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Gavan J. Fitzsimons

Edward and Rose Donnell Distinguished Professor
Fuqua School of Business
Duke Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Fuqua School, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Sharing Food Can Backfire: When Healthy Choices for Children Lead Parents to Make Unhealthy Choices for Themselves

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · June 1, 2024 Many consumers are caregivers and, as part of caregiving, frequently make food choices for their dependents. This research examines how food choices made for children influence the healthiness of parents’ subsequent self-choices. Whereas prior work focuses ... Full text Cite

When and Why Antiegalitarianism Affects Resistance to Supporting Black-Owned Businesses.

Journal Article Psychological science · June 2024 Understanding how initiatives to support Black-owned businesses are received, and why, has important social and economic implications. To address this, we designed three experiments to investigate the role of antiegalitarian versus egalitarian ideologies a ... Full text Cite

Conceptual replication and extension of health behavior theories' predictions in the context of COVID-19: Evidence across countries and over time

Journal Article Social and Personality Psychology Compass · February 1, 2024 Virus mitigation behavior has been and still is a powerful means to fight the COVID-19 pandemic irrespective of the availability of pharmaceutical means (e.g., vaccines). We drew on health behavior theories to predict health-protective (coping-specific) re ... Full text Cite

When do photos on products hurt or help consumption? How magical thinking shapes consumer reactions to photo-integrated products

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2024 Consumers and companies frequently integrate products with lifelike photographs of people, animals, and other entities. However, consumer responses to such products are relatively unknown. Drawing on magical thinking and moral psychology, we propose that, ... Full text Cite

Pandemic boredom: Little evidence that lockdown-related boredom affects risky public health behaviors across 116 countries.

Journal Article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · December 2023 Some public officials have expressed concern that policies mandating collective public health behaviors (e.g., national/regional "lockdown") may result in behavioral fatigue that ultimately renders such policies ineffective. Boredom, specifically, has been ... Full text Cite

Identifying important individual- and country-level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: A machine learning analysis

Journal Article European Journal of Social Psychology · October 1, 2023 Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small n ... Full text Cite

Understanding effect sizes in consumer psychology

Journal Article Marketing Letters · September 1, 2023 Over the past decade, behavioral scientists have learned that many findings in the field may not replicate, leading to calls for change in how behavioral research is conducted. Krefeld-Schwalb and Scheibehenne (2023) examine changes in the methodological p ... Full text Cite

Intentions to be Vaccinated Against COVID-19: The Role of Prosociality and Conspiracy Beliefs across 20 Countries.

Journal Article Health communication · July 2023 Understanding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is important to inform policy decisions and plan vaccination campaigns. The aims of this research were to: (1) explore the individual- and country-level determinants of intentions to be vaccinated a ... Full text Cite

Secret consumer behaviors in close relationships

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2023 Although close relationships are often characterized by openness and disclosure, in the present research, we propose that there are times when individuals choose not to tell close others about their consumer behavior, keeping it a secret. For example, one ... Full text Cite

Celebrate Good Times: How Celebrations Increase Perceived Social Support

Journal Article Journal of Public Policy and Marketing · April 1, 2023 Despite the ubiquity of celebrations in everyday life, little is known about how celebrations may contribute to consumer well-being. In the current work, the authors propose that celebrations promote perceived social support, which prior work has conceptua ... Full text Cite

Aha over Haha: Brands benefit more from being clever than from being funny

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2023 We examine whether the cleverness of a brand's humor attempt affects consumers' brand attitudes and engagement. A clever humor attempt is any humor attempt wherein the consumer feels she must make mental connections to solve the joke (e.g., understand a cu ... Full text Cite

Trust in government regarding COVID-19 and its associations with preventive health behaviour and prosocial behaviour during the pandemic: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study.

Journal Article Psychological medicine · January 2023 BackgroundThe effective implementation of government policies and measures for controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires compliance from the public. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associati ... Full text Cite

Spending and Happiness: The Role of Perceived Financial Constraints

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2022 Perceived financial constraints are ubiquitous, and prior research suggests that consumers who feel financially constrained are especially likely to engage in compensatory consumption to signal positive attributes or offset the aversiveness associated with ... Full text Cite

Open Science Online Grocery: A Tool for Studying Choice Context and Food Choice

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · October 1, 2022 The purpose of this article is to introduce a new tool—the Open Science Online Grocery—for studying the effects of the choice context on purchasing decisions. We first review the features of the tool: a mock online grocery store containing over 11,000 prod ... Full text Cite

Lockdown Lives: A Longitudinal Study of Inter-Relationships Among Feelings of Loneliness, Social Contacts, and Solidarity During the COVID-19 Lockdown in Early 2020.

