Less Talking, More Empathy: How to use Emojis to Help People Feel Good

Text therapy is an affordable and convenient form of counselling that allows clients to text with a Therapist. It is quite common for therapists to use emojis while talking to their clients via texts. In this study, we examine how use of emojis in the context of text therapy impacts clients’ overall counselling experience. In two studies, we show that using emojis with concise messages (vs. long messages) lead to greater clients’ overall satisfaction, higher willingness to pay, and increased positive word of mouth

Human Chefs Cook More Calories: The Impact of Human (vs. Robotic) Food Producer on Calorie Estimation

This research explores how the production mode (human-made vs. robot-made) has an impact on calorie estimation for vice and virtue food. Across 3 studies, we find that healthy food is inferred to have more calories when it is produced by a robot than by a human whereas the effect is reversed for unhealthy food. Unhealthy food produced by a human is estimated to have more calories than the counterpart

Entitled to Be Served: Does Self-Checkout Make Customers Feel Less Rewarded?

The adoption of self-service technologies (SST) has been rising over the last few years, and among different SSTs, self-checkout systems are one of the most popular options. In this study, we examine how self-checkout service impacts customers’ shopping outcomes compared to regular checkout service. We propose that self-checkout (vs. regular checkout) systems, would make customers feel less rewarded and less satisfied with their purchases. We conducted four studies to test our hypotheses and showed that self-checkout (vs. regular checkout) service makes customers feel less rewarded, less satisfied with their shopping outcomes, and less likely to return to the store. We further demonstrate that customers’ sense of entitlement to be served and their perceived saved effort during the checkout process parallelly mediate these effects. Lastly, we demonstrate that the number of items purchased during a shopping trip moderates the indirect effect through perceived saved effort during a checkout process

Counting Every Thought: Implicit Measures of Cognitive Responses to Advertising

Our research explores new implicit measures of cognitive responses to advertisements that focus on detecting the effects of specific thoughts. We first demonstrate that consumers\u27 thoughts about persuasive messages can be assessed by both a thought recognition task and a belief verification task. We also show that performance on these tasks (i.e., jointly observed responses, reaction times, and confidence ratings) can be modeled as Poisson counting processes. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness of these new measures in predicting consumers\u27 product attitudes and that these measures can outperform traditional thought listing when people are unwilling or unable to report certain thoughts

Construction and expression of two-copy engineered yeast of feruloyl esterase

Background: Aspergillus niger has the ability to secrete feruloyl esterase. However, for economically viable industrial applications, it is necessary to increase their catalytic activities and/or protein yields to satisfy the increasing needs for feruloyl esterases. Results: The gene AnFaeA that encodes a type A feruloyl esterase was successfully expressed in Pichia pastoris by a two-copy engineered yeast. After a screen in shaker flask, a one-copy strain GSKFA3 having the highest feruloyl esterase activity of 2.4 U/mL was obtained. Then, the pPICZ\u3b1A-AnFaeA plasmid was transformed into GSKFA3 and the transformants were grown on YPDS plates with antibiotic Zeocin. After cultivation, a two-copy strain GSKZ\u3b1FA20 with the highest feruloyl esterase activity of 15.49 U/mL was obtained. The expressed protein (recombinant AnFaeA) may be a glycoprotein with an apparent molecular weight of 40 kDa. It displayed the maximum activity at pH 6.0 and 50\ub0C, and was stable at a pH range of 4.0\u20136.5 and at below 45\ub0C. Its activity was not significantly affected by K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Cu2+, Zn2+, Mn2+, Na+ and EDTA, but activated by Fe2+. The Km and Vmax toward 4-nitrophenyl ferulate were 5.5 mM and 69.0 U/mg, respectively. Conclusions: The two-copy strain GSKZ\u3b1FA20 showed a 4.4-fold increase in extracellular enzyme activity compared with the one-copy strain GSKFA3. Construction of two-copy strain improved secretion of recombinant AnFaeA in P. pastoris

