Featured in #040 Newsletter Shopping: Carts and Perceptions

" EXPRESS: Getting a handle on Sales: Shopping Carts affect purchasing by Activating Arm Muscles",

Estes, Z.; Streicher

Journal of Marketing, (2022) 1-18

This Journal of Marketing study tested a completely different handle design for supermarket trolleys. They replaced the horizontal pushing bar with two handles comparable to a wheel barrow. These were on either side of the trolley. They were about 10 centimetres lower than the traditional handle. The objective was to activate the biceps rather than the triceps.

A field study in a real supermarket demonstrated surprising results. The new design induced shoppers to spend more than the normal design. Not only did they spend more money they bought more items. Not only more items but more unique items. The trolley seemed to induce “impulse purchases”. Only the buying of "stockpile" products did not change.

Our perception is not just influenced by our traditional senses. It can also be affected the muscles that we use. There is, in fact, a large literature in psychology on the impact of using the biceps or the triceps.

Researchers suggested that this is due again to the associations within our memory. The biceps are used to draw things towards us. We use the biceps to bring food to our mouths. We use the biceps to draw those that we love to ourselves. The triceps are associated with “pushing things away”. The “wheel barrow handles” were shown to activate the biceps. In one study respondents were asked to evaluate Chinese characters. They could not speak Chinese so the ideographs were meaningless. Half the characters were assessed whilst pressing down on the table with the palms of the hands. The other half with the hands pressing upwards on the underside of the table. Pressing down activates the triceps, pressing up the biceps. With the biceps engaged identical characters were evaluated more positively.

Smart Shopping Carts: How Real Time Feedback InfluencesSpending

Koert van Ittersum, Brian Wansink, Joost M.E. Pennings,& Daniel Sheehan

Journal of Marketing 21 Vol. 77 (November 2013), 21 –36

Although interest in smart shopping carts is increasing,both retailers and consumer groups have concerns about how real-time spending feedback will influence shopping behavior. Building on budgeting and spending theories,the authors conduct three lab and grocery store experiments that robustly show that real-time spending feedback has a diverging impact on spending depending on whether a person is budget constrained (“budget” shoppers) or not (“nonbudget” shoppers). Real-time spending feedback stimulates budget shoppers
to spend more (by buying more national brands). In contrast, this feedback leads nonbudget shoppers to spend less (by replacing national brands with store brands). Furthermore, smart shopping carts increase repatronage intentions for budget shoppers while keeping them stable for nonbudget shoppers. These findings underscore fundamental unexplored differences between budget and nonbudget shoppers. Moreover, they have key implications for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers as well as app developers.

Culture and Fertility Featured in Newsletter #043 "Binge Watching"

Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil

La Ferrara, E.; Chung, A.; Duryen, S.

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,(2012), 1-31

In 1960 the average Brazilian female would have 6.3 children. This had fallen to 2.3 by 2000. It is 1.76 today and dropped below the replacement rate around 2004. The team wanted to understand the drivers of the decline from 1960 to 2000. They used the usual predictors: female education, availability of contraception and prosperity.

It was clear that their models were not explaining everything. Fertility did not drop consistently over time. There was also a lot of variability by geography. Cities and states started to decline at different times. National television started in the middle of the sixties. Television ownership in 1991 had risen to 91%. Education levels in Brazil were generally lower than its neighbours. They wondered whether messages were reaching people more through TV than the classroom.

Soap Operas in Brazil.

The vast majority of people in Brazil watch the soap operas or novellas as they are called. The Rede Globo channel has a virtual monopoly on novellas. It was founded in 1965. Its coverage of the population grew as it rolled out transmission masts around the country. Its coverage in 1980 had grown to 45%. By 1991 it had reached 92%. It is now the fourth largest television station in the world after the three major US channels.

Soap Operas and Fertility

What the researchers realized was that the unexplained drops in fertility corresponded to the roll out of the Globo channel. They could see the drops even in a small metropolitan area covered by a single new mast. They could see that the declines were not happening before the arrival of Globo. Fertility drops instead one year after transmission starts. Fertility is measured by births not pregnancies This was exactly the expected pattern.

To understand why this might be happening they had to look at the content of the novellas. They chose only the 7pm and 8pm shows but still had to watch 110 different series! They spanned the period 1965 to 1999. They watched all episodes to understand the “message” coming from the TV. They were particularly interested in the role of women.

