The Detrimental Effects of External Objectives in Consumer Behavior

Consumers often engage in behaviors that are meaningful or self-relevant. These behaviors are typically guided by internal processes and motivations; as a result, extrinsic objectives can be disruptive. In my dissertation, I explore two distinct areas in which an external goal or incentive can be detrimental for consumers. In my first essay, I examine the utility people derive from their experiences as a function of their photo-taking goals. Virtually all people strive to maximize the happiness they obtain from their experiences, both living them in the moment and reliving them in the future. In a world where photo-taking is becoming increasingly common in almost every experience, it is important to understand how consumers’ photo-taking objectives influence how much they enjoy their experiences. In two field and four laboratory studies, we find that relative to taking photos to preserve memories for oneself, taking photos to share with others decreases consumers’ enjoyment of an experience. This effect occurs because taking photos to share increases anxiety from self-presentational concern. In other words, taking photos with the goal of sharing them with others, that is, with an extrinsic social motivation, can make rewarding activities less enjoyable. In my second essay, I investigate individuals’ effectiveness in persuading others to donate to a cause as a function of whether they were incentivized. Many individuals are intrinsically motivated to perform prosocial acts; that is, they are internally driven to help others. For activities like this that provide their own inherent reward, the introduction of an external motivator, such as a monetary incentive, can reduce effort or persistence on simple quantifiable tasks. But no work has examined the effect of incentives on prosocial tasks that require special skills or abilities, such as communicating and convincing others to do good deeds. In three fundraising experiments, we find that monetary incentives make individuals less effective in persuading others to donate to a cause by undermining their perceived sincerity. In other words, extrinsic material rewards can “crowd out” individuals’ genuineness of expression and thus their ability to gain support for a cause

Pro Pro Bono: Volunteer Lawyers Are an Essential Part of Access to Civil Justice

https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/impact_center/1007/thumbnail.jp

Criminal Procedure: Antideadlock Jury Intructions in the District of Columbia

This article is part of the District of Columbia Surve

Revisionist Art: \u3cem\u3eMacbeth \u3c/em\u3eon Film

From one point of view, art is a matter of influence and criticism, as Harold Bloom suggests in The Anxiety of Influence. Each poet, that is, each maker, works under the influence of antecedent arts. In creating a new work, the artist reduces the parent work and expands it to a new meaning. As Bloom puts it, The meaning of a poem can only be another poem, and the two poems are never the same. Every new poem, Bloom continues, is misinterpretation, … is anxiety of influence, is misprision, is a disciplined perverseness, or, in other words, it is contraction and expansion; for all the ratios of revision are contracting movements, yet making is an expansive one. Bloom\u27s theory of poetry may aptly be applied to the making of literature into film

Criminal Procedure: Antideadlock Jury Intructions in the District of Columbia

This article is part of the District of Columbia Surve

Pro Pro Bono: Volunteer Lawyers Are an Essential Part of Access to Civil Justice

https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/impact_center/1007/thumbnail.jp

Palifermin for management of treatment-induced oral mucositis in cancer patients

Oral mucositis (OM) remains a major side effect of various cancer therapies, which exacts a significant price in terms of morbidity and cost of care. Efforts aimed at prevention and/or therapy of OM have been largely unsuccessful. Few agents have shown efficacy, and even those were applicable to limited types of patients. The advent of small-molecule targeted agents opened new possibilities for intervention in the mucopathogenic processes induced by cancer therapies. One of these agents, recombinant human keratinocyte growth factor (KGF), has been studied extensively and has shown promising results in reducing chemotherapy induced OM. This drug’s effects on stem cell engraftment, graft-versus-host disease and other treatment-induced morbidities remain undefined. In this article we evaluate the pre-clinical and clinical evidence and discuss the clinical applications of KGF as an adjunct therapeutic agent in oncology