Specificity of transfer-appropriate processing in indirect memory

Studies of hyperspecific transfer of processing in indirect memory tests are reviewed. A procedure for deriving a comprehensive assessment of priming of indirect memory is then proposed. The procedure is illustrated in Experiment 1, in which prior study of randomly selected words presented with no item-specific context and what could be construed as neutral instructions primed their identification more in a perceptual (fragment completion) task than in a conceptual (semantic cuing) task. Experiments 2 and 3 failed to provide evidence for hyperspecific (i.e., sublexical) transfer of processing in an indirect memory task that called for rapid identification of gradually presented words. Experiment 4 also failed to provide evidence of hyperspecific transfer of processing, despite following more closely the procedure of an experiment (Hayman & Tulving, 1989, Experiment 4) that has provided such evidence. It appears that hyperspecific transfer of processing may be more elusive than sometimes assumed

There is more to planned purchases than knowing what you want: Dynamic planning and learning in a repeated multi-store price search task

As consumers, our lives are full of planning. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of consumer planning, how planning performance improves with experience, and the possible interventions that may help people form better shopping strategies have important implications for marketers, policy makers, and consumers. Despite the importance of this topic, there is a scarcity of research on consumer planning in marketing. Most research has focused on planned vs. unplanned purchases and defines planned purchases strictly as those items that were fully specified before entering the store (e.g., on a shopping list). These studies have not examined the psychology of planning itself and ignored the fact that an unplanned purchase made in the store can be the result of a well developed plan that intentionally stopped short of full specification. In the current research, planning is defined as coming up with a scheme or procedures for the accomplishment of an objective before the commencement of the task. We focus on repeated multi-store price search behavior because it provides an ideal framework to study planning from the perspective of human information-processing. We show in four simulated shopping experiments that consumers often fail to plan optimally and do not appreciate the value of early learning. Fortunately, after obtaining relevant experience consumers are able to increase their awareness to track and keep important information in working memory for the successful plan execution. As a result, they transferred their planning to shopping in a different situation or product category successfully. Finally, having consumers explicitly verbalize their plan has mixed effects on their performance depending on what stage of this repeated shopping process consumers are asked to focus on. On the one hand, explicit planning for immediate shopping trips at a deep level helps people perform better by making them focus on strategy-oriented metacognitive processes. On the other hand, having people plan for their final shopping habits was not helpful and inhibits their initial learning. Implications of our results as well as future research directions are discussed at the end

There is more to planned purchases than knowing what you want: Dynamic planning and learning in a repeated multi-store price search task

As consumers, our lives are full of planning. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of consumer planning, how planning performance improves with experience, and the possible interventions that may help people form better shopping strategies have important implications for marketers, policy makers, and consumers. Despite the importance of this topic, there is a scarcity of research on consumer planning in marketing. Most research has focused on planned vs. unplanned purchases and defines planned purchases strictly as those items that were fully specified before entering the store (e.g., on a shopping list). These studies have not examined the psychology of planning itself and ignored the fact that an unplanned purchase made in the store can be the result of a well developed plan that intentionally stopped short of full specification. In the current research, planning is defined as coming up with a scheme or procedures for the accomplishment of an objective before the commencement of the task. We focus on repeated multi-store price search behavior because it provides an ideal framework to study planning from the perspective of human information-processing. We show in four simulated shopping experiments that consumers often fail to plan optimally and do not appreciate the value of early learning. Fortunately, after obtaining relevant experience consumers are able to increase their awareness to track and keep important information in working memory for the successful plan execution. As a result, they transferred their planning to shopping in a different situation or product category successfully. Finally, having consumers explicitly verbalize their plan has mixed effects on their performance depending on what stage of this repeated shopping process consumers are asked to focus on. On the one hand, explicit planning for immediate shopping trips at a deep level helps people perform better by making them focus on strategy-oriented metacognitive processes. On the other hand, having people plan for their final shopping habits was not helpful and inhibits their initial learning. Implications of our results as well as future research directions are discussed at the end

A metacognitive perspective on the motivational benefits of planning across domains

We examine how plans made in one domain influence planning motivation in another unrelated domain. Consumers forming an abstract plan augmented with why considerations are more motivated to plan in a second domain compared those making concrete plans