Changing Driver Behavior Through Unconscious Stereotype Activation

Under the guise of evaluating a head-up display in a driving simulator, participants completed scrambled sentence tasks (while waiting at stop signs) designed to prime either an elderly or teenage stereotype. Driving speeds between stop signs in the Stereotype conditions were compared to Control conditions in which age non-specific words were substituted for stereotyped words. Participants had a lower maximum speed in the Elderly Stereotype condition and a higher maximum speed in the Teenage condition (as compared to controls). These effects were obtained even though the participants were completely unaware of the themes in the experimental conditions. For both stereotypes, the change in behavior occurred relatively quickly: a significant effect on driving speed was observed after only five stops. These findings indicate that it may be possible to reduce the incidence of dangerous driving behavior through the use of unconscious priming

When opposites attract? Exploring the existence of complementarity in self-brand congruence processes

In the psychology of human interpersonal attraction, complementarity is a well-recognized phenomenon, where individuals are attracted to partners with different but complementary traits to their own. Although scholarship in human-brand relations draws heavily from interpersonal attraction theory, preferred techniques for measuring self-brand congruence tend to capture it in only one form: the similarity configuration, which expresses the extent to which brand traits essentially resemble or mirror a consumer’s own. Hence, the aim of this study is to explore, for the first time, the existence of complementarity in self-brand congruence. From a canonical correlation analysis of survey data in which respondents rated their own personality traits and those of their favorite brand, the existence of both similarity and complementarity configurations is indeed revealed. Based on this, the study then derives a measure of self-brand congruence that captures both configurations, and tests its predictive power for a range of brand-related outcomes. The new measure is found to perform well against existing measures of self-brand congruence based purely on a similarity configuration, particularly for emotionally based brand-related outcomes

Case studies of mental models in home heat control: Searching for feedback, valve, timer and switch theories

An intergroup case study was undertaken to determine if: 1) There exist distinct mental models of home heating function, that differ significantly from the actual functioning of UK heating systems; and 2) Mental models of thermostat function can be categorized according to Kempton’s (1986) valve and feedback shared theories, and others from the literature. Distinct, inaccurate mental models of the heating system, as well as thermostat devices in isolation, were described. It was possible to categorise thermostat models by Kempton’s (1986) feedback shared theory, but other theories proved ambiguous. Alternate control devices could be categorized by Timer (Norman, 2002) and Switch (Peffer et al., 2011) theories. The need to consider the mental models of the heating system in terms of an integrated set of control devices, and to consider user’s goals and expectations of the system benefit, was highlighted. The value of discovering shared theories, and understanding user mental models, of home heating, are discussed with reference to their present day relevance for reducing energy consumption