the high self-esteem condi-tion, results were the same as the prior studies: finders’ willingness to share depended less on characteristics of the content itself. Inducing low self-esteem, however, made finders look more like receivers:
both finders’ and receivers’ willingness to share was equally sensi-tive to underlying content characteristics. It’s only when finders are primed to be self-critical do they become more sensitive to content characteristic.
Taken together, these four studies show that how people ac-quire content affects their subsequent sharing behavior. Compared to people who received content from others, the willingness to share of people who found content themselves depended less on the charac-teristics of the content. Further, this was driven by people’s tendency to be less critical of things associated with the self (as long as the self is seen positively). More broadly, this research contributes to under-standing why people share. It is not just characteristics of the con-tent itself, but also how concon-tent is acquired, that determines sharing.
When is Saying Believing?
Sharing Sensations after Tasting New Products EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Humans, as social beings and as consumers, have a strong mo-tivation to share their understanding, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and inner states with others—to create a shared reality (Echterhoff , Higgins and Levine 2009; Hardin and Higgins 1996; Higgins and Pittman 2008; Rimé et al. 1999). Such shared reality motivations lead individuals to communicate with others about referents such as people and products (Higgins 2005). Shared reality motivations underlie studies demonstrating the saying-is-believing effect, which show that “a message tailored to a particular audience influences a communicator’s subsequent memory and impression of the mes-sage topic” (Hausmann, Levine and Higgins 2008). Such audience tuning (Higgins 1992) implies that consumers consider their audi-ence’s point of view when sending messages (Schlosser 2005), and shows that tuning messages to match the audience’s point of view can impact consumers’ memory and evaluations in the direction of the “tuned” message. Shared reality effects are stronger under condi-tions of ambiguity, where consumers lack a coherent interpretation of a situation or, conversely, are confronted with multiple plausible interpretations (Festinger 1950; Frish and Baron 1988). Consumers can deal with ambiguity by creating a shared reality with others, al-lowing them to construct an audience-congruent representation of the target and attain a greater sense of certainty about what the target is actually like (Kopietz et al. 2010).
The current research uses the context of new products to ex-plore shared reality effects. In this context, ambiguity should play a significant role, since many new products are ambiguous with re-spect to the product categories that they belong to (Moreau, Mark-man and LehMark-mann 2001). In four studies, we examine when and how exposure to others’ opinions influences consumers’ evaluations and purchase intentions for new products. Theoretically, we extend previous work on shared reality and saying-is-believing to the con-sumer context; more importantly, we examine several marketplace-relevant variables that should increase or decrease the ambiguity of new products, and examine how these variables affect consumers’
susceptibility to others’ opinions. Practically, our results offer ways for marketers to understand and manage consumers’ evaluations of new products.
Studies 1 and 2 used jellybeans with unidentifiable flavors to represent ambiguous new products. In both studies, undergraduates tasted the jellybeans. Some participants received information about others’ opinions (95% of consumers like this flavor of jellybean), while others did not. In addition, in study 1, the timing of when par-ticipants received this information was manipulated to occur during or after the jellybean tasting. We predicted that even if participants received information after tasting, this would not be sufficient to eliminate their susceptibility to others’ opinions because of ambigu-ity of the jellybean flavors. In study 2, the unidentifiable jellybean flavor was manipulated, based on pre-testing, such that participants tasted a liked or a disliked jellybean. We predicted that participants would show susceptibility to others opinions’ only in the disliked condition, because the desire to reduce ambiguity and increase un-derstanding is greater for negative than for positive experiences (Wong & Weiner 1980).
Replicating prior work, both studies showed that participants
“tuned” their opinions to others: receiving positive information about others’ opinions increased participants’ jellybean evaluations and purchase intentions. The timing manipulation in study 1 did not influence this tuning process: even when participants received
opinion information after tasting the jellybean, their evaluations were still influenced. However, the valence manipulation in study 2 revealed that participants were influenced by others’ opinions only when they sampled disliked, rather than liked, jellybeans. This ef-fect was so strong that participants’ final, “tuned” evaluations of the disliked jellybean were equivalent to their evaluations of the liked jellybean. Thus, studies 1 and 2 suggest that shared reality effects in the marketplace are fairly robust. In contrast, studies 3 and 4 identify a variable that attenuates these effects and allows consumers to rely on their own evaluations rather than on others’.
Study 3 shows that explaining can decrease consumers’ reli-ance on others’ opinions. One might predict that receiving additional information—of any kind—about others’ opinions should lead con-sumers to rely on them even more; however, we find the opposite.
