Alix Barasch

Advancements in data analytics and increased access to consumer data have revolutionized companies’ price discrimination capabilities. These technological advancements have not only changed how prices are determined but also who determines them, with companies increasingly relying on algorithms rather than humans to set prices. We examine consumers’ fairness perceptions of demographic price discrimination—a prevalent yet controversial practice that can trigger considerable consumer backlash—and find that it depends on who is responsible for setting prices. Consumers view demographic-based price discrimination as more fair when prices are determined by algorithms (vs. humans), which is driven by consumers feeling less judged by algorithms than by people, and believing algorithms’ decisions are less exploitative and more justified. Accordingly, we find that consumers’ favorable evaluations of algorithmic pricing attenuate under a more common and less contentious form of price discrimination (i.e., temporal-based) and when the price discrimination serves a prosocial goal.

Today more than ever before, online text-based interactions have become a common means of communication between consumers and companies. But with the advent of AI-powered chatbots, customers sometimes struggle to ascertain the humanness of their online interaction partners (e.g., customer service agents). The current research investigates the humanizing potential of one common feature in text communication—typographical errors (“typos”). Across five experiments reported in the main text, two supplementary experiments, and pilot data (total 𝑁=3,399), participants perceived customer service agents who made and subsequently corrected a typo to be more human—and more helpful—than agents who made no typos or made but did not correct a typo. These findings provide novel insights into how conversational features influence customers’ perceptions of online agents. In an era where AI frequently surpasses human performance in a variety of domains, consumers may perceive the act of making (and correcting) errors to be a hallmark of humanness.

When do people make optimistic forecasts about goal adherence? Nine preregistered studies find that a recent streak of goal-consistent behavior increases the predicted likelihood that the individual will persist, compared to various other patterns holding the rate of goal adherence constant. This effect is due to perceiving a higher level of commitment following a streak. Accordingly, the effect is larger when the behavior requires commitment to stick with it, compared to when the same behavior is enjoyable in its own right. Furthermore, the effect is weaker in the presence of another diagnostic cue of commitment: when the individual has a high historic rate of goal adherence. People also behave strategically in ways consistent with these inferences (e.g., are less likely to adopt costly goal support tools following a streak, choose partners with recent streaks for joint goal pursuit). Together, these results demonstrate the significance of streaky behavior for forecasting goal adherence.

New technologies increasingly enable consumers to track their behaviors over time, making them more aware of their “streaks”—behaviors performed consecutively three or more times—than ever before. Our research explores how these logged streaks affect consumers’ decisions to engage in the same behavior subsequently. In seven studies, we find that intact streaks highlighted via behavioral logs increase consumers’ subsequent engagement in that behavior, relative to when broken streaks are highlighted. Importantly, this effect is independent of actual past behavior and depends solely on how that behavior is represented within the log. This is because consumers consider maintaining a logged streak to be a meaningful goal in and of itself. In line with this theory, the effect of intact (vs. broken) logged streaks is amplified when consumers attribute a break in the streak to themselves rather than to external factors, and attenuated when consumers can “repair” a broken streak. Our research provides actionable insights for companies seeking to benefit from highlighting consumers’ streaks in various consequential domains (e.g., fitness, learning) without incurring a cost (e.g., reduced engagement or abandonment) when those streaks are broken.

Honorable Mention for the JCR Ferber Award in 2023

Selected Press: Washington Post, Fast Company, Yahoo, The Conversation,
Psychology Today

Rankings, hierarchies, and competitions are an integral part of peoples’ personal and professional lives and knowing one’s standing vis-à-vis others helps employees decide how to outdo higher-ranked colleagues and how to refrain from being outdone by lower-ranked others. But whom do people attend to when considering these rankings? In seven studies (and five supplementary studies; N = 4496) we document a robust asymmetry in attention to higher-ranked versus lower-ranked competitors. First, using unobtrusive measures, we show that people attend more to and exhibit better memory for their higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) peers. Second, we demonstrate that this asymmetry is reduced when attention is shifted to lower-ranked competitors, and is moderated by participants’ own standing. Finally, we find that asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others leads people to overestimate minority representation in rankings and to make suboptimal financial decisions. We discuss implications for social comparison theory, workplace rankings, and the psychology of competition.