Journal Article Personality & social psychology bulletin · September 2022 We examine how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. From the PsyCorona database, we obtained longitudinal data from 23 countries, collected between March and May 2020. The re ... Full text Cite

Better to Decide Together: Shared Consumer Decision Making, Perceived Power, and Relationship Satisfaction

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · July 1, 2022 Shared consumer decisions, particularly those made with a relationship partner, can be very different from decisions that are made alone. Across multiple studies, we investigate how shared consumer decision making affects perceptions of power and relations ... Full text Cite

COVID-19 stressors and health behaviors: A multilevel longitudinal study across 86 countries.

Journal Article Preventive medicine reports · June 2022 Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examina ... Full text Cite

Using machine learning to identify important predictors of COVID-19 infection prevention behaviors during the early phase of the pandemic.

Journal Article Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · April 2022 Before vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became available, a set of infection-prevention behaviors constituted the primary means to mitigate the virus spread. Our study aimed to identify important predictors of this set of behaviors. Whereas ... Full text Cite

'We are all in the same boat': How societal discontent affects intention to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal Article Journal of community & applied social psychology · March 2022 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentim ... Full text Cite

Predictors of adherence to public health behaviors for fighting COVID-19 derived from longitudinal data.

Journal Article Scientific reports · March 2022 The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how in ... Full text Cite

Sharing Food Can Backfire: When Healthy Choices for Children Lead Parents to Make Unhealthy Choices for Themselves

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · June 1, 2024 Many consumers are caregivers and, as part of caregiving, frequently make food choices for their dependents. This research examines how food choices made for children influence the healthiness of parents’ subsequent self-choices. Whereas prior work focuses ... Full text Cite

When and Why Antiegalitarianism Affects Resistance to Supporting Black-Owned Businesses.

Journal Article Psychological science · June 2024 Understanding how initiatives to support Black-owned businesses are received, and why, has important social and economic implications. To address this, we designed three experiments to investigate the role of antiegalitarian versus egalitarian ideologies a ... Full text Cite

Conceptual replication and extension of health behavior theories' predictions in the context of COVID-19: Evidence across countries and over time

Journal Article Social and Personality Psychology Compass · February 1, 2024 Virus mitigation behavior has been and still is a powerful means to fight the COVID-19 pandemic irrespective of the availability of pharmaceutical means (e.g., vaccines). We drew on health behavior theories to predict health-protective (coping-specific) re ... Full text Cite

When do photos on products hurt or help consumption? How magical thinking shapes consumer reactions to photo-integrated products

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2024 Consumers and companies frequently integrate products with lifelike photographs of people, animals, and other entities. However, consumer responses to such products are relatively unknown. Drawing on magical thinking and moral psychology, we propose that, ... Full text Cite

Pandemic boredom: Little evidence that lockdown-related boredom affects risky public health behaviors across 116 countries.

Journal Article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · December 2023 Some public officials have expressed concern that policies mandating collective public health behaviors (e.g., national/regional "lockdown") may result in behavioral fatigue that ultimately renders such policies ineffective. Boredom, specifically, has been ... Full text Cite

Identifying important individual- and country-level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: A machine learning analysis

Journal Article European Journal of Social Psychology · October 1, 2023 Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small n ... Full text Cite

Understanding effect sizes in consumer psychology

Journal Article Marketing Letters · September 1, 2023 Over the past decade, behavioral scientists have learned that many findings in the field may not replicate, leading to calls for change in how behavioral research is conducted. Krefeld-Schwalb and Scheibehenne (2023) examine changes in the methodological p ... Full text Cite

Intentions to be Vaccinated Against COVID-19: The Role of Prosociality and Conspiracy Beliefs across 20 Countries.

Journal Article Health communication · July 2023 Understanding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is important to inform policy decisions and plan vaccination campaigns. The aims of this research were to: (1) explore the individual- and country-level determinants of intentions to be vaccinated a ... Full text Cite

Secret consumer behaviors in close relationships

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2023 Although close relationships are often characterized by openness and disclosure, in the present research, we propose that there are times when individuals choose not to tell close others about their consumer behavior, keeping it a secret. For example, one ... Full text Cite

Celebrate Good Times: How Celebrations Increase Perceived Social Support

Journal Article Journal of Public Policy and Marketing · April 1, 2023 Despite the ubiquity of celebrations in everyday life, little is known about how celebrations may contribute to consumer well-being. In the current work, the authors propose that celebrations promote perceived social support, which prior work has conceptua ... Full text Cite

Aha over Haha: Brands benefit more from being clever than from being funny

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2023 We examine whether the cleverness of a brand's humor attempt affects consumers' brand attitudes and engagement. A clever humor attempt is any humor attempt wherein the consumer feels she must make mental connections to solve the joke (e.g., understand a cu ... Full text Cite

Trust in government regarding COVID-19 and its associations with preventive health behaviour and prosocial behaviour during the pandemic: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study.

