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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 conceptualized as the belief that others will be there for you for future negative life events. The authors further theorize that celebrations require three key characteristics that, in combination, are necessary for increasing perceived social support. Specifically, celebrations must (1) mark an individual's separate positive event and (2) involve consumption (3) with others (i.e., social). They test this theory across eight studies and demonstrate a process mechanism for this effect: these characteristics lead to increases in enacted support and perceived responsiveness, which in turn lead to increases in more general perceived social support. They then extend these findings by investigating virtually held celebrations, the individual's role at the celebration, and a downstream prosocial outcome. By doing so, this work highlights the broader benefits of celebrations beyond the focal individual and the immediate experience. Finally, specific policy implications and suggestions for enhancing consumer well-being are provided.

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) represent...

When it comes to health(-risk) behaviors, researchers are apt to consider how to change behaviors from a top-down approach (i.e., using the conscious, reflective, deliberate system) even though much of human behavior is determined by bottom-up processes (i.e., the nonconscious, reflexive, impulsive system). Given that researchers have proposed that interventions that target nonconscious processes underlying health(-risk) behaviors may prove to be more effective than interventions that target conscious processes, we argue that understanding the ways in which mimicking and modeling affect health(-risk) behaviors is a critical—albeit largely unexplored—domain. In this paper, we review existing evidence that people mimic and model a broad range of health(-risk) behaviors: specifically, the cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, (un)healthy eating, and physical activity of others. We then discuss the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying these effects. Next, we outline moderators: specifically, we discuss when mimicking and modeling are more likely to occur, who is more likely to mimic and model, as well as who is more likely to be mimicked and modeled. Finally, we consider how mimicry and modeling could be used to leverage healthy behavioral change.

Thwarted goals and motivational obstacles are antecedents of aggression, but it is not entirely clear what motivates the aggressive response or why it is often displaced onto unrelated targets. The present work applies Goal Systems Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2002) to consider how displaced aggression can sometimes operate like any other means to an end. Specifically, in five studies, we find that thwarted goals motivate displaced aggression to compensate for a threatened sense of competence. First, when an achievement goal is experimentally thwarted, it both threatens self-efficacy beliefs and increases displaced aggression (Studies 1–2). Second, when goal-thwarted individuals have the means to engage in displaced aggression, it reestablishes self-efficacy in the thwarted goal domain (Study 3). However, we find that the superordinate goal being served is competence and not to be aggressive per se: In Study 4, goal thwarted individuals choose to help someone rather than remain idle, even if idleness is the more aggressive alternative. In Study 5, displaced aggression is attenuated among individuals who expect a second performance opportunity in the thwarted goal domain. Together, the results suggest goal-thwarted individuals mainly resort to displaced aggression when they lack other means to interact effectively with the environment.

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 concept of brand compatibility, defined as the extent to which individuals have similar brand preferences (e.g., both partners prefer the same brand of soda), influences life satisfaction. The authors propose that when brand compatibility is high, life satisfaction will also be high. Conversely, because low brand compatibility may be a source of conflict for the relationship, the authors propose that it will be associated with reduced life satisfaction. Importantly, the authors predict that the effects of brand compatibility on conflict and life satisfaction will depend upon relationship power. Across multiple studies and methodologies, including experimental designs (studies 2, 3, 5) and dyadic data from real-life couples (studies 1, 4, 6), the authors test and find support for their hypotheses. By exploring how a potentially unique form of compatibility influences life satisfaction, including identifying a key moderator and an underlying mechanism, the current research contributes to the literatures on branding, close relationships, consumer well-being, and relationship power.

Rejection can motivate either affiliation or withdrawal. In order to study how personality and situational variables influence whether women will be motivated to affiliate versus withdraw, we manipulate social feedback (rejection vs. acceptance) and opportunity for face-to-face interaction (blocked vs. face-to-face) and measure the individual difference variables rejection sensitivity and social anxiety. We test how these variables affect endogenous progesterone and cortisol concentrations, which are presumed to signal motivational responses to rejection. We find that three-way interactions involving social feedback, opportunity for face-to-face interactions, and either social anxiety or rejection sensitivity significantly predict progesterone change, but not cortisol change. Both interactions are driven by sharp progesterone decreases for women high in social anxiety/rejection sensitivity who have been rejected and who have no opportunity to reaffiliate in a face-to-face interaction. This progesterone change may be a physiological marker of motivation for social avoidance following rejection for women who cannot reaffiliate and who are particularly socially anxious or sensitive to rejection.