The English Tea Shop Organic (ETS) brand has created a sustainable ecosystem that supports suppliers’ livelihoods as well as its competitiveness in the market. In 2021, it embarked on a second 10-year plan, aiming to become a sustainable, employee-owned business with a purpose-driven brand, and by 2022 30% of the company was employee owned. The case describes the challenges ETS faced building a brand that appealed to ethically minded consumers, while helping farmers grow organic tea and make a sustainable living. It explores various avenues through which it could achieve scale: geographic expansion, developing its successful gift range, focusing on regular in-home consumption, entering adjacent categories, and exploring B2B options, possibly in the HoReCa segment. However, in seeking to make the brand purpose-driven, it discovered that ‘doing good’ was not enough to get customers to pay premium prices. Could its newly developed blockchain system not only help to connect with customers but be harnessed to drive growth?

A growing number of people donate to charity together with others, such as a spouse, friend, or stranger. Does giving to charity collectively with another person—called collaborative giving—promote generosity? Existing data offer unsatisfactory insight; most studies are correlational, present mixed findings, or examine other concepts. Yet, theory suggests that collaborative giving may increase generosity because giving with others could be intrinsically enjoyable. We conducted two well-powered, pre-registered experiments to test whether collaborative giving boosts generosity. In Experiment 1 (N = 202; 101 dyads) and Experiment 2 (N = 310; 155 dyads), pairs of unacquainted undergraduates earned money and were randomly assigned to donate collaboratively (Experiments 1–2), individually in each other’s presence (Experiments 1–2), or privately (Experiment 2). Across studies, we observed no condition differences on generosity. However, collaborative (vs. individual) giving predicted greater intrinsic enjoyment, which, in turn, predicted larger donations, suggesting a promising potential mechanism for future research and practice.

Whether your colleague is asking for input on a joint decision or a friend is simply curious about what kind of music you prefer, it’s common for people to intentionally withhold their opinions and preferences out of a desire to appear easygoing and cooperative. However, the authors’ research suggests that this approach can seriously backfire: Through a series of studies with more than 7,000 participants in a wide range of interpersonal situations, the authors found that failing to weigh in can actually make you seem less likable, ultimately harming both personal and workplace relationships. To address this common misconception, the authors suggest that managers should encourage and model healthy self-expression on their teams, both to improve their own relationships with colleagues across their organizations and to normalize the expression of personal preferences for employees who might otherwise be inclined to stay silent.

In many joint consumption decisions, such as choosing a restaurant or a movie to watch together, one party often communicates to the other that they do not have a particular preference among the options (e.g., “I have no preference,” “I’m fine with any option”). Despite their prevalence, little is known about how communications of no preference impact joint decision making and the consumption experience. Do consumers take the other party’s indifference at face value? Does the decision become easier to make without one party’s preference to incorporate? How will such communications ultimately impact consumption and social utility? In a series of six studies using both hypothetical and real joint consumption decisions, the authors find that recipients of no-preference communication infer that the co-consumer (i.e., the person communicating having no preferences) actually does have preferences but is not disclosing them. These perceptions of undisclosed preferences increase the decision makers’ decision difficulty and cause them to like the co-consumer less. Further, the authors find that the decision maker intuits that the co-consumer’s (undisclosed) preferences are probably dissimilar to their own, which leads them to choose an option they like less and ultimately decreases their enjoyment. Interestingly, these negative effects are not anticipated by the party who communicates having no preference.

Selected Press: Psychology Today

Phone use is everywhere. Previous work has shown that phone use during social experiences, or “phubbing”, has detrimental effects on cognitive processing, well-being, and relationships. In this work, we first replicate this by showing the negative effects of phone use on relationships during both controlled and naturalistic social experiences. In Study 1, participants that were randomly assigned to complete a task with a confederate who used their phone part of the time reported lower feelings of social connection and engagement than participants paired with a partner who did not use their phone at all. In Study 2, dyads in a park completed a survey about their experience of the day. Participants reported that increased phone use resulted in lower feelings of social connection, enjoyment, and engagement in the experience. If the negative effects of phone use are so obvious, why do people continue to phub their friends? Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people accurately intuit the effects of others’ phone use on experiences, but fail to recognize the effects of their own phone use. Study 4 explains this phubbing blindspot by demonstrating an actor-observer bias – people attribute their own phone use to positive motives and overestimate their ability to multitask compared to others. Together these findings suggest that while people are aware of the harmful effects of another person’s phone use in social situations, they may fail to recognize the negative consequences of their own use because they mispredict the positive contributions of their phone use to the experience.