Journal Article Psychological medicine · January 2023 BackgroundThe effective implementation of government policies and measures for controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires compliance from the public. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associati ... Full text Cite

Spending and Happiness: The Role of Perceived Financial Constraints

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2022 Perceived financial constraints are ubiquitous, and prior research suggests that consumers who feel financially constrained are especially likely to engage in compensatory consumption to signal positive attributes or offset the aversiveness associated with ... Full text Cite

Open Science Online Grocery: A Tool for Studying Choice Context and Food Choice

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · October 1, 2022 The purpose of this article is to introduce a new tool—the Open Science Online Grocery—for studying the effects of the choice context on purchasing decisions. We first review the features of the tool: a mock online grocery store containing over 11,000 prod ... Full text Cite

Lockdown Lives: A Longitudinal Study of Inter-Relationships Among Feelings of Loneliness, Social Contacts, and Solidarity During the COVID-19 Lockdown in Early 2020.

Journal Article Personality & social psychology bulletin · September 2022 We examine how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. From the PsyCorona database, we obtained longitudinal data from 23 countries, collected between March and May 2020. The re ... Full text Cite

Better to Decide Together: Shared Consumer Decision Making, Perceived Power, and Relationship Satisfaction

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · July 1, 2022 Shared consumer decisions, particularly those made with a relationship partner, can be very different from decisions that are made alone. Across multiple studies, we investigate how shared consumer decision making affects perceptions of power and relations ... Full text Cite

COVID-19 stressors and health behaviors: A multilevel longitudinal study across 86 countries.

Journal Article Preventive medicine reports · June 2022 Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examina ... Full text Cite

Using machine learning to identify important predictors of COVID-19 infection prevention behaviors during the early phase of the pandemic.

Journal Article Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · April 2022 Before vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became available, a set of infection-prevention behaviors constituted the primary means to mitigate the virus spread. Our study aimed to identify important predictors of this set of behaviors. Whereas ... Full text Cite

'We are all in the same boat': How societal discontent affects intention to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal Article Journal of community & applied social psychology · March 2022 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentim ... Full text Cite

Predictors of adherence to public health behaviors for fighting COVID-19 derived from longitudinal data.

Journal Article Scientific reports · March 2022 The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how in ... Full text Cite

Concern with COVID-19 pandemic threat and attitudes towards immigrants: The mediating effect of the desire for tightness.

Journal Article Current research in ecological and social psychology · January 2022 Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pand ... Full text Cite

Correction: Politicization of COVID-19 health-protective behaviors in the United States: Longitudinal and cross-national evidence.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2022 [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256740.]. ... Full text Cite

Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal Article Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology · August 1, 2021 Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( ... Full text Cite

Lives versus Livelihoods? Perceived economic risk has a stronger association with support for COVID-19 preventive measures than perceived health risk.

Journal Article Scientific reports · May 2021 This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 ... Full text Open Access Cite

Sincere, not sinful: Political ideology and the unique role of brand sincerity in shaping heterosexual and LGBTQ Consumers’ views of LGBTQ ads

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · April 1, 2021 Brand sincerity (wholesome, family-oriented) is a core dimension of brand personality; however, to what extent is LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning) representation congruent with brand sincerity? We argue that whether or not ... Full text Cite

Associations of risk perception of COVID-19 with emotion and mental health during the pandemic.

Journal Article Journal of affective disorders · April 2021 BackgroundAlthough there are increasing concerns on mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, no large-scale population-based studies have examined the associations of risk perception of COVID-19 with emotion and subsequent mental healt ... Full text Cite

Internal states and interoception along a spectrum of eating disorder symptomology.

Journal Article Physiol Behav · March 1, 2021 OBJECTIVE: Recent studies on atypical interoceptive capabilities have focused on clinical populations, including anorexia nervosa[1,2]. The present exploratory study aims to characterize the influence of disordered eating symptomology on interoceptive capa ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intergenerational conflicts of interest and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · March 1, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic presents threats, such as severe disease and economic hardship, to people of different ages. These threats can also be experienced asymmetrically across age groups, which could lead to generational differences in behavioral responses ... Full text Cite

Politicization of COVID-19 health-protective behaviors in the United States: Longitudinal and cross-national evidence.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2021 During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors. Health behavior theories suggest perceived vulnerability ... Full text Cite

Meal skipping and cognition along a spectrum of restrictive eating.