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, we posit that individuals with greater resources still have a need to connect and are using other sources for connection, namely brands. Across five studies, we test and find support for the theory that resource level shifts the preferred source of social connection from people to brands. Specifically, we find that individuals with more resources have stronger connections and are more satisfied with their brands, suggesting that these individuals place more emphasis on these relationships. We also find that perceiving greater resources leads to greater connection, purchase intention, and willingness to pay for a new brand, demonstrating that resource level influences both existing brand relationships and the creation of new ones. In addition, we ...

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 such opportunities to enhance their autonomy. We specifically propose a self-regulatory perspective on reactance, wherein freedom/autonomy is the superordinate goal, and thus highly reactant individuals will be sensitive to peer influences that could enhance their behavioral freedoms. In two studies, we find that reactant individuals can be cooperative in response to autonomy-supportive peer influences. Participants read a scenario in which a peer’s intentions to engage in substance use were manipulated to imply freedom of choice or not. Results indicated that highly reactant participants were sensitive to deviant peers whose own behavior towards alcohol (Study 1, N = 160) or marijuana (Study 2, N = 124) appeared to be motivated by autonomy and thus afforded free choice. Altogether, the results support a self-regulatory model of reactance, wherein deviant peer influence can be a means to pursue autonomy.

Whereas previous research has focused on the role of the rTPJ when consciously inhibiting mimicry, we test the role of the rTPJ on mimicry within a social interaction, during which mimicking occurs nonconsciously. We wanted to determine whether higher rTPJ activation always inhibits the tendency to imitate (regardless of the context) or whether it facilitates mimicry during social interactions (when mimicking is an adaptive response). Participants received either active or sham intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS: a type of stimulation that increases cortical activation) to the rTPJ. Next, we measured how much participants mimicked the hair and face touching of another person. Participants in the active stimulation condition engaged in significantly less mimicry than those in the sham stimulation condition. This finding suggests that even in a context in which mimicking is adaptive, rTPJ inhibits mimicry rather than facilitating it, supporting the hypothesis that rTPJ enhances representations of self over other regardless of the goals within a given context.

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 self-presentations (high self-monitors) are more likely to choose products that take into account the need to accommodate the co-consumer's preferences as well as the desire to remain consistent with gender role expectations and to correct negative expectations of sexism. Whereas the co-consumers' preferences and chooser's gender role expectations are aligned in same-gender situations (i.e., females consuming with females), in cross-gender situations (i.e., males consuming with females), male consumers' willingness to accommodate the female co-consumer's preferences is limited by gender role expectations in certain social contexts (e.g., romantic relationships). Within mixed-gender situations, we also find that high self-monitoring male consumers' ability to accommodate a feminist female co-consumers' preferences is limited by the desire to correct negative expectations and avoid appearing sexist.

Gift-giving is a common form of social exchange but little research has examined how different gift types affect the psychological distance between giver and recipient. We examined how two types of gifts influence recipients’ perceived psychological distance to the giver. Specifically, we compared desirable gifts focused on the quality of the gift with feasible gifts focused on the gift’s practicality or ease of use. We found that feasible (vs. desirable) gifts led recipients to feel psychologically closer to givers (Studies 1-4). Further clarifying the process by which receiving a desirable versus feasible gift affects perceived distance, when recipients were told that the giver focused on the gift’s practicality or ease of use (vs. the gift’s overall quality), while holding the specific features of the gifts constant, they felt closer to the gift-giver (Study 5). These results shed light on how different gifts can influence interpersonal relationships.