Since Veblen (1899), signaling status through conspicuous consumption is presumed to be socially advantageous. Given the myriad of social benefits granted to high-status individuals, it behooves people to ensure that others can observe their wealth and status. In the present research, however, we examine when it is strategically better for people to refrain from
conspicuous consumption. Specifically, in cooperative contexts, people respond less favorably toward conspicuous consumers because they perceive those individuals to be less warm and cooperative and expect them to behave less cooperatively. Furthermore, people show some awareness of the benefits of modesty and refrain from conspicuous consumption in contexts where it is beneficial to appear cooperative. Thus, despite theory and evidence of the social value of conspicuous consumption, when it pays is to appear cooperative, conspicuous consumption backfires.

Consumers lose more weight when they log their food consumption more consistently, yet they face challenges in doing so. We investigate how the modality of food logging—whether people record what they eat by taking photos versus writing text—affects their anticipated and actual logging experience and behavior. We find that consumers are more likely to adopt and anticipate better experiences with photo-based food logging tools over text-based tools. However, in a weeklong field study, these expectations reveal themselves to be inaccurate; once participants start logging, they find taking photos (vs. writing text) to be more difficult, log less of what they eat, and are less likely to continue using the logging tool. These findings contribute to existing research on how people track goal progress, as well as persistence with and dis-adoption of products. Moreover, our findings provide insights into what might increase the use of products that encourage healthy eating.

Advances in technology, particularly smartphones, have unlocked new opportunities for consumers to generate content about experiences while they unfold (e.g., by texting, posting to social media, writing notes), and this behavior has become nearly ubiquitous. The present research examines the effects of generating content during ongoing experiences. Across nine studies, the authors show that generating content during an experience increases feelings of immersion and makes time feel like it is passing more quickly, which in turn enhances enjoyment of the experience. The authors investigate these effects across a broad array of experiences both inside and outside the lab that vary in duration from a few minutes to several hours, including positive and negative videos and real-life holiday celebrations. They conclude with several studies testing marketing interventions that increase content creation and find that consumers who are incentivized or motivated by social norms to generate content reap the same experiential benefits as those who create content organically. These findings illustrate how leveraging content creation to improve experiences can mutually benefit marketers and consumers.

Selected for the Journal of Marketing Webinar for Marketing Professionals

Selected Press: Fast Company, Forbes

We propose that autonomy is a crucial aspect of consumer choice. We offer a definition that situates autonomy among related constructs in philosophy and psychology, contrast actual with perceived autonomy in consumer contexts, examine the resilience of perceived autonomy, and sketch out an agenda for research into the role of perceived autonomy in an evolving marketplace increasingly characterized by automation.

People constantly share information with others, whether that information is about themselves, others, or the world at large. This review offers a framework for considering how these sharing behaviors produce two types of consequences – intrapersonal outcomes (which affect the sharer internally) and interpersonal outcomes (which affect the sharer’s relationships) – and how these consequences depend on whether the content shared is positive or negative in valence. In doing so, the article presents a synthesis of prior research relevant to this organizing framework, and concludes by highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

A substantial literature asserts that anger expressions boost status. Across seven studies (N = 4027), we demonstrate that this assertion is often wrong. Rather than boosting status, many anger expressions predictably diminish status. We find that the intensity of expressed anger profoundly influences social perceptions and status conferral. Compared to mildly or moderately angry individuals, extremely angry people are perceived to be less competent and warm, and are thus accorded less status. We also contrast expressions of anger with expressions of sadness across different levels of intensity. At low levels of intensity anger expressions boost status conferral compared to sadness expressions and a neutral control condition, but at high levels of intensity anger expressions harm status conferral compared to sadness expressions and a neutral control condition. Taken together, our findings reveal that the relationship between expressed emotion and status is far more nuanced than prior work has assumed, and that the magnitude of an emotion can substantively moderate its effects.