Journal Article Eat Behav · December 2020 OBJECTIVE: Inadequate nutrition adversely impacts brain development and cognitive functioning (Pollitt et al., 1983). Studies examining the acute impact of eating regular meals on cognition have reported inconsistent findings, necessitating the exploration ... Full text Link to item Cite

Monetary scarcity leads to increased desire for assortment

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · October 1, 2020 Money is a unique resource that provides considerable freedom and options to consumers. Restrictions on money may have a broader impact on consumers than similar restrictions to other desirable resources. In the first two studies, we show that within two d ... Full text Cite

She’ll take two: Relationship interdependence and negative emotion in everyday choice for others

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · July 1, 2020 Individuals frequently make choices for others. However, little work has examined the emotional quality of doing so or explored how relationship factors affect such choices. In three experiments and one longitudinal study, we explore how relationship inter ... Full text Cite

Special edition packaging and its negative effects on search and the shopping experience

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice · April 2, 2020 Past research offers mixed advice for marketers regarding the benefits of novel packaging. We find that special edition packaging, even when especially visually salient, impedes consumers’ search for the target product and leads to more negative evaluation ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Wine for the table: Self-construal, group size, and choice for self and others (Journal of Consumer Research DOI: 10.1093/jcr/ucy082)

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · April 1, 2020 In the article "Wine for the Table: Self-Construal, Group Size, and Choice for Self and Others" Journal of Consumer Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy082 Upon initial publication, Figure 4 contained a typo, and the supplementary material did not pro ... Full text Cite

Wine for the Table: Self-Construal, Group Size, and Choice for Self and Others

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2019 This research examines how consumers make unilateral decisions on behalf of the self and multiple others, in situations where the chosen option will be shared and consumed jointly by the group - for instance, choosing wine for the table. Results across six ... Full text Cite

A Framework for Understanding Consumer Choices for Others

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2019 Although most research on consumers' choices, and resulting insights, have focused on choices that consumers make solely for themselves, consumers often make choices for others, and there is a growing literature examining such choices. Theoretically, how c ... Full text Cite

The primacy of “what” over “how much”: How type and quantity shape healthiness perceptions of food portions

Journal Article Management Science · July 1, 2019 Healthy eating goals influence many consumer choices, such that evaluating the healthiness of food portions is important. Given that both the type and quantity of food jointly contribute to weight and overall health, evaluations of a food portion's healthi ... Full text Cite

Too much of a good thing? Consumer response to strategic changes in brand image

Journal Article International Journal of Research in Marketing · June 1, 2019 The current research investigates a potential disadvantage of building brand associations that resonate with consumers' identities and facilitate consumer–brand bonding. The authors propose a theory of consumer response to changes that either dampen or aug ... Full text Cite

Delicate Snowflakes and Broken Bonds: A Conceptualization of Consumption-Based Offense

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · April 1, 2019 When do consumers experience offense due to another individual's choice, use, display, gifting, sharing, or disposal of a product? Why do they experience offense, and does it matter if they do? In this article, we first draw from past work in multiple disc ... Full text Cite

Indulgent Foods Can Paradoxically Promote Disciplined Dietary Choices.

Journal Article Psychol Sci · February 2019 As obesity rates continue to rise, interventions promoting healthful choices will become increasingly important. Here, participants ( N = 79) made binary choices between familiar foods; some trials contained a common consequence that had a constant probabi ... Full text Link to item Cite

The sales impact of featuring healthy foods, indulgent foods, or both: Findings from a large-scale retail field study

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · July 1, 2018 It is well documented that featuring foods increases their sales. However, little is known about whether there are spillover effects of featuring one food type (healthy or indulgent) on sales of the nonfeatured food type, or about the effect of jointly fea ... Full text Cite

Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand compatibility, relationship power, and life satisfaction

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · February 1, 2018 Individuals often evaluate, purchase, and consume brands in the presence of others, including close others. Yet relatively little is known about the role brand preferences play in relationships. In the present research, the authors explore how the novel co ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand compatibility, relationship power, and life satisfaction [Journal of Consumer Research, 44, 5, (2018) (991-1014)] DOI: 10.1093/jcr/ucx079

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · February 1, 2018 In the article "Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Compatibility, Relationship Power, and Life Satisfaction," by Danielle J. Brick, Gráinne M. Fitzsimons, Tanya L. Chartrand, and Gavan J. Fitzsimons, doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucx079, the findings for studies 4 and 6 were incorr ... Full text Cite

