Seeing the beauty in everyday people: a qualitative study of young Australians' opinions on body image, the mass media and models

While governments have called for greater body size diversity in media imagery to promote positive body image and prevent disordered eating, the fashion and advertising industries often argue that average-size models do not appeal to consumers. Focus groups were conducted with 76 young Australian women and men to provide a previously neglected consumer perspective on this debate. Thematic analysis identified dissatisfaction with the restricted range of body sizes, and the objectification of women, in media imagery. Participants indicated a desire for change and positive reactions to average-size models in advertising, but also suggested barriers to their increased use, including concerns about the promotion of obesity. The results suggest that there is some consumer support for increased body size diversity in media imagery. Consumer and industry barriers, however, will need to be addressed in the future if this is to be an effective public health intervention to promote positive body image.     

Disordered Eating and Body Dissatisfaction in Transgender and Gender-Expansive Adults: An Evaluation and Integration of the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience and Tripartite Influence Models

Transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) people, including transgender and nonbinary individuals, experience elevated rates of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating compared to cisgender individuals, but little is known about why. To address this research gap, we compared the ability of TGE-specific factors as proposed in the gender minority stress and resilience (GMSR) model, general psychological factors contained in the tripartite influence (TI) model, and an integration of these frameworks to explain body dissatisfaction and disordered eating among TGE individuals. Regression analyses were conducted to test the models’ abilities to explain experiences reported in a survey of 93 U.S. TGE adults, including 43 transgender women respondents (46.2%) and 31 transgender men respondents (33.3%). Participants were diverse with regard to age (M = 34.19, SD = 12.02) and ethnoracial background (e.g., 29.0% Hispanic/Latinx, 17.2% Black/African American, 6.5% American Indian/Alaska Native; 5.4% multiracial). Results demonstrated both models’ abilities to explain body dissatisfaction and disordered eating independently, except for the relationship between body dissatisfaction and the thinness-oriented TI model. An integration of the models better explained body dissatisfaction and disordered eating compared to either model alone. Notably, some findings did not align with the two frameworks, suggesting existing models may not adequately describe pathways through which disordered eating emerges in TGE populations. Specifically, body dissatisfaction showed no significant relationship with disordered eating and was not well explained by the TI model, and higher gender identity pride was related to greater disordered eating symptoms. Implications for clinical care and future research are discussed.     

Exploring the role of the Amazon effect on customer expectations: An analysis of user-generated content in consumer electronics retailing

While Amazon's disruption of the retail market has been associated with significant changes in consumer behavior, empirical studies on how interacting with Amazon has changed customers' expectations toward other offline/online retailers remain scarce. Such Amazon-driven perceptions of service attributes are sometimes referred to as the ‘Amazon effect’. After clarifying the meaning of the Amazon effect and reviewing the studies on consumer complaints online, this paper aims to identify key triggers for the Amazon effect from consumer comments on social media. Based on natural language processing techniques, a content and sentiment analysis of users' comments drawn from the Facebook pages of three leading consumer electronics retailers in Italy over a two-year span (2016–2018) was used to evaluate the dissatisfaction toward these retailers associated to Amazon-related service attributes. The findings show that there is a wide diffusion of consumer comments and service complaints related to the Amazon effect on consumer electronics retailers, especially regarding price, customer service, in-store staff, and post-purchase support. Compared with corresponding evaluations on the Italian Amazon website, the negative sentiments revealed in consumers' comments on Facebook suggest that the Amazon's service standards have raised consumer expectations and have made consumers less satisfied when they interact with other retailers. We argue the need for further research to better clarify Amazonification in terms of customer impatience and dissatisfaction in general, also going beyond price and logistics issues, which are usually considered as the main constitutive factors.     