Selected Press: Fortune

The Handbook of Research on Identity Theory in Marketing features cutting-edge research that delves into the origins and consequences of identity loyalty and organizes these insights around five basic identity principles that span nearly every consumer marketing subdomain. This Handbook is a comprehensive and state of the art treatment of identity and marketing: An authoritative and practical guide for academics, brand managers, marketers, public policy advocates and even intellectually curious consumers.

Experiences make up some of the most important aspects of our lives. From traveling to a new city to having a cup of coffee at your favorite coffee shop, nowadays these experiences often involve taking photos, to the tune of an estimated 1.2 trillion pictures in 2017 alone. However, given the time and importance photo-taking occupies in our lives, it is baffling how little we know about how photo-taking affects the very experiences we capture. One can often hear others say that taking photos ruins experiences, and that people should put down their cameras and just live in the moment. When people take photos, they report feeling more engaged and they look longer and more frequently at aspects of interest in the experience, providing further behavioral evidence for the engagement process. Of course, there are always situations where photo-taking becomes less beneficial, even for positive experiences.

Sea-changes in society, technology, consumer expectations and our understanding of behavioral economics have caused us to rethink our understanding of the scope of knowledge required to navigate, analyze and shape consumer behavior.

You hold in your hand a field guide for this adventure. Ron Hill and Cait Lamberton have gathered together the very top professors from around the world and invited them to share the beliefs, practices and wisdom that they have developed and honed across years and contexts.

Each of these luminaries shares personal stories and deep insights about the way that not only business works, but the way we, ourselves, navigate the world. These short contributions are contained in eight “destinations” that showcase overlapping and essential topics, ranging from technology to subsistence marketplaces, followed by unique questions that are answered by the material provided. The research described has helped the field understand the central role of exchange in marketing relationships, and how product features, pricing strategies, delivery mechanism and various communication modalities create or fail to produce functioning marketplaces around the world. In addition, it reminds us all of the need to continue to learn, to grow, and to share our knowledge – in whatever corner of the marketing world we find ourselves.

Photos are a ubiquitous mode of social communication. Analysis of thousands of online profiles finds that people overwhelmingly post posed photos of themselves. But might candids actually lead observers to react more favorably? Five studies test this possibility. Compared to posed photos, candids made observers feel more connected to the poster, feel more interested in getting to know or date them, and like them more. This was driven by candids making people seem more genuine, which made others react more favorably. Furthermore, consistent with the hypothesized role of genuineness, the benefits of candids were diminished when observers learned that the poster realized their photo was being taken. These finding highlight the role of authenticity in person perception and a potential disconnect between photo posters and viewers. Although posters seem to post mostly posed photos, observers may prefer candids because they provide a more authentic sense of who the poster really is.

Selected Press: Knowledge@Wharton, Elite Daily

We explore the signal value of emotion and reason in human cooperation. Across four experiments utilizing dyadic prisoner dilemma games, we establish three central results. First, individuals infer prosocial feelings and motivations from signals of emotion. As a result, individuals believe that a reliance on emotion signals that one will cooperate more so than a reliance on reason. Second, these beliefs are generally accurate–those who act based on emotion are more likely to cooperate than those who act based on reason. Third, individuals’ behavioral responses towards signals of emotion and reason depend on their own decision mode: those who rely on emotion tend to conditionally cooperate (that is, cooperate only when they believe that their partner has cooperated), whereas those who rely on reason tend to defect regardless of their partner’s signal. These findings shed light on how different decision processes, and lay theories about decision processes, facilitate and impede cooperation.

Charity could do the most good if every dollar donated went to causes that produced the greatest welfare gains. In line with this proposition, the effective-altruism movement seeks to provide individuals with information regarding the effectiveness of charities in hopes that they will contribute to organizations that maximize the social return of their donation. In this research, we investigated the extent to which presenting effectiveness information leads people to choose more effective charities. We found that even when effectiveness information is made easily comparable across options, it has a limited impact on choice. Specifically, people frequently choose less effective charity options when those options represent more subjectively preferred causes. In contrast to making a personal donation decision, outcome metrics are used to a much greater extent when choosing financial investments and when allocating aid resources as an agent of an organization. Implications for effective altruism are discussed.

