Consumer response journey following a product-harm crisis: The role of online brand communities

Online brand communities can serve as a crucial information source about a product-harm crisis and allow consumers to seek information from others and share their opinions in a social dynamic environment. The role of an online brand community in shaping consumer responses following such a crisis nevertheless remains under-researched. Drawing from attribution theory, this research explores the dynamic and holistic consumer journey in online brand communities following a product-harm crisis, specifically examining consumer attribution as the key mechanism and consumers' decision to forgive the brand as the outcome response. This research includes two studies. First, a netnographic pilot study is conducted to provide real-world evidence for the research phenomenon and to explore consumer responses within the natural setting of an online brand community. Second, the main study uses an interpretivist epistemological approach to track the unfolding process and capture the evolution of consumer attribution and forgiveness. The results show the social nature of attribution as members engage with others in online brand communities, seeking and verifying information, sensemaking and forming opinions. The findings make theoretical contributions to the literature on attribution and product-harm crisis. The findings from the research also help brands make informed decisions on crisis management strategies.     

The Role of Functions of Aggression in Associations Between Behavioral Inhibition and Activation and Mental Health Outcomes

While the behavioral acitivation system (BAS) has been most consistently linked to externalizing behaviors, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) has been more closely related to internalizing outcomes. Proactive and reactive aggression have demonstrated a similar pattern of association, with proactive aggression more closely linked to externalizing behavior and reactive aggression more consistently linked to internalizing symptoms. Despite theoretical links, few studies have examined associations between these constructs. Accordingly, the current study examined associations between the BAS and BIS and proactive and reactive aggression, and the role of proactive and reactive aggression in the link between the BAS and BIS and mental health outcomes. The BAS was associated with both proactive and reactive aggression, while the BIS was uniquely related to reactive aggression. Both proactive and reactive aggression appear to be playing a role in associations between the BAS and indicated mental health outcomes. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Testimony and the Constitutive Norm of Assertion

Abstract

I can, given the right conditions, transmit my knowledge to you by telling you some information. If I know the time, and if all goes well, I can bring it about that you know it too. If conditions are right, all I have to do is assert to you what time it is. Paradigmatically, speakers use assertions to transmit what they know to their hearers. Clearly, assertion and testimony are tightly connected. The nature of this connection, however, is not so clear. According to many accounts, assertion has an epistemic constitutive norm. This norm appears to be able to account for some important features of testimony: first, testimonial knowledge transmission, second, the reliability of testimony, and third, the epistemic rights exchanged in cases of testimony. In this paper, however, I argue against this apparent ability. The constitutive norm of assertion, I argue, plays no role in accounts of testimonial knowledge transmission, or of the epistemic rights that testimony confers. This is especially clear when we consider the general norms to which we’re held. Epistemological accounts of testimony can and should, therefore, avoid the difficult debate over the constitutive norm of assertion.     

An electrophysiological study of school-aged children with a history of failure to thrive during infancy

Sixty-five subjects, ages 8 to 12, participated in a visual electrophysiological study. Twenty-two of the subjects had received a diagnosis of nonorganic failure-to-thrive (FTT) before the age of three. The remaining 43 subjects had no history of FTT and served as Controls. IQs were obtained with the abbreviated WISC-III, and the Controls were split into two groups, LO IQ and HI IQ, to provide a LO IQ Control group with an average IQ equivalent to the FTT group. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from five scalp locations during a cued continuous performance task (CPT). Subjects had to press a button every time they saw the letter “X” following the letter “A” (50 targets out of 400 stimuli). During the CPT, the FTT subjects made marginally more errors of omission to targets than the LO IQ Control group and significantly more errors of omission than the HI IQ Control subjects. The groups did not differ significantly on errors of commission (false alarms) or reaction times to targets. ERP averages revealed a group difference in amplitude in a late slow wave for the 50 non-X stimuli (false targets) that followed the letter A. This difference was greatest over frontal sites, where the FTT group had a more negative going slow wave than each control group. Late frontal negativity to No Go stimuli has been linked with post-decisional processing, notably in young children. Thus, the FTT subjects may have less efficient inhibitory processes, reflected by additional late frontal activation. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A31BB040 00006     

The Importance of Context in the US Preexposure Effect in CTA: Novel versus Latently Inhibited Contextual Stimuli

Three experiments were conducted to examine the role of novel contextual stimuli in producing the unconditioned stimulus (US) preexposure effect. Experiment 1 demonstrated that novel contextual stimuli produce a significantly stronger US preexposure effect than familiar or “latently inhibited” contextual stimuli. Moreover, subjects preexposed in the presence of latently inhibited contextual cues failed to show a significant US preexposure effect. Experiments 2 and 3 attempted to provide evidence that the addition of a single novel stimulus to the latently inhibited context would result in a significantly stronger US preexposure effect than when no such novel cue was present. Experiment 3 was able to demonstrate this effect. Results are consistent with the Rescorla–Wagner (1972) model of conditioning.