Learned safety and the CS-US delay gradient in taste-aversion learning

Decrements in taste-aversion learning produced by extensions of the interval between the CS flavor and poisoning (the US) may be attributed to decay of the CS trace during long CS-US intervals. Kalat and Rozin (1973) alternatively proposed that such decrements occur because during extended CS-US intervals subjects learn that the CS is safe. They sought to show that trace decay is not responsible for the CS-US delay gradient by demonstrating that learning is disrupted even if the CS is reintroduced during extended CS-US intervals. The present experiments show that such a second CS presentation during conditioning may (1) enhance subsequent intakes of the CS solution whether or not subjects are poisoned, and/or (2) facilitate aversion learning, the facilitation being greater the closer the second CS exposure is to poisoning. These results question the adequacy of previous evidence for the contribution of learned safety to the CS-US delay gradient and suggest that some other process is also involved.     

Patterns of Emotional Responses and Behavioural Consequences of Dissatisfaction

Quels sont les modèles de réponses émotionnelles à une expérience de consommation insatisfaisante et quelle est la relation entre ces modèles et les réponses du consommateur suite à l'achat? Lors d' une simulation mentale, les sujets ont fait part de leurs réponses émotives et de leurs cognitions postérieures à l' achat, de leur satisfaction et de leurs intentions à la suite de la constatation d' une carence fondamentale. On a observé quatre modèles discriminables de réponses émotionnelles dans un espace tridimensionnel. Les cognitions traitant du problème, les jugements de satisfaction, la sortie, la plainte, de vive voix, et la perte de clientèle différaient entre les modèles émotionnels; en outre deux dimensions structurelles (acceptation/calme et colère/surprise) rendaient compte d' une grande partie de la variance des réponses comportementales du consommateur à l' insatisfaction.
Patterns of emotional responses to a dissatisfactory consumption experience and the relationship between these patterns and consumer post-purchase responses are investigated. In a mental simulation, participants reported their emotional responses and post-purchase cognitions, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions following a core service failure. Four discriminable patterns of emotional responses, positioned in a tridimensional space, were observed. Problem-handling cognitions, satisfaction judgements, and exit, voice, word-of-mouth, and loyalty intentions were found to differ among emotional patterns, with two structural dimensions, acceptance/calmness and anger/surprise, accounting for most of the variation in consumer behavioural responses to dissatisfaction.     

Consumer uncertainty: The influence of anticipatory emotions on ambivalence,attitudes, and intentions

Specific emotions and their combinations have important implications for consumer experiences and decisions. Therefore, emotional response is examined from a future temporal perspective in order to investigate the effect of anticipatory emotions on consumer ambivalence, attitudes, and intentions. In the first study, anticipatory emotions, compared with outcome‐based emotions, are found to be central in prospective consumption situations, and this combination of emotions is most likely to occur when consumers are presented with conflicting information. Furthermore, anticipatory mixed emotions (i.e., anticipatory ambivalence), in contrast to outcome‐based mixed emotions, were the greatest contributor to consumer discomfort and uncertainty regarding future consumption. The second study builds on the first by considering the effect of anticipatory ambivalence on attitudes and intentions in the context of a prospective purchase situation. Ambivalence was found to mediate the effect of evaluative information on intentions, as well as moderate the relationship between attitudes and intentions. Thus, the uncertainty associated with anticipatory emotions negatively affects intentions, as well as the relationship between attitudes and intentions. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotions and cognitions in consumer health behaviors: insights from chronically ill patients into the effects of hope and control perceptions

The lack of compliance to medical advice is a widely recognized healthcare concern with important implications to consumer well‐being. Through an in‐depth examination of the narratives provided by chronically ill patients, this study contributes to transformative consumer research by offering a better understanding of patients' compliance or lack of compliance with medical advice. The narratives are examined with a focus on two potential antecedents: hope and perceptions of control over health outcomes. Findings suggest that although control perceptions play a crucial role in compliance, chronically ill patients often feel that they have no control over their health outcomes. The narratives reveal that the positive emotion of hope is a motivator for positive health behaviors. Additionally, the lived experiences accounts suggest a possible relationship between hope and control perceptions: patients' belief in their ability to manage their chronic illness facilitates hope but might not be essential to it. The importance of healthcare providers' role in cultivating hope and customizing their interactions with patients is discussed. The implications also indicate that health initiatives aimed at increasing treatment compliance should consider alternatives to messages calling for patients to take control of their health. Instead, future research on health behavior should look beyond social cognition models of health behavior and focus on the role of positive emotions such as hope. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Avoiding negative vs. achieving positive outcomes in hard and prosperous economic times

