The allure of consensus: People (over)seek consensus in selecting group persuasion strategies.

How do people select targets when tasked with persuading a group of people? One approach would be to prioritize getting people in support of the persuader's position to hold relatively extreme attitudes-an extremity strategy. An alternative approach would be to prioritize getting as many people as possible to support the persuader's position, regardless of how extreme they are-a consensus strategy. Although some situations might allow persuaders to combine these strategies, the present work examines how people select targets and strategies when a natural trade-off exists between acquiring fewer people with more extreme attitudes versus more people with less extreme attitudes. Prior work suggests that potential advantages exist for both extremity and consensus strategies. However, the current research finds that people exhibit a strong preference for a consensus strategy when tasked with selecting targets in group persuasion contexts. Further, this preference prevails even when consensus strategies would backfire and cause one's persuasive efforts to fail. This allure of consensus is demonstrated across eight primary experiments, which also reveal why people are drawn to a consensus strategy as well as explore potential boundary conditions for this preference. This work has implications for understanding how persuaders select targets and strategies in the context of group persuasion. In addition, the paradigms and results invite a host of new avenues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Are many sex/gender differences really power differences?

This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast, emphasize how societal roles and social power contribute to sex/gender differences beyond any biological distinctions. By connecting two empirical advances over the past two decades-6-fold increases in sex/gender difference meta-analyses and in experiments conducted on the psychological effects of power-the current research offers a novel empirical examination of whether power differences play an explanatory role in sex/gender differences. Our analyses assessed whether experimental manipulations of power and sex/gender differences produce similar psychological and behavioral effects. We first identified 59 findings from published experiments on power. We then conducted a P-curve of the experimental power literature and established that it contained evidential value. We next subsumed these effects of power into 11 broad categories and compared them to 102 similar meta-analytic sex/gender differences. We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% (72/102) of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% (8/102) were opposite, representing a 9:1 ratio of consistent-to-inconsistent effects. We also tested for discriminant validity by analyzing whether power corresponds more strongly to sex/gender differences than extraversion: although extraversion correlates with power, it has different relationships with sex/gender differences. These results offer novel evidence that many sex/gender differences may be explained, in part, by power differences.

Behavioral winter: Disillusionment with applied behavioral science and a path to spring forward.

Chater & Loewenstein thoughtfully express their disillusionment with contemporary applied behavioral science, particularly as it pertains to public policy. Although they fault an overemphasis on i-frame approaches, their proposed alternatives leave doubt regarding whether behavioral science has much, if anything, useful to offer policy. We offer two critical principles to guide and motivate more relevant behavioral science.

How uncertainty affects information search among consumers: a curvilinear perspective.

Uncertainty is an inherent part of consumers' environment. A large literature in marketing and related disciplines has found a positive relationship between uncertainty and information search: as consumers' uncertainty about a brand, product, or service increases, so does their inclination to seek out and engage with information. In contrast to this conventional view, the present research proposes and demonstrates a curvilinear (inverted-U) relationship between uncertainty and information search. Conceptually, we put forth theoretical insight for this relationship: uncertainty increases both accuracy and efficiency considerations, presenting an inherent tradeoff. This tradeoff is perceived to be more favorable at moderate levels of uncertainty relative to low and high levels. Empirically, we observe an inverted-U relationship between uncertainty and information search across three experiments and find evidence consistent with our theorizing. This research suggests that the conventional view is incomplete and points to the importance of exploring uncertainty at multiple levels. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11002-022-09657-0.

Motives underlying human agency: How self-efficacy versus self-enhancement affect consumer behavior.

Agency reflects an orientation in which the individual prioritizes the self. Agency has been associated with positive consequences, such as directing people to accomplish tasks and attain goals. Yet, agency is also associated with negative consequences, such as fueling materialistic and narcissistic behavior. This paper reviews recent research that conceptualizes agency as a hierarchical framework. Specifically, a general orientation toward agency can be rooted in two distinct and separable motives: self-efficacy and self-enhancement. Specifically, these motives can differentially guide how agency affects consumption and psychological well-being. As such, recognizing the distinct motives underlying agency allows for greater precision in predicting and understanding both consumer behavior in particular and human behavior in general.

Social-rank cues: Decoding rank from physical characteristics, behaviors, and possessions.

Inferring individuals' social rank-their position within a hierarchy-is central to many interactions. However, how do observers assess actors' social rank? The current article reviews three broad sources of social-rank cues: physical characteristics, behaviors, and possessions. First, observers infer an actor's social rank from ancestral stereotypes tethered to physical characteristics. Second, observers ascribe social rank to an actor from behaviors that range from nonverbal communication to explicit acts.Finally, observers assume social rank from actors' possessions. The present review emphasizes recent developments in these areas and poses question for future research.

The Attitude-Behavior Relationship Revisited.

