Safety First? The Role of Emotion in Safety Product Betrayal Aversion

Consumers often face decisions about whether to purchase products that are intended to protect them from possible harm. However, safety products rarely provide perfect protection and sometimes betray consumers by causing the very harm they are intended to prevent. Examples include vaccines that may cause disease and air bags that may explode with such force that they cause death. Expanding research on betrayal aversion, this study examines the role of emotions in consumers\u27 tendency to choose safety options that provide less overall protection in order to eliminate a very small probability of harm due to safety product betrayal. In five studies we find that betrayal aversion is reduced and safer alternatives are selected when factors that dampen the emotional response to potential betrayals are introduced or taken into account. These factors include changing the betrayal from an action to an omission (study 1), introducing positive imagery (study 2), introducing visual representations of risk (study 3), making the decision for another rather than oneself (study 4), and intuitive thinking style (study 5)

Marketing actions that influence estimates of others also shape identity

Consumers’ social identities stem from comparisons between themselves and others. These identities help determine consumption decisions. Unfortunately, perceptions of comparative traits and characteristics are frequently biased, which can lead to similarly biased consumption decisions. Five studies show that two incidental but commonplace marketing decisions can influence consumers’ estimates of their relative standing and thus their social identities by influencing estimates of how other consumers are distributed.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142090/1/jcpy495.pd

Wait until your father gets home? Mother's and fathers’ spanking and development of child aggression

This study examined whether fathers’ and mothers’ spanking contributed to development of child aggression in the first 5 years of life. We selected parents (N =1,298) who were married or cohabiting across all waves of data collection. Cross-lagged path models examined fathers’, mothers’, and both parents’ within-time and longitudinal associations between spanking and child aggression when the child was 1, 3, and 5 years of age. Results indicated that mothers spanked more than fathers. When examining fathers only, fathers’ spanking was not associated with subsequent child aggression. When examining both parents concurrently, only mothers’ spanking was predictive of subsequent child aggression. We found no evidence of multiplicative effects when testing interactions examining whether frequent spanking by either fathers or mothers was predictive of increases in children’s aggression. This study suggests that the processes linking spanking to child aggression differ for mothers and fathers.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111064/1/2015 Lee Altschul Gershoff CYSR.pdfDescription of 2015 Lee Altschul Gershoff CYSR.pdf : Main articl

Hugs, not hits: Warmth and spanking as predictors of child social competence

Many parents believe that spanking is an effective way to promote children's positive behavior, yet few studies have examined spanking and the development of social competence. Using information from 3,279 families with young children who participated in a longitudinal study of urban families, this study tested competing hypotheses regarding whether maternal spanking or maternal warmth predicted increased social competence and decreased child aggression over time and which parent behavior was a stronger predictor of these changes. The frequency of maternal spanking was unrelated to maternal warmth. Findings from cross-lagged path models indicated that spanking was not associated with children's social competence, but spanking predicted increases in child aggression. Conversely, maternal warmth predicted children's greater social competence but was not associated with aggression. Warmth was a significantly stronger predictor of children's social competence than spanking, suggesting that warmth may be a more effective way to promote children's social competence than spanking.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120572/1/2016 Altschul Lee Gershoff JMF.pd

Parent Discipline Practices in an International Sample: Associations With Child Behaviors and Moderation by Perceived Normativeness

This study examined the associations of 11 discipline techniques with children’s aggressive and anxious behaviors in an international sample of mothers and children from 6 countries and determined whether any significant associations were moderated by mothers’ and children’s perceived normativeness of the techniques. Participants included 292 mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children living in China, India, Italy, Kenya, Philippines, and Thailand. Parallel multilevel and fixed effects models revealed that mothers’ use of corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and yelling were significantly related to more child aggression symptoms, whereas giving a time-out, using corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and shaming were significantly related to greater child anxiety symptoms. Some moderation of these associations was found for children’s perceptions of normativeness.J.E.L. acknowledges support of NICHD Grant R01HD054805. K.A.D. acknowledges support of NIDA Grants K05DA015226 and P30DA023026.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99712/1/Gershoff Grogan-Kaylor et al.pd

Estimating Brand Level Price Elasticities for the Margarine Industry: A Two-Stage Budget Approach

The congressional elections of 1994 rocked Washington and the country with the ousting of the Democratic party\u27s long-standing control of the Congress. Less than two years later radical welfare reductions were signed into law by the democratic president. The reemergence of conservative ideology has brought calls for the slashing of government programs and a renewed zeal for the free market. This enthusiasm for the market mechanism rests on the belief that unfettered economic exchange will yield the most efficient allocation of resources to society. This belief is based on the implicit assumption that markets tend to be competitive in the absence of governmental intervention. Given the growing demand to limit the government\u27s direct intervention in matters of the economy, it is imperative to know if and when markets are competitive. The solution to this question has been at the root of industrial organization since the 1950\u27 s with the early empirical work of economist Joe Bain. It is now over forty years later and there is still a lack of a definitive answer to this fundamental query. It is not from lack of effort - hundreds of theoretical and empirical papers have been published on this topic. Why the answer should be so elusive stems largely from two basic limitations to economic inquiry: Explicit and implicit political values influencing research. The difficulty in applying the experimental design to economic questions. The two are related of course, but each plays its own role in preventing economists - and society - from reaching definitive conclusions to economic problems

Families' social backgrounds matter : socio-economic factors, home learning and young children's language, literacy and social outcomes

Parental support with children's learning is considered to be one pathway through which socio-economic factors influence child competencies. Utilising a national longitudinal sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, this study examined the relationship between home learning and parents' socio-economic status and their impact on young children's language/literacy and socio-emotional competence. The findings consistently showed that, irrespective of socio-economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio-economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children's language/literacy than on social-emotional competence. Socio-economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school. For children in the first decade of this century in England, these findings have equity implications, especially as the socio-economic gap in our society widens