Rhesus macaques form preferences for brand logos through sex and social status based advertising.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2018 Like humans, monkeys value information about sex and status, inviting the hypothesis that our susceptibility to these factors in advertising arises from shared, ancestral biological mechanisms that prioritize social information. To test this idea, we asked ... Full text Link to item Cite

It's too pretty to use! When and how enhanced product aesthetics discourage usage and lower consumption enjoyment

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2017 Marketers invest a lot of resources in product aesthetics and design, but does this strategy always lead to favorable consumer outcomes? While prior research suggests enhanced aesthetics should have a uniformly positive influence on pre-usage evaluations a ... Full text Cite

Just do it! Why committed consumers react negatively to assertive ads

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · July 1, 2017 Research shows that assertive ads, which direct consumers to take specific actions (e.g., Visit us; Just do it!), are ineffective due to reactance. However, such ads remain prevalent. We reexamine assertive ads, showing that their effectiveness depends on ... Full text Cite

Oppositional brand choice: Using brands to respond to relationship frustration

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2017 Within close relationships individuals feel a variety of emotions toward their partner, often including frustration. In the present research we suggest a novel way in which individuals respond to frustration with their partner is through their choice of br ... Full text Cite

The effects of resources on brand and interpersonal connection

Journal Article Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · January 1, 2017 Although social connections have long been considered a fundamental human motivation and deemed necessary for well-being, recent research has demonstrated that having greater resources is associated with weaker social connections. In the present research, ... Full text Cite

Is Freedom Contagious? A Self-Regulatory Model of Reactance and Sensitivity to Deviant Peers.

Journal Article Motivation science · December 2016 Psychological reactance is typically assumed to motivate resistance to controlling peer influences and societal prohibitions. However, some peer influences encourage behaviors prohibited by society. We consider whether reactant individuals are sensitive to ... Full text Cite

When donating is liberating: The role of product and consumer characteristics in the appeal of cause-related products

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2016 The present work examines the effectiveness of pairing a charitable donation with a product purchase. We propose a compensatory process, in which the guilt-laundering properties of charitable donations are more appealing the more consumption guilt is exper ... Full text Cite

The influence of gender and self-monitoring on the products consumers choose for joint consumption

Journal Article International Journal of Research in Marketing · December 1, 2015 We examine how impression management can influence the types of products consumers suggest for joint consumption in same-gender and mixed-gender situations. We show that when motivated to engage in impression management, those who care the most about their ... Full text Cite

When doing good is bad in gift giving: Mis-predicting appreciation of socially responsible gifts

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · November 1, 2015 Gifts that support a worthy cause (i.e., "gifts that give twice"), such as a charitable donation in the recipient's name, have become increasingly popular. Recipients generally enjoy the idea of these gifts, which not only benefit others in need but also m ... Full text Cite

Median splits, Type II errors, and false-positive consumer psychology: Don't fight the power

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · October 1, 2015 Considerable prior statistical work has criticized replacing a continuously measured variable in a general linear model with a dichotomy based on a median split of that variable. Iacobucci, Posovac, Kardes, Schneider, and Popovich (2015-in this issue) defe ... Full text Cite

When brands reflect our ideal world: The values and brand preferences of consumers who support versus reject society’s dominant ideology

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 2015 In what ways can brands symbolize America’s defining values, and for whom do these values resonate? Drawing from research on values (Schwartz 1994), the symbolic power of brands (Holt 2004, 2006; McCracken 1986), and system justification theory (Jost and B ... Full text Cite

Vice-virtue bundles

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2015 We introduce a simple solution to help consumers manage choices between healthy and unhealthy food options: vice-virtue bundles. Vice-virtue bundles are item aggregates with varying proportions of both vice and virtue, holding overall quantity constant. Fo ... Full text Cite

Contemplating the futures of branding

Journal Article Strong Brands, Strong Relationships · 2015 Full text Cite

Finding brands and losing your religion?

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. General · December 2014 Religion is a powerful force in many people's lives, impacting decisions about life, death, and everything in between. It may be difficult, then, to imagine that something as seemingly innocuous as the usage of brand name products might influence individua ... Full text Cite

Distinctively different: Exposure to multiple brands in low-elaboration settings

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · February 1, 2014 Consumers see many brands during the course of a day but often pay very little attention to how such exposures will influence their subsequent decisions. This research examines how being exposed to multiple brands at once affects consumers' reactions to th ... Full text Cite

Yes, we have no bananas: Consumer responses to restoration of freedom

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2014 Cite

Yes, we have no bananas: Consumer responses to restoration of freedom

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2014 When stockouts restrict consumers' freedoms, two independent responses can occur: product desirability, or a reactance-based increase in the desire for the unavailable option, and source negativity, or general frustration with the source of the restriction ... Full text Cite