Selected Press: NonProfit Pro

People often share their experiences with others who were not originally present, which provides them with both personal and interpersonal benefits. However, most prior work on this form of sharing has examined the decision to share one’s experience only after the experience is over. We investigate a distinct, unexplored aspect of the sharing process: when the decision to share is already salient during an experience and hence can impact the experience itself. We examine this research question within the context of photo-taking, an increasingly ubiquitous and integral part of people’s experiences. Across two field and three laboratory studies, we find that relative to taking pictures for oneself (e.g., to preserve one’s memories), taking pictures with the intention to share them with others (e.g., to post on social media) reduces enjoyment of experiences. This effect occurs because taking photos with the intention to share increases self-presentational concern during the experience, which can reduce enjoyment directly, as well as indirectly by lowering engagement with the experience. We identify several factors that moderate the effect of photo-taking goals on enjoyment, such as individual differences in the extent to which individuals care about how others perceive them and the closeness of the intended audience.

Finalist for the JCR Best Paper Award in 2021

Selected for JCR Research Curation: “From Atoms to Bits and Back: A research Curation on Digital Technology and Agenda for Future Research” (Schmitt 2019)

Selected Press: NY Times, Big Think, Wired, Afar, NBC, Vox, Slate

How does volitional photo taking affect unaided memory for visual and auditory aspects of experiences? Across one field and three lab studies, we found that, even without revisiting any photos, participants who could freely take photographs during an experience recognized more of what they saw and less of what they heard, compared with those who could not take any photographs. Further, merely taking mental photos had similar effects on memory. These results provide support for the idea that photo taking induces a shift in attention toward visual aspects and away from auditory aspects of an experience. Additional findings were in line with this mechanism: Participants with a camera had better recognition of aspects of the scene that they photographed than of aspects they did not photograph. Furthermore, participants who used a camera during their experience recognized even nonphotographed aspects better than participants without a camera did. Meta-analyses including all reported studies support these findings.

Lead article

Selected Press: NY Times, NPR, Wired, New York Magazine, Big Think, Marketing Science Institute Reports, Inverse, The Cut, Science Daily, Digital Trends, BBC Radio

Across six studies, we examine how the magnitude of expressed happiness influences social perception and interpersonal behavior. We find that happiness evokes different judgments when expressed at high levels than when expressed at moderate levels, and that these judgments influence opportunistic behavior. Specifically, people perceive very happy individuals to be more naïve than moderately happy individuals. These perceptions reflect the belief that very happy individuals shelter themselves from negative information about the world. As a result of these inferences, very happy people, relative to moderately happy people, are more likely to receive biased advice from advisors with a conflict of interest and are more likely to be chosen as negotiation partners when the opportunity for exploitation is salient. Our findings challenge existing assumptions in organizational behavior and psychology by identifying a significant disadvantage of expressing happiness, and underscore the importance of examining emotional expressions at different magnitudes. We call for future work to explore how the same emotion, experienced or expressed at different levels, influences judgment and behavior.

Selected Press: Business Insider, Pacific Standard, Chicago Sun Times, Fast Company

Studies on crowding out document that incentives sometimes backfire—decreasing motivation in prosocial tasks. In the present research, we demonstrated an additional channel through which incentives can be harmful. Incentivized advocates for a cause are perceived as less sincere than nonincentivized advocates and are ultimately less effective in persuading other people to donate. Further, the negative effects of incentives hold only when the incentives imply a selfish motive; advocates who are offered a matching incentive (i.e., who are told that the donations they successfully solicit will be matched), which is not incompatible with altruism, perform just as well as those who are not incentivized. Thus, incentives may affect prosocial outcomes in ways not previously investigated: by crowding out individuals’ sincerity of expression and thus their ability to gain support for a cause.