The attitude-behavior relationship is of great import to many areas of psychology. Indeed, psychologists across disciplines have published thousands of articles on the topic. The majority of this research implies that the attitude-behavior relationship is linear. However, observations from 4,101 participants on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and 321,876 online reviews demonstrate that this relationship is systematically nonlinear. Across diverse topics, measures, and contexts, as attitudes move from extremely negative to extremely positive, the corresponding shift in behavior tends to be relatively flat at first (as attitudes move from extremely to moderately negative), to steepen when attitudes cross neutral and shift from negative to positive, and to taper off again as attitudes move from moderately to extremely positive. This result can be explained on the basis of research on categorical perception. The present research suggests a fundamental pivot in how researchers construe, study, and assess the attitude-behavior relationship.

Mass-scale emotionality reveals human behaviour and marketplace success.

Online reviews promise to provide people with immediate access to the wisdom of the crowds. Yet, half of all reviews on Amazon and Yelp provide the most positive rating possible, despite human behaviour being substantially more varied in nature. We term the challenge of discerning success within this sea of positive ratings the 'positivity problem'. Positivity, however, is only one facet of individuals' opinions. We propose that one solution to the positivity problem lies with the emotionality of people's opinions. Using computational linguistics, we predict the box office revenue of nearly 2,400 movies, sales of 1.6 million books, new brand followers across two years of Super Bowl commercials, and real-world reservations at over 1,000 restaurants. Whereas star ratings are an unreliable predictor of success, emotionality from the very same reviews offers a consistent diagnostic signal. More emotional language was associated with more subsequent success.

Act boldly: Important life decisions, courage, and the motivated pursuit of risk.

How do people respond to risk in important life decisions? For example, when presented with the opportunity to leave one's job to start a business-a risky proposition for most-or to stay put-often a safer course of action-what do people choose? The current work explores the idea that important life decisions offer people the opportunity to display a highly valued psychological characteristic: courage. Specifically, important life decisions often combine the critical preconditions for a risky choice to be viewed as courageous-fear, purpose, agency, and the availability of risky options with an appropriate risk/reward tradeoff. Because of this combination of features, to the extent people desire to be courageous, they are motivated to choose risky options in important life decisions. The present perspective offers a counterpoint to prior work on decision making that assumes individuals are generally risk averse. Seven primary and 2 supplemental studies provide evidence in support of this perspective. Implications for understanding decision making in important decisions, the value of courage, and the motivated pursuit of risk are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Attitudes and attitude strength as precursors to object attachment.

This article puts forth a perspective that attitudes and attitude strength can serve as precursors to object attachment. To help the reader understand this perspective, I provide an overview of the attitude and attitude strength constructs and distinguish them from object attachment. I then explain a number of prominent ways in which attitudes and attitude strength can influence behaviors that might be important contributors to object attachment. In doing so, this paper offers researchers interested in object attachment an alternative lens to study how people might come to be attached to their objects.

Can Bad Be Good? The Attraction of a Darker Self.

To avoid threats to the self, people shun comparisons with similar-yet immoral, mentally unstable, or otherwise negatively viewed-others. Despite this prevalent perspective, we consider a contrarian question: Can people be attracted to darker versions of themselves? We propose that with self-threat assuaged, similarity signals self-relevance, which draws people toward those who are similar to them despite negative characteristics. To test this general idea, we explored a prevalent context that may offer a safe haven from self-threat: stories. Using a large-scale proprietary data set from a company with over 232,000 registered users, we demonstrated that people have a preference for villains-unambiguously negative individuals-who are similar to themselves, which suggests that people are attracted to such comparisons in everyday life. Five subsequent lab experiments (N = 1,685) demonstrated when and why similarity results in attraction toward-rather than repulsion from-negative others.

Individual Differences in Attitude Consistency Over Time: The Personal Attitude Stability Scale.

This research finds evidence for reliable individual differences in people's perceived attitude stability that predict the actual stability of their attitudes over time. Study 1 examines the reliability and factor structure of an 11-item Personal Attitude Stability Scale (PASS). Study 2 establishes test-retest reliability for the PASS over a 5-week period. Studies 3a and 3b demonstrate the convergent and discriminant validity of the PASS in relation to relevant existing individual differences. Studies 4 and 5 show that the PASS predicts attitude stability following a delay period across several distinct topics. Across multiple attitude objects, for people with high (vs. low) scores on the PASS, Time 1 attitudes were more predictive of their Time 2 attitudes, indicative of greater attitudinal consistency over time. The final study also demonstrates that the PASS predicts attitude stability above and beyond other related scales.

Social rank: implications for consumers as actors and observers.

This review provides an introduction to the relationship between consumers' social rank and their behavior as actors and observers. As actors, people's experience of occupying a position of lower or higher social rank-whether actual or imagined-influences consumer behavior outcomes such as gift giving and luxury consumption. As observers, people exhibit both positive and negative responses to others' signals of social rank. Finally, research opportunities related to power versus status hierarchies, how observers categorize luxury consumption, and observers' ability to correctly assess an actor's social rank are discussed. In total, this review provides a primer on past, present, and future research on the role of social rank in consumer behavior.