What they found was a novella world a million miles away from the lives of most of the viewers. Of all the lead female characters 62% had no children. 20% had only one child. For characters portrayed as younger than 50, 71% had no children. Even amongst married characters 45% had no children and 30% had only a single child.

Was it these role models influencing fertility or was it simply the TV itself? They looked at the naming pattern for children by geography. They looked at the top 20 most popular names in each area. Many names in the novellas are idiosyncratic. They found a 33% match between the characters and the children’ s names in areas where Globo broadcast. This dropped to 8% in areas where it was not transmitted. People were certainly watching the novellas.

Further evidence came from the details of the characters. The impact on fertility was higher when the age of the woman matched the age of the novella character. Fertility amongst the 15-24 age group in Brazil did not change in the period. Few lead characters were in this age band. The effect is strong for the 25-34 age group and strongest for the 35-44 age group. Lower socio economic age groups appeared to be influenced more. The novellas portrayed aspirational middle class or upper middle class homes.

Why were the Worlds in the Novellas so Different to Reality?

Military dictatorship in Brazil started on April 1st 1964. It lasted for 21 years. Throughout the development of the novella, Brazil was under military censorship. The novellas attracted very high calibre script writers. Many were already important writers looking for a vehicle for their anti- government feelings. The plots were designed to undermine. Over half of the married women characters were having affairs. There is widespread female emancipation at work. The novellas portray women pursuing their own pleasure and love. They are anti-machismo. There is a strong emphasis across all characters on individualism. Homosexuality is acceptable and everyone criticizes religion and traditional values.

February 2022

Featured in #049 Early Birds and Night Owls

The aging clock: circadian rhythms and later life

Suzanne Hood and Shimon Amir

Journal of Clinical Investigation (2017), 437-446

Circadian rhythms play an influential role in nearly all aspects of physiology and behavior in the vast majority of species on Earth. The biological clockwork that regulates these rhythms is dynamic over the lifespan: rhythmic activities such as sleep/wake patterns change markedly as we age, and in many cases they become increasingly fragmented. Given that prolonged disruptions of normal rhythms are highly detrimental to health, deeper knowledge of how our biological clocks change with age may create valuable opportunities to improve health and longevity for an aging global population. In this Review, we synthesize key findings from the study of circadian rhythms in later life, identify patterns of change documented to date, and review potential physiological mechanisms that may underlie these changes.

Featured in Newsletter #050 Pushed or Pulled Migrants

Estimation of emigration, return migration, and transitmigration between all pairs of countries

Jonathan J. Azosea, and Adrian E. Rafterya,

116–122 | PNAS | January 2, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 1

We propose a method for estimating migration flows betweenall pairs of countries that allows for decomposition of migration into
emigration, return, and transit components. Current state-of-the[1]art estimates ofbilateral migration flows rely on the assumption that the number of global migrants is as small as possible. We relax this assumption, producing complete estimates of all between country migrationflows with genuine estimates of total global migration. We find that the total number of individuals migraing internationallyhas oscillated between 1.13 and 1.29% of the global population per 5-year period since 1990. Return migration and transit migration are big parts of total migration; roughly one of four migration events is a return to an individual’s country of birth. In the most recent time period, we estimate particularly large return migration flows from the United States to Central and South America and from the Persian Gulf to south Asia

Featured in #056 Beware Psychologists Carrying Tests

A Sensory Origin for Color-Word Stroop Effects in Aging: Simulating Age-Related Changes in Colorvision Mimics Age-Related Changes in Stroop

Boaz M. Ben-David & Bruce A. Schneider

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition (2010) , 730-746

An increase in Stroop effects with age can be interpreted as reflecting age-related reductions in selective attention, cognitive slowing, or
color-vision. In the present study, 88 younger adults performed a Stroop test with two color-sets, saturated and desaturated, to simulate an age-related decrease in color perception. This color manipulation with younger adults was sufficient to lead to an increase in Stroop effects that mimics age-effects. We conclude that age-related changes in color perception can contribute to the differences in Stroop effects observed in aging. Finally, we suggest that the clinical applications of Stroop take this factor into account.

Emergence of a Powerful Connection Between Sensory and Cognitive Functions Across the Adult Life Span: A New Window to the Study of Cognitive Aging?