Three studies suggest that business cycle fluctuations trigger distinct motivational orientations that selectively affect economic judgment and decision making. Economic contractions induce avoidance motivation and affect negative economic sentiment, but leave approach motivation and positive economic sentiment unaffected. In contrast, economic expansions induce approach motivation and positive economic sentiment, but do not affect avoidance motivation or negative economic sentiment (study 1). Moreover, economic contractions induce risk aversion for negative outcomes, but not for positive outcomes, while economic expansions instigate risk seeking for positive outcomes, but not for negative outcomes (study 2). A time-series study based on consumer spending over eight decades mirrors the findings of the experimental studies: The consumption of products associated with avoiding negative outcomes increases during economic contractions, but not during expansions. In contrast, the consumption of products associated with achieving positive outcomes increases in expansions, but is unaffected by contractions (study 3).     

On The Nature of Experiencing Self‐Agency: The Role of Goals and Primes in Inferring Oneself as the Cause of Behavior

People often find themselves in situations where the cause of events may be ambiguous. Surprisingly though, the experience of self‐agency, i.e., perceiving oneself as the causal agent of behavioral outcomes, appears quite natural to most people. How then do these experiences arise? We discuss common models proposing that self‐agency experiences result from the comparison between actual action‐outcomes and the outcomes one explicitly set as a goal. However, recent developments in psychology and neuroscience suggest that our behaviors and the outcomes they produce can be primed and implicitly guided by environmental cues and yet are accompanied by experiences of self‐agency. Hence, we also review research revealing how self‐agency experiences may arise over behavioral outcomes that are implicitly primed before they occur and how such implicitly cued agency experiences may differ from agency experiences that are the result of explicitly set goals. Directions for future research are briefly addressed.     

Localized intracaudate dopamine D2 receptor activation during the post-training period improves memory for visual or olfactory conditioned emotional responses in rats.

Rats with cannulas aimed at the posteroventral (PV) or ventrolateral (VL) areas of the caudate nucleus were trained on a conditioned emotional response (CER) task. Post-training microinjections of the indirect catecholamine agonist, d-amphetamine (5 micrograms), or of the dopamine D2 receptor agonist, LY171555 (1 microgram), into the PV area improved retention of a CER with a visual CS, but had no effect on a CER with an olfactory CS. Post-training injections of the same two drugs into the VL area improved retention of a CER with an olfactory CS, but had no effect on a CER with a visual CS. Post-training injections of the dopamine D1 receptor agonist, SKF38393 (0.5, 1.0, 2.0 micrograms), into either site had no effects on either CER. These findings suggest that different areas of the caudate nucleus mediate acquisition of CERs with different CSs, possibly implicating the topographically organized corticostriatal innervation in the acquisition of certain types of memories in the caudate nucleus. The findings also suggest that dopamine D2 receptors in the caudate nucleus are involved in the acquisition of these CERs.     

A longitudinal investigation of the mediating role of self-esteem and body importance in the relationship between stress and body dissatisfaction in adolescent females and males

Body dissatisfaction is particularly prevalent during adolescence and has recently been linked to stress in females and males. However, prospective studies are needed to better understand the relationship between stress and body dissatisfaction. The present study investigates the direction of this association and the mediating role of self-esteem and body image importance. A sample of 298 adolescent females and males in Grades 7 to 10 (ages 12 to 17 years) were surveyed at two time points over a one-year period. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that stress significantly predicted body dissatisfaction one year later. Furthermore, a multiple mediation analysis controlling for gender revealed a significant indirect effect in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, indicating that stress predicts reductions in self-esteem and increases in body importance, which in turn predict body dissatisfaction. These findings suggest that stress, self-esteem, and body importance should be included in programmes aimed at improving body dissatisfaction.     