Selected Press: Science Daily, Knowledge@Wharton, Nonprofit Quarterly

Experiences are vital to the lives and well-being of people; hence, understanding the factors that amplify or dampen enjoyment of experiences is important. One such factor is photo-taking, which has gone unexamined by prior research even as it has become ubiquitous. We identify engagement as a relevant process that influences whether photo-taking will increase or decrease enjoyment. Across 3 field and 6 lab experiments, we find that taking photos enhances enjoyment of positive experiences across a range of contexts and methodologies. This occurs when photo-taking increases engagement with the experience, which is less likely when the experience itself is already highly engaging, or when photo-taking interferes with the experience. As further evidence of an engagement-based process, we show that photo-taking directs greater visual attention to aspects of the experience one may want to photograph. Lastly, we also find that this greater engagement due to photo-taking results in worse evaluations of negative experiences.

Lead article

Selected Press: Atlantic, Time, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Fast Company, NBC, Yahoo, Huffington Post, NPR, CNET, Digital Trends, Science Daily, Inc.

People often brag about, or advertise, their good deeds to others. Seven studies investigate how bragging about prosocial behavior affects perceived generosity. The authors propose that bragging conveys information about an actor’s good deeds, leading to an attribution of generosity. However, bragging also signals a selfish motivation (a desire for credit) that undermines the attribution of generosity. Thus, bragging has a positive effect when prosocial behavior is unknown because it informs others that an actor has behaved generously. However, bragging does not help—and often hurts—when prosocial behavior is already known, because it signals a selfish motive. In addition, the authors demonstrate that conspicuous cause marketing products have effects akin to bragging by signaling an impure motive for doing good deeds. Finally, the authors argue that bragging about prosocial behavior is unique because it undermines the precise information that the braggart is trying to convey (generosity). In contrast, bragging about personal achievements does not affect perceptions of the focal trait conveyed in the brag. These findings underscore the strategic considerations inherent in signaling altruism.

Selected Press: BloombergView, Inc., Financial Times, The Atlantic, Knowledge@Wharton

Theories that reject the existence of altruism presume that emotional benefits serve as ulterior motives for doing good deeds. These theories argue that even in the absence of material and reputational benefits, individuals reap utility from the feelings associated with doing good. In response to this normative view of altruism, this article examines the descriptive question of whether laypeople penalize emotional prosocial actors. Six studies find that emotion serves as a positive signal of moral character, despite the intrapsychic benefits associated with it. This is true when emotion motivates prosocial behavior (Studies 1, 2, 3, and 5) and when emotion is a positive outcome of prosocial behavior (i.e., “warm glow”; Studies 4, 5, and 6). Emotional actors are considered to be moral because people believe emotion provides an honest and direct signal that the actor feels a genuine concern for others. Consequently, prosocial actors who are motivated by the expectation of emotional rewards are judged differently than prosocial actors who are motivated by other benefits, such as reputational or material rewards (Study 6). These results suggest that laypeople do not view altruism as incompatible with all benefits to the self.

Does the number of people with whom someone communicates influence what he or she discusses and shares? Six studies demonstrate that compared with narrowcasting (i.e., communicating with just one person), broadcasting (i.e., communicating with multiple people) leads consumers to avoid sharing content that makes them look bad. Narrowcasting, however, encourages people to share content that is useful to the message recipient. These effects are driven by communicators’ focus of attention. People naturally tend to focus on the self, but communicating with just one person heightens other-focus, which leads communicators to share less self-presenting content and more useful content. These findings shed light on the drivers of word of mouth and provide insight into when the communication sender (vs. receiver) plays a relatively larger role in what people share.

Selected Press: NY Times, Marketing Science Institute Reports, Marklives.com

This research examines the interplay of self-construal orientation and victim group-membership on prosocial behavior. Whereas consumers primed with an independent self-construal demonstrate similar propensities to help needy in-group and out-group others, an interdependent orientation fosters stronger commitments to aid in-group than out-group members. This interaction holds in both individualistic (i.e., the United States) and collectivistic (i.e., China) nations and seems driven by a belief system. For interdependents, the prospect of helping needy in-group (relative to out-group) members heightens the belief that helping others contributes to their own personal happiness, which in turn increases their propensity to act benevolently. Such in-group/out-group distinctions do not seem to operate among independents. The article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of our findings for the cross-cultural, intergroup-relations, and prosocial literatures before deriving insights for practice.