Positive Mood and Susceptibility to False Advertising

This paper examines the impact of mood on consumers' implicit and explicit responses to false advertising. In our first experiment, we find that those consumers in a positive (versus a negative or neutral) mood state are more likely to notice the false information in the advertising, but paradoxically, are also likely to develop positive feelings toward the brand. In that experiment, we used both a hedonic brand (Disney) and a hedonic/emotional ad (autobiographical). In our second experiment, we extend the ad stimulus context beyond Disney to Wendy's to more readily facilitate autobiographical versus informational manipulations. We find that, indeed, the hedonic advertising execution (autobiographical vis-à-vis informational) is associated with more elaborate processing (but only for those in a positive mood). The observed positive affect transfer continued, however, despite the greater detection of the false information in the positive mood condition. We propose that the negative feelings toward the ad associated with detecting the false information are momentary and are replaced by positive feelings toward the brand that are engendered by positive mood and the advertising, as suggested by the synapse model of memory. Our third experiment varies the timing of our measures to investigate this proposition and finds that timing does matter. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings for research on mood, deceptive advertising, and implicit versus explicit effects of advertising response.     

The influence of consumer mood state as a contextual factor on imagery-inducing advertisements and brand attitude

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of consumer preexisting mood as a contextual factor on consumers' response to imagery-inducing advertisements. The results showed that positive mood seemed to be the most productive context for an imagery ad. Positive mood increased consumers' positive affective state and increased their subsequent brand attitudes. In addition, the results showed that consumers' mood state can also affect the processing mode consumers actually adopt while viewing an ad, and thus indirectly affect brand attitude. Positive mood state was shown to facilitate the induction of mental imagery processing, and at the same time distract detail-oriented analytical processing. As a result, evaluation of the ad was enhanced. On the other hand, negative mood was shown to reduce the intended mental imagery processing, but it appeared to encourage a detail-oriented analytical processing. As a result, consumers remembered more accurately the specific ad claims, but were not affected as much by the imagery-inducing appeals.     

An Examination of the Contribution of Dispositional Affect on Ethical Lapses

The popular press and academic research has focused primarily on the characteristics of corporate leaders. Subordinates have been studied much less frequently than leaders and yet they play a pivotal role in destructive leadership processes. An area holding significant potential to bring clarity to subordinates?? ability to withstand (or succumb) to pressures from superiors is dispositional affect. In our exploratory study, we examine how specific affective states influence subordinates?? unethical behavior. We performed an experiment with 63 mid-level managers having significant work experience. Participants were given ethical scenarios and asked to assess their intentions to comply with their superiors?? requests to engage in unethical conduct. The participants also completed the positive affect negative affect schedule (PANAS) which provides measures of affective states. Our results provide support for theory-based predictions. The findings of our study make important contributions and have implications to both practice and theory. First, we identify certain affective states that encourage subordinates to adopt the behavior of a conformer or colluder and thus be susceptible to their superiors?? unethical directives. Second, our results suggest the need for training programs to assist employees in managing affect in the work place and consideration of organizational changes that provide a culture of empowerment of its employees. Third, unlike a large majority of prior research, we measured naturally occurring affective states rather than providing a contrived (and potentially exaggerated) triggering event to elicit affective states. Fourth, we examined specific affective states rather than examining only general positive and negative valence categories.     

领导成员交换与员工创造力：情感机制的中介作用

情感是员工创造力的重要前因,而已有文献结论存在不一致,且未深入地探讨影响员工情绪的组织情境因素。文章依据情感事件理论,分析和检验了领导成员交换、积极/消极情感与创造力的关系,以及组织创造力支持感的调节作用。通过分析442对主管〖CD*2〗下属配对样本,结果表明：积极情感和消极情感在领导成员交换与创造力关系之间起部分中介作用;组织创造力支持感正向调节积极情感与创造力的关系,而对消极情感与创造力关系的负向调节作用不显著;最后,高的组织创造力支持感还调节积极/消极情感在领导成员交换与员工创造力关系间的中介作用。     

Mutually Dependent: Power,Trust, Affect and the Use of Deception in Negotiation

Using a simulated two-party negotiation, we examined how trustworthiness and power balance affected deception. In order to trigger deception, we used an issue that had no value for one of the two parties. We found that high cognitive trust increased deception whereas high affective trust decreased deception. Negotiators who expressed anxiety also used more deception whereas those who expressed optimism also used less deception. The nature of the negotiating relationship (mutuality and level of dependence) interacted with trust and negotiators’ affect to influence levels of deception. Deception was most likely to occur when negotiators reported low trust or expressed negative emotions in the context of nonmutual or low dependence relationships. In these relationships, emotions that signaled certainty were associated with misrepresentation whereas emotions that signaled uncertainty were associated with concealment of information. Negotiators who expressed positive emotions in the context of a nonmutual or high dependence relationship also used less deception. Our results are consistent with a fair trade model in which negotiator increases deception when contextual and interpersonal cues heighten concerns about exploitation and decrease deception when these cues attenuate concerns about exploitation.     