Does the way that individuals pay for a good or service influence the amount of connection they feel after the purchase has occurred? Employing a multi-method approach across four studies, individuals who pay using a relatively more painful form of payment (e.g., cash or check) increase their post-transaction connection to the product they purchased and/or the organization their purchase supports in comparison to those who pay with less painful forms of payment (e.g., debit or credit card). Specifically, individuals who pay with more painful forms of payment increase their emotional attachment to a product, decrease their commitment to nonchosen alternatives, are more likely to publicly signal their commitment to an organization, and are more likely to make a repeat transaction. Moreover, the form of payment influences post-transaction connection even when the objective monetary cost remains constant and when the psychological cost is indirect (i.e., donating someone else’s money). Increasing the psychological pain of payment appears to have beneficial consequences with respect to increasing downstream product and brand connection.

Extraverts are better than introverts at building rapport, but it remains unknown what they do behaviorally to better connect with other individuals. We hypothesized that extraverts mimic more than introverts as a way to build rapport; however, we predicted that this social skillfulness of extraverts emerges only when they are motivated to affiliate. In Study 1, we found that extraversion predicted increased mimicry when an affiliation goal was present, but not when an affiliation goal was absent. In Study 2, we found that mimicry mediates the relationship between extraversion and rapport, but only when an affiliation goal is present. Our findings are the first to identify a behavior that extraverts engage in that helps them build rapport. Furthermore, our studies show that this skillfulness of extraverts emerges only when they are motivated to affiliate, providing evidence in favor of the reward-sensitivity-as-core model of extraversion over the sociability-as-core model of extraversion.

People both mimic and are mimicked in nearly every social interaction, though neither the mimicker nor the mimicked are generally aware of its occurrence. People mimic what they observe in others, including facial expressions, emotions, behavioral movements, and verbal patterns. In the current review we focus on the causes and consequences of mimicry. Specifically, what causes mimicry to occur within a given social interaction and what are the downstream consequences of such mimicry? We position recent developments in the context of prior findings in order to emphasize the current direction of mimicry research. Then we turn to the role of mimicry in social disorders and discuss how mimicry may underlie social deficits in these disorders.

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 Banaji 1994), the current research explores (1) what values define America’s dominant ideology, (2) which consumers subscribe to these values, and (3) implications for brands that reflect versus do not reflect the dominant ideology. It is proposed that consumers vary in their satisfaction with American society and their endorsement of America’s defining values, and thus differ in the values they endorse versus reject in brands. Five experiments manipulate whether or not the values signaled by a brand are in alignment with the dominant ideology. Consumers more versus less satisfied with American society respond differently to the values a brand signals, affecting brand attitudes, perceptions of a brand’s status as a cultural icon, and purchase intentions. In a sixth experiment, those more versus less satisfied with American society respond differently to consumer-related policy (i.e., a ban on trans fat), depending on the values that the policy is framed as reflecting. Implications for branding and policy are discussed.

Intrinsic rewards are typically thought to stem from an activity's inherent properties and not from separable rewards one receives from it. Yet, people may not consciously notice or remember all the subtle external rewards that correspond with an activity and may misattribute some directly to the activity itself. We propose that perceptions of intrinsic reward can often be byproducts of misattributed causal inference, and present some initial evidence that perceptions of intrinsic reward can in fact increase when words pertaining to an activity are subtly paired with pleasant context cues. Importantly, these effects follow classic boundary conditions of both misattribution and intrinsic motivation; insofar as they were extinguished when participants could make a proper source attribution and/or when the activity became associated with a blatant external reward. We further propose a distinction can be made between authentically "intrinsic" rewards and the illusion of intrinsic rewards caused by misattributed positive affect.

Given research suggesting that social interactions are beneficial, it is unclear why individuals lower in extraversion engage less in social interactions. In this study, we test whether individuals lower in extraversion reap fewer hedonic rewards from social interactions and explore social psychological processes that explain their experiences. Before participants socialized, we measured extraversion, state positive affect, cognitive capacity, and expectations about the social interactions. After participants socialized with one another, we measured state positive affect and cognitive capacity again as well as fear of negative evaluation and belief in limited cognitive capacity. Participants also rated the social skillfulness of each interaction partner. We found that less extraverted individuals expect to feel worse after socializing. However, all but those extremely low in extraversion (17% of sample) actually experience an increase in positive affect after socializing. Surprisingly, those low in extraversion did not show reduced cognitive capacity after socializing. Although they are more likely to believe that cognitive capacity is limited and to be fearful of negative evaluation, these characteristics did not explain the social experience of those low in extraversion.