Matching choices to avoid offending stigmatized group members

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · November 1, 2013 People (selectors) sometimes make choices both for themselves and for others (recipients). We propose that selectors worry about offending recipients with their choices when recipients are stigmatized group members and options in a choice set differ along ... Full text Cite

Response to restrictive policies: Reconciling system justification and psychological reactance

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · November 1, 2013 Here we propose a dual process model to reconcile two contradictory predictions about how people respond to restrictive policies imposed upon them by organizations and systems within which they operate. When participants' attention was not drawn to the res ... Full text Cite

Stereotyping, affiliation, and self-stereotyping of underrepresented groups in the sales force

Journal Article Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management · January 1, 2013 This study adds theoretical and managerial insights to the sales literature regarding the unfortunate but prevalent issue of stereotyping in sales by supervisors toward underrepresented groups of sales employees. Specifically, we examine (1) the self-evalu ... Full text Cite

Spotlights,floodlights,andthe magic number zero: Simple effects tests in moderated regression

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2013 It is common for researchers discovering a significant interaction of a measured variable X with a manipulated variable Z to examine simple effects of Z at different levels of X. These "spotlight" tests are often misunderstood even in the simplest cases, a ... Full text Cite

Putting brands in their place: How a lack of control keeps brands contained

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2013 New brand extensions can push a brand outside its typical boundaries. In this artietingcle, the authors argue that people's acceptance of such extensions depends on their feelings of control. Across several studies, the authors demonstrate that when feelin ... Full text Cite

Matching choices to avoid offending stigmatized group members

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2013 Cite

Reactance versus rationalization: divergent responses to policies that constrain freedom.

Journal Article Psychological science · February 2012 How do people respond to government policies and work environments that place restrictions on their personal freedoms? The psychological literature offers two contradictory answers to this question. Here, we attempt to resolve this apparent discrepancy. Sp ... Full text Cite

We Are What We Buy?

Chapter · 2012 Cite

How disgust enhances the effectiveness of fear appeals

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2012 The current research explores the role of disgust in enhancing compliance with fear appeals. Despite its frequent use in advertising and prevalence in consumer settings, little is known about the specific role that disgust plays in persuasion. This article ... Full text Cite

Wolves in sheep's clothing: How and when hypothetical questions influence behavior

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · January 1, 2012 How and when does responding to hypothetical questions shape future judgment and behavior? We identify knowledge accessibility as an implicit process through which hypothetical questions influence individuals, and examine moderators of accessibility that d ... Full text Cite

When your world must be defended: Choosing products to justify the system

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 2011 Consumers are often strongly motivated to view themselves as part of a legitimate and fair external system. Our research focuses on how individuals adopt distinct ways of defending their system when it is threatened and, in particular, how this is revealed ... Full text Cite

A person by situation account of motivated system defense

Journal Article Social Psychological and Personality Science · March 1, 2011 Three studies demonstrate how individual differences in confidence in the sociopolitical system interact with threats that engage the system justification motive to produce system defense. Following threat, participants low, but not high, in system confide ... Full text Cite

Nonconscious Consumer Psychology

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2011 Full text Cite

How asking " who am i?" affects what consumers buy: The influence of self-discovery on consumption

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2011 Are you type A or type B? An optimist or a pessimist? Intuitive or analytical? Consumers are motivated to learn about the self, but they may not always accept what they learn. This article explores how the desire for self-discovery leads people to seek but ... Full text Cite

Brands: The opiate of the nonreligious masses?

Journal Article Marketing Science · January 1, 2011 Are brands the "new religion"? Practitioners and scholars have been intrigued by the possibility, but strong theory and empirical evidence supporting the existence of a relationship between brands and religion is scarce. In what follows, we argue and demon ... Full text Cite

Might an overweight waitress make you eat more? How the body type of others is sufficient to alter our food consumption

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2010 This paper investigates how people's food choices can be shaped by the body type of others around them. Using a professionally constructed obesity prosthesis, we show that the body type of a (confederate) server in a taste test study was sufficient to alte ... Full text Cite

I'll have what she's having: Effects of social influence and body type on the food choices of others

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · April 1, 2010 This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of ... Full text Open Access Cite

Dinner out with independent self-construal consumers: Wow, this is bad wine

Journal Article Advances in Consumer Research · December 1, 2009 Cite

The influence of service employee characteristics on customer choice and post-choice satisfaction

Journal Article Advances in Consumer Research · December 1, 2009 Interaction with a frontline employee is common in most retail and service encounters in which customers are looking to make product and service choices. During these customer-employee interactions, customers are exposed to service employees' personal char ... Cite

Vicarious goal fulfillment: When the mere presence of a healthy option leads to an ironically indulgent decision

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · October 1, 2009 This research examines how consumers' food choices differ when healthy items are included in a choice set compared with when they are not available. Results demonstrate that individuals are, ironically, more likely to make indulgent food choices when a hea ... Full text Cite

Brands: The opiate of the non-religious masses?