Paul B. Baltes and Ulman Lindenberger

Psychology and Aging (1997) 12-21

Six hundred eighty seven individuals ages 25-103 years werestudied cross-sectionally to examine the relationship between measures of
sensory functioning (visual and auditory acuity) and intelligence (14 cognitive tasks representing a 5-factor space of psychometric intelligence). As predicted, the average proportion of individual differences in intellectual functioning connected to sensory functioning increased from 11% in adulthood (25-69 years) to 31% in old age (70-103 years). However, the link between fluid intellectual abilities and sensory functioning, albeit of different size, displayed a similarly high connection to age in both age groups. Several explanations are discussed, including a "common cause" hypothesis. In this vein, we argue that the increase in the age-associated link between
sensory and intellectual functioning may reflect brain aging and that the search for explanations of cognitive aging phenomena would benefit from attending to factors that are shared between domains

Negative Aging Stereotypes Impair Performance on BriefCognitive Tests Used to Screen for Predementia

Marie Mazerolle, Isabelle Régner,Sarah J. Barber Marc Paccalin, Aimé-Chris Miazola, Pascal Huguet, and
François Rigalleau

Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES (2017), 932-936

There is today ampleevidence that negative aging stereotypes impair healthy older adults’ performance on cognitive tasks. Here, we tested whether these stereotypes also decrease performance during the screening for predementia on short cognitive tests widely used in primary care. An experiment was conducted on 80 healthy older adultstaking the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) under Threat or Reduced-threat condition. Stereotype threat significantly impaired older adults’ erformance on both tests, resulting in 40% of older adults meeting the screening criteria for predementia, compared with 10% in Reduced-threat condition (MMSE and MoCA averaged).

Our research highlights the influence of aging stereotypes on short cognitive tests used to screen for predementia. It is of critical
importance that physicians provide a threat-free testing environment. Further research should clarify whether this socially induced bias may also operate in secondary care by generating false positives.

Adapting Test Timing to the Sleep-Wake Schedule: Effects on Diurnal Neurobehavioral Performance Changes in Young Evening and Older Morning Chronotypes

Christina Schmidt,Philippe Peigneux, Christian Cajochen, and Fabienne Collette

Chronobiology International, 482–490, (2012)

The synchrony effect refers to the beneficial impact of temporal matching between the timing of cognitive task administration and preferred time-of-day for diurnal activity. Aging is often associated with an advance in sleep wake timing and concomitant optimal performance levels in the morning. In contrast, young adults often perform better in the evening hours. So far, the synchrony effect has been tested at fixed clock times, neglecting the individual’s sleep-wake schedule and thus introducing confounds, such as differences in accumulated sleep pressure or circadian phase, which may exacerbate synchrony effects.

To probe this hypothesis, the authors tested older morning and young evening chronotypes with a psychomotor vigilance and a Stroop paradigm once at fixed morning and evening hours and once adapting testing time to their preferred sleep-wake schedule in a within subject design.

The authors observe a persistence of synchrony effects for overall median reaction times during apsychomotor vigilance task, even when testing time is adapted to the specific individual’s sleep-wake schedule.However, data analysis also indicates that time-of-day modulations are weakened under those conditions forincongruent trials on Stroop performance and the slowest reaction times on the psychomotor vigilance task. Thelatter result suggests that the classically observed synchrony effect may be partially mediated by a series ofparameters, such as differences in socio-professional timing constraints, the amount of accumulated sleep need, orcircadian phase, all leading to differential arousal levels at testing

Effects of Aging and Noise on Real-Time Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence From Eye Movements

Boaz M. Ben-David, Craig G. Chambers, Meredyth Daneman, M. Kathleen Pichora-Fuller, E. M. Reingold, Bruce A. Schneider

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 243–262, 2011

To use eye tracking to investigate age differences in real-time lexical processing in quiet and in noise in light of the fact that older adults find it more difficult than younger adults to understand conversations in noisy situations.Twenty-four younger and 24 older adults followed spoken instructions referring to depicted objects, for example, “Look at the candle.” Eye movements captured listeners’ ability to differentiate the target noun (candle) from a similarsounding phonological competitor (e.g., candy or sandal). Manipulations included the presence/absence of noise, the type of phonological overlap in target–competitorpairs, and the number of syllables.Having controlled for age-related differences in word recognition accuracy (by tailoring noise levels), similar online processing profiles were found for younger and older adults when targets were discriminated from competitors that shared onset sounds. Age-related differences were found when target words were differentiated from rhyming competitors and were more extensive in noise.Real-time spoken word recognition processes appear similar for younger and older adults in most conditions; however, age-related differences may be found in the discrimination of rhyming words (especially in noise), even when there are no age differences in word recognition accuracy.

Featured in Newsletter #058 100 Years for Ageism to Fail.

Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes III: Long-Term Change in Gender Stereotypes

Tessa E. S. Charlesworth and Mahzarin R. Banaji

Social Psychological and Personality Science 1-13 2021

Gender stereotypes are widely shared “collective representations” that link gender groups (e.g., male/female) with roles or attributes (e.g., career/family, science/arts). Such collective stereotypes, especially implicit stereotypes, are assumed to be so deeply embedded in society that they are resistant to change. Yet over the past several decades, shifts in real-world gender roles suggest the possibility that gender stereotypes may also have changed alongside such shifts. The current project tests the patterns of recent gender stereotype change using a decade (2007–2018) of continuously collected data from 1.4 million implicit and explicit tests of gender stereotypes (male-science/female-arts, male-career/female-family). Time series analyses revealed that, over just 10 years, both implicit and explicit male-science/female-arts and male-career/female-family stereotypes have shifted toward neutrality, weakening by 13%–19%. Furthermore, these trends were observed across nearly all demographic groups and in all geographic regions of the United States and several other countries, indicating worldwide shifts in collective implicit and explicit gender types.

The Relationship of Implicit Social Cognition and Discriminatory Behavior

Tessa E.S. Charlesworth & Mahzarin R. Banaji

Chapter to appear in Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action (Ed. Deshpande, A.). 2021

When viewing the state of the world today, social and behavioral scientists face a puzzling inconsistency: how can it be that evidence of discrimination persists in all significant aspects of life, from housing and jobs to healthcare and law enforcement, even though individuals and institutions adamantly stand for equality in treatment? Over the past two decades, research has demonstrated that at least part of the answer to this puzzle can be attributed to the implicit nature of biases – attitudes, beliefs, and identities that are less conscious and controllable but that nevertheless exist and shape behavior. Indeed, today, we take it as given that evidence is strong and substantial for the presence of implicit bias in the minds and behaviors of individuals. This chapter, however, reviews an emerging body of research that uses massive, aggregated data across millions of tests of implicit attitudes and beliefs to understand outcomes of socially significant systemic behaviors ranging from the police use of lethal force to infant healthcare to school suspensions and discipline. Methodologically, the studies quantify social and psychological processes in the real world and introduce data of unprecedented scope across geography and time. Theoretically, this melding of psychological evidence about implicit bias aggregated across millions of individuals alongside large-scale socially significant behaviors underscores a new and more robust meaning of the term systemic discrimination: the results show the various ways that implicit bias both shapes and is shaped by broad structural systems and outcomes.

Implicit Social Cognition

Anthony G. Greenwald and Calvin K. Lai

Annual Review of Psychology 2020. 71:419–45

In the last 20 years, research on implicit social cognition has established that social judgments and behavior are guided by attitudes and stereotypes of which the actor may lack awareness. Research using the methods of implicit social cognition has produced the concept of implicit bias, which has generated wide attention not only in social, clinical, and developmental psychology, but also in disciplines outside of psychology, including business, law, criminal justice, medicine, education, and political science. Although this rapidly growing body of research offers prospects of useful societal applications, the theory needed to confidently guide those applications remains insufficiently developed. This article describes the methods that have been developed, the findings that have been obtained, and the theoretical questions that remain to be answered

November 2022

Featured in Newsletter Number #060 If You Rise I Fall

If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups

N. Derek Brown, Drew S. Jacoby-Senghor, Isaac Raymundo

Psychological Science 2022

Nine preregistered studies (n = 4197) demonstrate that advantaged group members misperceive equality as necessarily harming their access to resources and inequality as necessarily benefitting them. Only when equality is increased within their ingroup, instead of between groups, do advantaged group members accurately perceive it as unharmful. Misperceptions persist when equality-enhancing policies offer broad benefits to society or when resources, and resource access, are unlimited. A longitudinal survey of the 2020 U.S. voters reveals that harm perceptions predict voting against actual equality-enhancing policies, more so than voters’ political and egalitarian beliefs. Finally two novel-groups experiments experiments reveal that advantaged participants’ harm misperceptions predict voting for inequality-enhancing policies that financially hurt them and against equality-enhancing policies that financially benefit them. Misperceptions persist even after an intervention to improve decision-making. This misperception that equality is necessarily zero-sum may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone

Featured in Newsletter #062 The Emotional Labour of the Consumer

"New Vantage Points on Emotional Labor and its Service Context: An Introduction to the Emotional Labor and Service Special Issue."

Fischbach, A.; Schneider, B.