品牌仪式的“见”之效应：品牌仪式如何影响消费者信任

受新冠肺炎疫情的影响，大多消费者只能在线观看企业通过互联网实施的品牌仪式，然而以往研究更多揭示的是消费者直接参与的仪式效应，鲜有消费者不直接参与的仪式研究。基于社会交换理论，文章运用实验法探讨了当消费者见到但不实际参与品牌仪式时，品牌仪式对消费者信任的影响机制，即品牌仪式的“见”之效应。结果表明：作为视觉材料呈现的品牌仪式（对比随机动作）也能激活消费者的仪式感知，增加消费者对品牌的信任。原因在于当消费者从品牌仪式的互动体验中获取相应的积极情感资源（心流体验）后，会更倾向与品牌建立信任关系。此外，消费者品牌关系规范会调节品牌仪式对消费者信任的影响，对于共享型关系中的消费者，品牌仪式通过增强消费者心流体验，进而增加消费者对品牌的信任，但对于交易型关系中的消费者，该效应消失。     

The influence of positive affect on consideration set formation in memory-based choice

Although prior research has examined whether positive affect can impact consideration set size in stimulus-based choice, unknown to this point is whether affective influences also characterize memory-based consideration processes. This distinction is important insofar as consideration in memory-based choice entails psychological processes (including those involving the accessibility of brands) that are unique to choice undertaken in memory-based settings. Experiment 1 provides an initial demonstration of positive affect’s ability to shape memory-based consideration by documenting that positive (versus neutral) affect leads to larger consideration sets. Two additional experiments extend these findings by showing that the influence of positive affect on consideration set size is moderated by characteristics of brands (typicality) and consumers (regulatory focus). Experiment 2 demonstrates that this increase in memory-based consideration set size is attributable to a greater number of atypical, but not typical, brands being considered under positive affect. Experiment 3 documents the moderating effect exerted by consumers’ regulatory focus by showing that the ability of positive affect to increase consideration set size is more likely for consumers high (but not low) on promotion focus. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed as are suggestions for future research.     

Opposites attract: Impact of background color on effectiveness of emotional charity appeals

The present work utilizes research on context effects and color psychology to investigate how background color can enhance the effectiveness of positive and negative charity appeals. Five experiments measuring both actual donations and donation intention examine the hypothesis that a negative charity appeal against an orange (vs. blue) background and a positive charity appeal against a blue (vs. orange) background will increase donations. We propose that this is because blue and orange colors are incongruous with positive and negative charity appeals, respectively, due to the affective valences of the appeals and the perceptions of warmth and coldness cued by the background colors. This incongruity enhances the attention people pay to the charity appeals, thereby strengthening their emotional response to the appeals, which increases charitable donations. When attention is manipulated, people who pay a high (vs. low) level of attention to the charity appeal are more likely to donate regardless of the color and valence of the appeal, suggesting attention is an important antecedent to the intensity of the emotional response and subsequent donation behavior. We also identify affect diagnosticity as a boundary condition for the effect – when people are informed that color affects their emotions, the contextual effect of color disappears.     

When consumers follow their feelings: The impact of affective or cognitive focus on the basis of consumers' choice

The authors assumed that automatic preferences based on lower‐order affective processes have a greater impact on choice when people focus on their affective response to choice options (affective focus) than when they try to find reasons for their preferences (cognitive focus). They further supposed that the impact of the focus during decision making is less important when the cognitive resources of consumers are constrained. In an experiment, participants had to choose between two options while the cognitive or affective focus and processing resources were manipulated. Measures of automatic preferences correlated with choice under an affective, but not under a cognitive, focus. In contrast to expectations, this effect of focus was not moderated by the manipulation of processing resources. Interest‐ingly, the automatic measures contributed to the prediction of choice under an affective focus independently and apart from self‐report measures. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Positive affect moderates the impact of assortment size on choice satisfaction

The present research proposes that positive affect mitigates choice overload. Results from four studies show that whereas people in neutral affect feel less satisfied when choosing from a large relative to a small assortment, people in positive affect do not experience a decline in satisfaction and may even feel more satisfied when choosing from a large, relative to a small assortment. It is proposed that positive affect has these effects by shifting people's attention from the difficulty of the choice task to the quality of the assortment, as a basis for judgment of choice satisfaction.     