Eco-restrictive experiences forming extraordinary consumer experiences

This article contributes to different research traditions when proposes to reflect on theoretical fields, such as consumer culture and contemporary marketing. The study in a tourist and ecological conservation project revealed eco-restricted extraordinary experiences. We found a group of volunteers that build meanings and practices connected with new actions and habits that offer, not only ecological and sustainable benefits, but new value consumption relations. In contextualizing our findings, we highlight experiences and curiosities that are glossed over in academic and practical accounts that celebrate the extraordinary experience. It was observed, by analyzing data from various qualitative techniques, that the findings cross borders of mundane ingrained practices and bring an emerging domain, where both, consumption and anti-consumption experiences, offer insights into to a diversity of areas of knowledge.     

Personal attitudes toward time: The relationship between temporal focus,space‐time mappings and real life experiences

What influences how people implicitly associate “past” and “future” with “front” and “back?” Whereas previous research has shown that cultural attitudes toward time play a role in modulating space‐time mappings in people's mental models (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache & Casasanto, 2014), we investigated real life experiences as potential additional influences on these implicit associations. Participants within the same single culture, who are engaged in different intermediate‐term educational experiences (Study 1), long‐term living experiences (Study 2), and short‐term visiting experiences (Study 3), showed their distinct differences in temporal focus, thereby influencing their implicit spatializations of time. Results across samples suggest that personal attitudes toward time related to real life experiences may influence people's space‐time mappings. The findings we report on shed further light on the high flexibility of human conceptualization system. While culture may exert an important influence on temporal focus, a person's conceptualization of time may be attributed to a culmination of factors.     

Reversing the Placebo: Performance‐Branded Experiences Can Undermine Consumer Performance

Products bearing premium brand labels are known to increase perceptions of efficacy and improve objective consumer performance relative to lesser‐branded equivalents, in what is traditionally described as a marketing placebo effect. In this paper, we suggest that experiences bearing these highly regarded brand labels can lead to a reverse effect, such that consumer performance actually declines with their use. Our findings demonstrate across domains of improving mental acuity, learning a new language, and developing financial analysis skills that completing performance‐branded training experiences impairs objective performance in related tasks, relative to lower‐performance‐branded or unbranded counterparts. We posit that branded training experiences can evoke a brand‐as‐master relationship in which consumers take on a subservient role relative to the brand. As a consequence, higher‐performance brands may impose greater demands upon consumers, increasing performance‐anxiety and interfering with an individual's ability to perform effectively. These results document an important ramification of applying branding to learning experiences and identify contexts in which traditionally positive marketing actions can backfire for consumers.     

期望、体验和回忆: 当消费者不能从体验中学习

人们对消费体验的期望、回忆与真实体验时常发生分离, 而且人们很少从真实体验中得到学习。本研究认为原因之一是期望、体验和回忆三者基于不同的输入信息, 以及三者特殊的交互关系。本研究首先提出了一个关于消费者期望、体验和回忆的理论框架, 系统阐述了消费者何时不能从体验中学习以及如何能促进学习, 然后在一个消费情景中通过3×2混合实验设计考察了三者的关系。实验比较了在“预期(无体验)”、“体验后即时评价”和“体验后延迟评价”三种评价方式下被试对两种品牌火腿肠的口味评价和偏好选择。结果发现: 消费者对口味体验的期望和回忆相似, 但两者都和真实体验发生分离。最后, 本研究还讨论了这一理论框架在消费者行为中的应用、未来研究拓展等。     

Consumption Effort: The Mental Cost of Generating Utility and the Role of Consumer Energy Level in Ambitious Consumption