Compared to participants who received no information about others’
opinions and to participants who received basic information about others’ opinions (e.g., 95% of consumers like this muffin), those who received an explanation of others’ opinions (e.g., 95% of con-sumers like this muffin because it is sugar free) did not “tune” their evaluations to others’ opinions. We suggest that this is because the explanation decreases ambiguity enough to allow consumers to rely on—and to explain—their own experience with the product, without reference to others.
Study 4 (in progress) will further test the effects of explaining on shared reality by looking at hedonic versus utilitarian products (e.g., a gummy candy vs. a gummy vitamin) crossed with hedonic versus utilitarian explanations (I like this gummy because it’s tasty vs. healthy). We predict an explanation by product type interaction (Moore 2012), where receiving hedonic reasons will reduce ambi-guity for the hedonic product, and receiving utilitarian reasons will reduce ambiguity for the utilitarian product; this should decrease consumers’ reliance on others’ opinions and reduce the shared reality effect. We should find a shared reality effect only when others’ expla-nations fail to reduce ambiguity—that is, when consumers receive a hedonic reason for liking a utilitarian product or a utilitarian reason for liking a hedonic product, they should still tune their evaluation to others’.
The current research provides a nuanced picture of when and why consumers are influenced by others’ opinions in the market-place. We find that shared reality motives have a strong impact on consumers’ evaluations and intentions to purchase new products—
even those that they have direct experience with, and even those that they dislike initially. However, these effects depend on what type of information consumers receive: ironically, receiving more informa-tion in the form of an explanainforma-tion can reduce their reliance on others’
opinions.
The Curvilinear Relationship between Attitude Certainty and Attitudinal Advocacy
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
From gun control to vaccinations to new product purchases, consumers are constantly advocating their beliefs. On Facebook, for example, friends bombard each other with countless posts comment-ing on current world events, excitcomment-ing new products, or the hottest new bar. What drives a person to advocate on behalf of these beliefs?
Despite a voluminous literature exploring the antecedents and con-sequences of persuasion more generally, surprisingly little is known about the determinants of attitudinal advocacy.
One factor that does appear to contribute to advocacy is attitude certainty. Attitude certainty refers to the subjective sense of confi-dence or conviction with which one holds one’s attitude (Rucker,
Tormala, Petty, and Briñol 2014). Certainty traditionally has been viewed as a dimension of attitude strength in that it shapes an at-titude’s durability and impact. For example, attitudes held with cer-tainty are more resistant to change and more influential over people’s choices and behaviors (Tormala and Rucker 2007). Most relevant to the current research, it also has been shown to contribute to advocacy intentions and actual advocacy behavior—people generally advocate more on behalf of their own attitudes and opinions (e.g., share them with others and seek to persuade others to their views) when they hold those attitudes and opinions with certainty (Akhtar, Paunesku, and Tormala 2013; Barden & Petty, 2008; Cheatham and Tormala under review; Visser, Krosnick, & Simmons, 2003).
However, there is also reason to believe that states of low certainty can foster advocacy type behavior. According to Gal and Rucker (2010), when a consumer’s confidence about a particular belief is undermined, he or she may feel threatened and engage in compensatory action that includes advocating more aggressively on behalf of the threatened belief. In a similar vein, Rios, Wheeler and Miller (2012) found that inducing people to feel self-uncertainty sometimes led them to express minority opinions more freely.
In short, based on past research there is potential controversy surrounding the role of attitude certainty in directing attitudinal ad-vocacy. We propose that this difference might be explained by the fact that past research has examined attitude certainty at different points on the certainty continuum: moderate to high certainty in studies showing a positive relation between certainty and advocacy and low to moderate certainty in studies showing a negative relation.
Our central hypothesis is that attitude certainty has a curvilinear re-lationship with attitudinal advocacy, such that people advocate more when they feel very uncertain or very certain, and advocate less when they are somewhere in between (i.e., moderate certainty). More spe-cifically, we submit that high certainty fosters feelings of efficacy, which have been shown to promote advocacy in past work (Akhtar et al. 2013), whereas low certainty fosters compensatory motives, which lead people to advocate as a means of self-affirmation (Gal and Rucker 2010). We present 3 studies testing these relationships.
Study 1 used a correlational design to provide initial evidence of the proposed curvilinear relationship between certainty and ad-vocacy. Participants were presented with several policy issues and asked about their attitudes, certainty, and advocacy intentions (i.e., their intentions to share their opinion with others and to persuade others to adopt their view). To test our hypothesis we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis. First, we observed a main effect of attitude certainty on sharing and persuasion intentions for each issue:
the more certain people felt, the more likely they were to advocate.
More importantly, we also uncovered a quadratic for both sharing and persuasion intentions, suggesting that both very uncertain and very certain participants expressed higher advocacy intentions than
More importantly, we also uncovered a quadratic for both sharing and persuasion intentions, suggesting that both very uncertain and very certain participants expressed higher advocacy intentions than