Journal Article Advances in Consumer Research · January 1, 2009 Cite

Ptolemy vs. Copernicus: Self-Construal and Social Consumption

Conference ADVANCES IN CONSUMER RESEARCH, VOL XXXVI · January 1, 2009 Link to item Cite

Automatic effects of anthropomorphized objects on behavior

Journal Article Social Cognition · December 1, 2008 Behavior can be automatically affected by the perception of other people, be they significant others or members of social groups (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003). The current research uses these findin ... Full text Cite

Automatic effects of brand exposure on motivated behavior: How Apple makes you "think different"

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 2008 This article first examines whether brand exposure elicits automatic behavioral effects as does exposure to social primes. Results support the translation of these effects: participants primed with Apple logos behave more creatively than IBM primed and con ... Full text Cite

Editorial death to dichotomizing

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 2008 Cite

Should we ask our Children about Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll?: Potentially Harmful Effects of Asking Questions About Risky Behaviors.

Journal Article Journal of consumer psychology : the official journal of the Society for Consumer Psychology · April 2008 Research shows that asking questions can fundamentally change behavior. We review literature on this question-behavior effect, which demonstrates that asking questions changes both normal and risky behaviors. We discuss potential explanations for the effec ... Full text Cite

While parents might not want to, researchers really should ask questions about risky behaviors

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · April 1, 2008 In this reply, we focus on two major issues raised by our commentators. First, we deal with some empirical issues about whether asking questions really increases risky behavior. We argue that the results reviewed in our target article are valid, and are no ... Full text Cite

The effects of nonconsciously priming emotion concepts on behavior.

Journal Article Journal of personality and social psychology · December 2007 Current empirical evidence regarding nonconsciously priming emotion concepts is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This article demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotion concepts can be nonconsciously activated, remain inac ... Full text Cite

Asking questions about vices really does increase vice behavior

Journal Article Social Influence · December 1, 2007 In a commentary in the previous issue of Social Influence, Schneider, Tahk, and Krosnick raise concerns about the analytical techniques and conclusions drawn in Williams, Block, and Fitzsimons (2006). In this response, we address a number of issues raised ... Full text Cite

Advance in Consumer Research: Preface

Journal Article Advances in Consumer Research · December 1, 2007 Cite

Nonconscious relationship reactance: When significant others prime opposing goals

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · September 1, 2007 Individuals nonconsciously and unintentionally pursue goals they associate with relationship partners (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003; Shah, 2003). Here, we demonstrate conditions under which individuals nonconsciously and unintentionally reject goals they assoc ... Full text Cite

Product contagion: Changing consumer evaluations through physical contact with "disgusting" products

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2007 This research demonstrates the strong influence of disgust in a consumer context. Specifically, it shows how consumer evaluations may change in response to physical contact with products that elicit only moderate levels of disgust. Using evidence from six ... Full text Cite

"Effects of Specific, Nonconscious Emotion Primes on Behavior"

Conference ADVANCES IN CONSUMER RESEARCH VOL XXXIV · January 1, 2007 Link to item Cite

Reducing Reactance Induced Backlash Responses to Recommendations

Conference ADVANCES IN CONSUMER RESEARCH VOL XXXIV · January 1, 2007 Link to item Cite

Measuring and mitigating the costs of stockouts

Journal Article Management Science · November 1, 2006 There is now an extensive theoretical literature investigating optimal inventory policies for retailers. Yet several recent reviews have recognized that these models are rarely applied in practice. One explanation for the paucity of practical applications ... Full text Cite

Spoken and typed expressions of repeated attitudes: matching response modes leads to attitude retrieval versus construction

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · September 1, 2006 Speaking and typing recruit different cognitive, motor, and perceptual systems that result in the encoding of differentiated memory traces. These factors did not affect the expression of stimulus-based attitudes. However, matching response modes resulted i ... Full text Cite

When questions change behavior: the role of ease of representation.