Strategic Storytelling: When Narratives Help Versus Hurt the Persuasive Power of Facts.

Stories are known to be powerful persuasive devices. Stories can capture attention, evoke emotion, and entrance listeners in a manner that reduces resistance to a message. Given the powerful persuasive potential of stories, one might deduce that it is best to embed one's facts within a story. In contrast to this perspective, the present research suggests that coupling facts with stories can either enhance or undermine persuasion. Specifically, to understand when facts benefit from the use of stories, this work provides a deeper examination of how counterargument reduction-a common explanation for the unique persuasive capabilities of stories-operates. Across three experiments, evidence is found for when it is more effective to embed facts within a story versus to use facts alone.

Perspective Taking and Self-Persuasion: Why "Putting Yourself in Their Shoes" Reduces Openness to Attitude Change.

Counterattitudinal-argument generation is a powerful tool for opening people up to alternative views. On the basis of decades of research, it should be especially effective when people adopt the perspective of individuals who hold alternative views. In the current research, however, we found the opposite: In three preregistered experiments (total N = 2,734), we found that taking the perspective of someone who endorses a counterattitudinal view lowers receptiveness to that view and reduces attitude change following a counterattitudinal-argument-generation task. This ironic effect can be understood through value congruence: Individuals who take the opposition's perspective generate arguments that are incongruent with their own values, which diminishes receptiveness and attitude change. Thus, trying to "put yourself in their shoes" can ultimately undermine self-persuasion. Consistent with a value-congruence account, this backfire effect is attenuated when people take the perspective of someone who holds the counterattitudinal view yet has similar overall values.

The Dark Side of Luxury: Social Costs of Luxury Consumption.

Extant research demonstrates that luxury goods are beneficial signals that bestow upon individuals social benefits that range from positive evaluations to compliance. In contrast to this perspective, the current work explores the idea that luxury goods can carry significant negative social costs for actors. Across four experiments, the social cost of luxury is examined. Although individuals who display luxury goods are ascribed higher status, they can pay a hefty tax when it comes to warmth. The social costs of luxury consumption appear to be driven by impression management concerns rather than envy. Consequently, whether the consumption of luxury goods yields positive or negative social consequences for an actor critically depends both on whether status or warmth is relevant for a decision and observers' own lay beliefs about luxury consumption. Overall, this work reveals the more complex psychology of individuals' interpretation and response to actors' use of luxury goods.

Persuasion, Emotion, and Language: The Intent to Persuade Transforms Language via Emotionality.

Persuasion is a foundational topic within psychology, in which researchers have long investigated effective versus ineffective means to change other people's minds. Yet little is known about how individuals' communications are shaped by the intent to persuade others. This research examined the possibility that people possess a learned association between emotion and persuasion that spontaneously shifts their language toward more emotional appeals, even when such appeals may be suboptimal. We used a novel quantitative linguistic approach in conjunction with controlled laboratory experiments and real-world data. This work revealed that the intent to persuade other people spontaneously increases the emotionality of individuals' appeals via the words they use. Furthermore, in a preregistered experiment, the association between emotion and persuasion appeared sufficiently strong that people persisted in the use of more emotional appeals even when such appeals might backfire. Finally, direct evidence was provided for an association in memory between persuasion and emotionality.

The Evaluative Lexicon 2.0: The measurement of emotionality, extremity, and valence in language.

The rapid expansion of the Internet and the availability of vast repositories of natural text provide researchers with the immense opportunity to study human reactions, opinions, and behavior on a massive scale. To help researchers take advantage of this new frontier, the present work introduces and validates the Evaluative Lexicon 2.0 (EL 2.0)-a quantitative linguistic tool that specializes in the measurement of the emotionality of individuals' evaluations in text. Specifically, the EL 2.0 utilizes natural language to measure the emotionality, extremity, and valence of evaluative reactions and attitudes. The present article describes how we used a combination of 9 million real-world online reviews and over 1,500 participant judges to construct the EL 2.0 and an additional 5.7 million reviews to validate it. To assess its unique value, the EL 2.0 is compared with two other prominent text analysis tools-LIWC and Warriner et al.'s (Behavior Research Methods, 45, 1191-1207, 2013) wordlist. The EL 2.0 is comparatively distinct in its ability to measure emotionality and explains a significantly greater proportion of the variance in individuals' evaluations. The EL 2.0 can be used with any data that involve speech or writing and provides researchers with the opportunity to capture evaluative reactions both in the laboratory and "in the wild." The EL 2.0 wordlist and normative emotionality, extremity, and valence ratings are freely available from www.evaluativelexicon.com .