We propose that the essence of consumption is the mental process of generating utility from products, that this process expends consumption effort, and that consumers take consumption effort into account in their decision making. In 2 studies, we tested the hypothesis that consumption preferences become more ambitious—individuals become more inclined to choose challenging‐to‐consume products—when consumer energy levels are elevated. In Study 1, energy induced by ingesting caffeine increased participants’ tendency to choose subtitled foreign movies rather than domestic remakes of those same movies. Study 2 demonstrated the same effect with naturally occurring energy levels and with consumption experiences whose effortfulness and quality were varied independently. In choosing among sets of poems to read, participants with higher levels of energy exhibited less effort aversion but neither more nor less quality seeking. A reanalysis of Study 1 showed that the energy effect is not simply a case of consumers using more energy when they have more energy, because the energy effect disappeared when participants were made aware of the energy source, suggesting that a preference‐correction process occurred. The energy dependence of consumer preferences affords tactical opportunities for marketers, but the welfare implications for consumers are intriguingly unclear, because in both studies we found that energy increased participants’ choice of challenging consumption experiences without increasing their liking of those experiences.     

The development of career choices: The relationship between patterns of commitment and career outcomes in adulthood

This study was designed to examine the theoretically predicted adult career outcomes of individuals who engage in different developmental patterns of commitment to choice. It was hypothesized, based on D. E. Super's formulations, that those who engage in increasing commitment and who do not revert to earlier behaviors would experience the most desirable outcomes in adulthood. This hypothesis was tested using an analysis of longitudinal data in relation to career outcomes at two points in adulthood. Minimal support for the hypothesis was found in combination with some findings to suggest that developmental patterns of increasing commitment may not lead to the predicted desirable outcomes. Implications for theory revision and future research are discussed.     

条件联结觉察在评价性条件反射中的作用

评价性条件反射(Evaluative Conditioning, EC)指通过将一个中性刺激和一个情绪性刺激重复配对, 使中性刺激获得情绪性刺激的情感性评价。条件联结觉察(Contingency Awareness)指被试觉察到中性刺激和情绪性刺激的配对规律。当前, 条件联结觉察在EC中的作用尚存争议。一些研究证明, 条件联结觉察独立于EC, 甚至阻碍了EC; 另一些研究则表明, 条件联结觉察促进EC的发生; 还有些研究发现条件联结觉察在EC中的作用受其他变量的调节。因此, 在将来的研究中, 需发展出更准确的觉察测量、检验其他变量的调节作用、加强多感觉通道的EC研究、探索EC的加工机制。     

The moderating role of emotional differentiation on satiation

People tend to like experiences less the more they repeat them, a process commonly referred to as satiation. Despite an increasing interest in satiation among consumer researchers, we still know very little about the role that emotions play in the process. Through a series of three experiments, we show paradoxically that when individuals differentiate between the positive and negative emotions that arise during repeated consumption, they satiate at a slower rate. We show that a cognitive re‐appraisal process drives this emotional differentiation effect, whereby, when individuals focus on negative emotions they exhibit increased enjoyment of repeated consumption sequences. We demonstrate these effects for both trait and state emotional differentiation and across both continued and repeated consumption contexts. Theoretical implications of these findings for satiation, emotional differentiation, and emotion regulation literatures are then discussed.     

Effects of parental comments on body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance in young adults: A sociocultural model

This study examined a sociocultural model of the influence of parental comments on body shape and eating concerns among males and females. Questionnaires were completed by 338 undergraduates. Participants reported levels of perceived parental comments, internalization of media ideals, appearance comparison, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and bulimia. Results revealed that, regardless of gender, internalization and appearance comparison only partially mediated the relationship between parental comments and the outcome variables. The final model for females explained a larger proportion of the variability in body shape and eating concerns than in males, with positive and negative parental comments directly related to body dissatisfaction and through it to eating outcomes. In males, only negative comments were directly related to body dissatisfaction. These findings highlight the role of parental influences in sociocultural models of the development of body dissatisfaction and eating concerns, and the gender-specific patterns of sociocultural influence.