Journal Article Psychological science · March 2006 In three experiments, we examined the mere-measurement effect, wherein simply asking people about their intent to engage in a certain behavior increases the probability of their subsequently engaging in that behavior. The experiments demonstrate that manip ... Full text Cite

The Placebo Effect in Marketing: Sometimes You Just Have to Want It to Work

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · November 2005 Cite

License to Sin: The Liberating Role of Reporting Expectations

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · 2005 Cite

1=2: When A Singular Experience Leads to Dissociated Evaluations

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2005 Cite

The brand positivity effect: When evaluation confers preference

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · December 1, 2004 One of the most common forms of consumer judgment is singular evaluation: the evaluation or appraisal of singular brands. Three experiments show that singular evaluation is often characterized by a brand positivity effect - brands tend to be evaluated more ... Full text Cite

The effect of analyzing reasons on the stability of brand attitudes: A reconciliation of opposing predictions

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · December 1, 2004 Past research has shown that thinking of reasons as to why one likes or dislikes an object can disrupt attitude stability, even though other forms of effortful processing (such as that induced by high involvement) typically produce strengthening effects on ... Full text Cite

When consumers do not recognize "benign" intention questions as persuasion attempts

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · December 1, 2004 We demonstrate that the mere-measurement effect occurs because asking an intention question is not perceived as a persuasion attempt. In experiments 1 and 2, we show that when persuasive intent is attributed to an intention question, consumers adjust their ... Full text Cite

The Brand Positivity Effect: When Evaluation Confers Preference

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · 2004 Cite

The Mere-Measurement Effect: Why Does Measuring Intentions Change Actual Behavior?

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2004 Recent research has demonstrated that merely measuring an individual's purchase intentions changes his or her subsequent behavior in the market. Several different alternative explanations have been proposed to explain why this "mere-measurement effect" occ ... Full text Cite

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

Journal Article Marketing Letters · December 1, 2002 While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant r ... Full text Cite

Non-conscious influences on consumer choice

Journal Article Marketing Letters · 2002 Cite

Nonconscious and contaminative effects of hypothetical questions on subsequent decision making

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · September 1, 2001 In this article we examine the impact of asking hypothetical questions on respondents' subsequent decision making. Across several experiments we find that even though such questions are purely hypothetical, respondents are unable to prevent a substantial b ... Full text Cite

Subscale Distance and Item Clustering Effects in Surveys: A New Metric

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · 2001 Cite

Subscale distance and item clustering effects in self-administered surveys: A new metric

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2001 The authors explore the effect of a form of question context on responses to a computer-mediated marketing research survey. As an increasing proportion of marketing research is conducted through computer interfaces, the pool of potential context effects is ... Full text Cite

Asking questions can change choice behavior: does it do so automatically or effortfully?

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Applied · September 2000 The present research uses a technique that permits unique estimation of both automatic and effortful processes in the question-behavior link. Results show that individuals asked to report behavioral intent (vs. those not asked) are more likely to choose op ... Full text Cite

Consumer response to stockouts

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · January 1, 2000 Consumer responses to stockouts, both in terms of consumer satisfaction with the decision process and in terms of subsequent store choice behavior, are explored. Four laboratory experiments involving stockouts in a consumer choice context are run. The resu ... Full text Cite

The effects of analyzing reasons for brand preferences: Disruption or reinforcement?

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2000 Different streams of research offer seemingly conflicting predictions as to the effects of analyzing reasons for preferences on the attitude-behavior link. The authors apply these different theoretical accounts to a new product scenario and identify condit ... Full text Cite

Choice-Process Satisfaction: The Influence of Attribute Alignability and Option Limitation.

Journal Article Organizational behavior and human decision processes · March 1999 This research investigates how choice-process satisfaction is influenced by limitation of choice option and by the types of features used to represent the options. Studies of choice satisfaction have focused on how satisfied the decision maker feels about ... Full text Cite

The effect of measuring intent on brand-level purchase behavior

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 1996 Previous research has demonstrated that merely asking consumers purchase intent questions has a significant impact on their actual purchase incidence in the category. Our article extends this research to explore the impact of the "mere-measurement" effect ... Full text Cite

An individual level analysis of the mutual fund investment decision

Journal Article Journal of Financial Services Research · January 1, 1996 This study investigates the manner in which consumers make investment decisions for mutual funds. Investors report that they consider many nonperformance related variables. When investors are grouped by similarity of investment decision process, a single s ... Full text Cite

PROGRAM INVOLVEMENT - ARE MODERATE LEVELS BEST FOR AD MEMORY AND ATTITUDE TOWARD THE AD

Journal Article JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH · September 1, 1995 Link to item Cite

Affluent Investors and Mutual Fund Purchases

Journal Article International Journal of Bank Marketing · 1994 Cite

Understanding Managers' Strategic Decision Making Process

Journal Article Marketing Letters · 1994 Cite