The Relationship between Processing Styles and Self-Control Behavioral Characteristics

Recent research suggests that cognitions and affect may operate independently or simultaneously during the decision process. The purpose of this exploratory research is to understand cognitive and affective processing styles by examining the self-control traits which may be associated with each style. Results suggest that individuals prone to affective decision processing (Feeling Processors) also tended towards more compulsive behavior than the other types of processors. Similarly, individuals who use both styles of processing (Combination Processors) were found to be more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior. Implications of these results and future research are suggested.     

Positive affect and decision frame in negotiation

This study examined decision frame (“gain” vs. “loss”) and negotiator affect (positive vs. control) in a simulated bilateral negotiation where negotiators dealt with a programmed opponent and made offers and counteroffers on three issues that differed in value. Direct comparisons between the gain and loss frame conditions, in the control-affect condition, revealed a replication of the standard frame effect: a loss frame produced fewer concessions than a gain frame. However, an interaction effect indicated that the frame effect reversed in the positive affect condition: under positive affect, a loss frame produced greater concessions than a gain frame. In addition, the data indicated a replication of earlier work showing that positive affect can lead to more integrative agreements in negotiation. The results suggest that positive affect can influence location of a reference point in evaluating prospective outcomes; one implication is that prospect theory can be useful for understanding the effects of affect in bilateral negotiation.     

How humor in advertising works: A meta-analytic test of alternative models

This study tests a cognitive and an affective model based on extant explanations of the effects of humor along with a new affective?Ccognitive model. Results are derived from meta-analytic data and show how previous explanations may be integrated in order to explain how humor in advertising works. Humor reduces negative cognitions related to the ad because it serves as a distraction from counter-argumentation. In order to maintain positive affect, humor reduces cognitive efforts, in particular those related to brand-related cognitions, thus supporting a vampire effect; that is, humor distracts from processing central benefits of the brand. Humor exerts its strongest impact along affective paths, supporting the dominance of affective mechanisms. Affect and cognition do interplay in line with a congruency effect where the impact of positive affect on attitudes towards the ad is mediated by positive cognitions. The models differ when they are performed based on data from studies using either real or fictitious stimuli. Depending on the type of stimuli, slight changes occur that can be explained by the lack or existence of prior brand experience. Overall, the integration of affect and cognitions into one model provides a better explanation than the previous solely cognitive or solely affective models.     

Consumers' mood states: Antecedents and consequences of experiential versus informational strategies for brand choice

The relationship between mood (an affective state variable) and choice strategies that are primarily affective (experiential strategy) or cognitive (informational strategy) is examined with a literature review and an empirical study. Findings suggest consumers in positive moods may be more likely to use an experiential strategy than those in negative moods, and consumers in negative moods may be more likely to use an informational strategy than those in positive moods. Results also suggest consumers in positive moods who use an experiential strategy may have more positive post-processing moods than those who use an informational strategy, and consumers in negative moods who use an informational strategy may have more positive and post-processing moods than those who use an experiential strategy. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are provided.     

The effect of permanent product discounts and order coupons on purchase incidence,purchase quantity,and spending

This paper examines the influence of a permanent discount strategy on customer purchase behavior, i.e., purchase incidence in each week, purchase quantity (in units), and total order spending (in CNY). Permanent discounts are defined as discounts continuously provided by retailers. We identify two types of permanent discounts, namely, product-specific price discounts (PD) and order coupons (OD, which can be redeemed for a total order). We collect transactional data from a Chinese online retailer and empirically examine the effects of the two types of permanent discounts and customers’ expectations of PD and OD. We find nonlinear relationships between permanent discounts and customer purchase behavior. PDs negatively influence spending when they are lower than 19% but show a positive effect beyond this threshold, hence depicting a U-shaped relationship. They also affect purchase quantity positively but at a decreasing rate. Customer expectations of PD influence purchase incidence, spending, and purchase quantity following a U-shaped patter with a positive influence appearing when PD expectations are high than 31%, 27%, and 18% respectively. On the other hand, ODs influence spending and purchase quantity positively at an increasing rate. Customer expectations of OD influence purchase incidence, spending, and purchase quantity following a U-shaped relationship where the positive influence on purchase incidence shows beyond OD expectations of 426 CNY, and the positive effect appearing on spending and purchase quantity when these expectations are higher than 34 CNY. We also find that customer expectations of discounts interact with current discount levels in their influence on spending. Combining these results and considering that order coupons negatively affect the profit margin of the total basket, we suggest that retailers should offer order coupons with relatively low value but product-specific price discounts with high discount depth.     