Journal of Service Management Research, 2021,215-228

What makes a good actor? When we go to a play we know why the lead actors got the starring parts. Their ability to inhabit their role means that they stand out. All actors know the script. They learned it before the first rehearsal. Only then can the director start to shape their performance. In the end, there are actors who “go through the motions”. They are called upon to be happy or bored and they do convey the correct facial expressions and movements. They are acting on the surface. The great actors are different. They make the emotions seem real. The can act from deep inside and make us believe that they really are sad, happy, angry etc.

The theatrical analogy for a service experience has a script, scenery and actors. Just like a play. The actors are the front line employees (FLE) and all the consumers. To work the service experience requires everyone to learn the script and to follow it. If they do the consumers will receive a satisfying experience and the operation will run efficiently. This is the idea of the co-production of a service and of the customer being a partial employee. Does the acting analogy go further and require employee and customer to engage their emotions?

Emotional Labour

For a long time organizational behaviour has looked at the emotional work done by employees. According to this idea there are display rules. These come from societal norms and from the “rules” imposed by management. The FLE’s need to express the correct emotion. They must smile and be friendly when they greet you. They must remain calm and detached when shouted at. They must regulate their emotions to act the part.

In the healthcare setting they have to remain happy and cheerful when dealing with harrowing situations. They must deal with the anguish of illness for the patient and their family. Researchers in organizational behaviour have called this “emotional labour”. This is the effort required to regulate internal emotions that do not match the role requirements.

There are two different kinds of employee acting. A surface pretence means smiling whilst you remain angry or sad. It is a veneer. As an actor you have not learned to invoke the emotions within yourself. Deep acting is much closer to the adoption of the role that a great actor can do. All the research suggests that surface acting is much more harmful to the firm and the individual. It causes unhappiness, internal conflict and low job satisfaction for the employee. In turn this leads to employee churn and industrial relations problems for the firm. Deep acting seems to be much less harmful to both. That completely artificial smile of welcome is not a good idea and probably does not fool the customer anyway.

Why do the FLEs behave in this way? There are societal norms about the service experience. No one expects these kinds of interactions to be conducted in anything but a civil way. During COVID 19 some of these rules broke down. The need for FLE’s to impose face mask wearing is not a normal part of the role. It has lead to well reported confrontations and a lot of extra emotional work.

The balance of the display rules comes from the firm. Many multi-site firms have “procedures manuals” that specify the role of the employee. Some specify the emotions as well “Make eye contact with customer and smile”. Display rules often come from the outlet or site manager. It is they that try to create the right “atmosphere” for the customer.

“Do Customers Regulate their Emotions? Development and Validation of a Model of Customer Emotional Labor”.

Imose, R.A.; Rogers, A.P.; Subramony, M.

Journal of Service Management Research,(2021, 241-255

In a recent article the “emotional work” idea was applied to consumers instead of employees. As partial employees we too must play our part. We must follow the mechanics of the script. We must also become emotional actors. The emotional script may not be consistent with how we feel at that moment. Indeed it may not be compatible with how would normally behave. To the extent that creates a gap it requires us to regulate our emotions just as much as the FLE’s. This research also developed a scale for measuring the emotional work of consumers.

Consumer effort in service encounters: the overlooked impact of surface acting

Laurel Aynne Cook, M. Paula Fitzgerald, Raika Sadeghein

Journal of Services Marketing (2022) 297–309

One shift in the retail landscape is the workload transfer from the retailer to the consumer. This study aims to explore consumer perceived effort and the consequences of this workload transfer. – Two scenario-based experiments were conducted. Partial least squares modelling was implemented on the experimental survey data to explore how different dimensions of effort (i.e. mental, physical and emotional) and surface acting contribute to perceptions of effort and value.

Surface acting increases consumer effort perceptions. Consumers’ value perceptions decline as perceived effort increases. Effort perceptions attenuate when consumers have a choice. The paper also brings attention to the shortcomings in the current conceptualization of surface acting and perceived effort, and reconceptualizes effort as a formative construct. This paper cautions marketers about the potential negative implications of shadow work. Service marketers should provide a choice between face-to-face (F2F) and self-service technologies whenever possible. In addition, marketers should develop and implement strategies for reducing consumer surface acting. This study includes an extended conceptualization and new operationalization of consumer surface acting, revised thinking about measuring consumer effort and a unique approach to accounting for effort perceptions of traditional F2F service vs SST.

The Business of Age

The Business of Age

Forget "advice to my younger self" articles. What would an older me want to know?

Financial Times