A Multilab Replication of the Induced-Compliance Paradigm of Cognitive Dissonance

According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by changing their attitude to be in line with their behavior. One of the most popular experimental paradigms used to produce such attitude change is the induced-compliance paradigm. Despite its popularity, the replication crisis in social psychology and other fields, as well as methodological limitations associated with the paradigm, raise concerns about the robustness of classic studies in this literature. We therefore conducted a multilab constructive replication of the induced-compliance paradigm based on Croyle and Cooper (Experiment 1). In a total of 39 labs from 19 countries and 14 languages, participants (N = 4,898) were assigned to one of three conditions: writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice, writing a counterattitudinal essay under low choice, or writing a neutral essay under high choice. The primary analyses failed to support the core hypothesis: No significant difference in attitude was observed after writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice compared with low choice. However, we did observe a significant difference in attitude after writing a counterattitudinal essay compared with writing a neutral essay. Secondary analyses revealed the pattern of results to be robust to data exclusions, lab variability, and attitude assessment. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted to test predictions from cognitive-dissonance theory. Overall, the results call into question whether the induced-compliance paradigm provides robust evidence for cognitive dissonance.publishedVersio

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.</p

The effect of unavailable donation opportunities on donation choice

AbstractIn the context of charitable donation decisions, we demonstrate that adding information to the decision context about a fundraising campaign one cannot act on (i.e., an unavailable alternative) increases donations for the remaining, available campaign. At times, adding an unavailable alternative is even more effective at increasing the donation rate than adding an available alternative to the choice set, contradicting the normative assumption that having more options is better. We find preliminary evidence suggesting that the effect is driven by perceived impact—adding an unavailable alternative leads consumers to believe their donation will have a greater impact on the remaining cause. This investigation contributes to the consumer prosocial behavior literature by demonstrating the positive effect of unavailable alternatives on donation choice and identifying its extent and determinants. Future directions and practical implications for fundraising managers are discussed.</jats:p

Essays in Consumer Behavior and Preference Elicitation

Our life is filled with choices which we describe as preferences. Preferences depend on the sensitivity of specific decisions to contextual and situational states that surround them as well as the support that individuals have in making them. As a result, science offers no simple summary of individuals’ competence as decision makers, but a suite of theories and methods suited to capturing these sensitivities. This dissertation contributes to the existing theory by exploring new grounds in consumer decision making that broaden our knowledge of decision science and making more sense of some of the otherwise unpredicted observed behaviors. Chapter 1 explores conditions under which some individual’s preference can be implicitly elicited. A series of five experiments demonstrate that people intuitively relate preferred choices to prominently labeled cues (such as Heads as opposed to Tails in a coin toss) and vice versa. Some findings suggest that preference-prominence congruence may be rooted in a deeper link between prominence and fluency. Chapter 2 investigates well-known measures of individual preference: stated and revealed preferences. A series of four experiments involving consequential decisions demonstrate that the mere act of stating one’s preference may influence subsequent behavior and the preferences it reveals. The results also suggest that consistency with previous judgments, but not greed, plays a central role in biasing observed preferences. Individuals who stated their desire compensation for a task they just performed, committed to a much higher compensation than those who haven’t done so. Chapter 3 investigates the conditions under which information about a large number of current adopters affects product attractiveness. The main results suggest a ‘Goldilocks’ requirement of product uncertainty in which large stock information that is coupled with too much or too little uncertainty can have no or even detrimental effect on sales. Particularly, while current adoption information may be uninformative for consumers who are already well informed (e.g., experts), too much product uncertainty together with a statements about a large number of current adopters may undermine seller credibility and decrease adoption likelihood