Understanding Consumer Response to Sponsorship Information: A Resource‐Matching Approach

Sponsorship of sporting teams and events has become an increasingly popular form of corporate and brand communication. Despite the continued growth of sponsorship spending, the corresponding literature base is highly fragmented and little agreement exists related to the psychological mechanisms underlying response. This paper integrates several prominent sponsorship research streams in promoting a “resource‐matching” perspective of cognitive elaboration and attitude change. This research holds that in the absence of clear functional fit between sponsor and event, identifying a basis for sponsor–event fit is likely to require some degree of cognitive effort. The results indicate stronger social identification with the sponsored event influences the favorability they attribute to sponsor motives and promotes stronger perceptions of fit between the sponsor and the sponsored activity. Further, the results indicate fit perceptions mediate the relationship between attribution and sponsorship response. Consistent with ELM theory, when cognitive resources are insufficient for the complexity of the fit‐matching task, social identification may still act as a peripheral cue in driving a positive affective response to sponsorship information.     

Not All Threats are Created Equal: How Implicitness and Timing Affect the Effectiveness of Threats in Negotiations

The effectiveness of threats in negotiations was examined by exploring two factors likely to affect it: implicitness, or the extent to which the threat mentions what action the perpetrator would take if the target does not comply; and timing, or the time when the threat is stated. Participants were given a negotiation scenario that differed only by the nature of the threat made by their counterpart. The design was a 2 (implicit vs. explicit threat) × 2 (early vs. late threat) factorial design with a control condition (no threat). The study showed that early-implicit and late-explicit threats were both more likely to elicit concessions than early-explicit and late-implicit threats. The two more effective threats were also the ones that made the perpetrator seem less aggressive. Further, perceived credibility mediated the positive effect that late-explicit threats had over late-implicit threats in eliciting concessions. These results support the claim that whether making the threats sanction implicit is effective depends on its timing, as the nature of bargaining moves and perceptions varies over time (Pruitt 1981). They suggest that the way in which a threat is stated may dramatically influence its effect on the target.     

The Effects of Prior Spending on Future Spending Decisions: The Role of Acquisition Liabilities and Payments

Research in mental accounting shows that prior spending influences a consumer's decision to make a new spending decision (Heath and Soll 1996, Soman 2001). In particular, greater spending in a particular category reduces the likelihood of further spending in that category. In the present research, we decompose spending into two distinct episodes—the acquisition liability episode during which a purchase is made accompanied by a commitment to pay (e.g., using a credit card) and the payment episode during which the consumer's wealth actually gets depleted (e.g., paying the credit card bill). Using a controlled laboratory experiment and real world data from a group of consumers, we replicate earlier findings that prior spending influences a pending spending decision, but also show that the location of both the acquisition liability episode and the payment episode play a role. Our results contribute to an understanding of the dynamic mental accounting of acquisition liability and actual outflows.     

Means–end analysis: Does the affective state influence information processing style?

Means–end theory aims at explaining how consumers evaluate products by linking relevant attributes to perceived consequences to desired ends in a hierarchical way, based on core assumptions of cognitive psychology about human information processing. This study investigates the influence of affective states on information processing styles in a means–end measurement situation, thus taking into account an important antecedent and correlate of human decision making and behavior that has received scarce attention so far in the methodological literature on means–end chains. The results reveal that a person's affective state indeed influences the style of information processing. Respondents in a positive mood used more general knowledge structures and processed the laddering questionnaire faster than respondents in a negative or neutral mood. The laddering technique, which measures means–end chains, thus seems to be sensitive to situational effects, and this finding indicates that affective states then also might have an influence on product knowledge and the decision‐making process in a purchase situation. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Remembering the Good Old Days: The Moderating Role of Consumer Affective State on the Effectiveness of Nostalgic Advertising

Employing different experimental priming procedures and advertising treatments across two studies, we examine the moderating role of consumer affective state on individuals’ responses to nostalgic and nonnostalgic advertising. Consistent with hypothesized expectations, our findings indicate that when consumers are in a positive affective state they respond more favorably (i.e., report more positive memories and favorable brand-related responses) to nostalgic (versus nonnostalgic) ads. In contrast, one's negative affective state appears to play a limited role in affecting responses between ad types. The theoretical implications of these findings as they relate to nostalgic advertising effects are discussed, and recommendations for advertising practitioners are offered.