The Moderating Role of Involvement and Differentiation in the Evaluation of Brand Extensions

Two experiments qualify the previously observed finding that a moderately incongruent brand extension is evaluated more favorably than a congruent or extremely incongruent brand extension and reconcile this finding with other outcomes that have been reported in the brand extension literature. A congruent brand extension is judged more favorably than either a moderately incongruent extension or an extremely incongruent extension when involvement in the task is low. Apparently, incongruity per se does not always prompt the elaboration required to reconcile a moderately incongruent extension with the parent brand and, thereby, enhance evaluation of the moderately incongruent extension. Further, when involvement is high, a moderately incongruent brand extension may only be judged more favorably than a congruent one if the extension is undifferentiated. If the extension is differentiated, the differentiation may provide a basis for favorable evaluation irrespective of the level of congruity with the brand. Recall of information about the performance of the extension relative to competitive brands and measures of attitude toward the parent brand, fit between the extension and the parent brand, and task satisfaction provide insight into the processes that underlie these effects.     

Happiness Enrichment and Sustainable Happiness

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Sustainable happiness research has recently received renewed attention. Studies present exercises intended to enhance happiness. A comprehensive process by...     

Are highly numerate individuals invulnerable to attribute framing bias? Comparing numerically and graphically represented attribute framing

Judgments and decisions are frequently biased by attribute framing, presenting either positive or negative attributes of an object. This paper focused on two factors previously shown to moderate the attribute‐framing bias: mode of presentation and participants' numeric ability. Whereas many studies demonstrated that graphical display reduced the bias, recent findings suggest that graphical manipulation can nevertheless elicit significant framing bias. Numeracy has been shown to moderate attribute‐framing bias when the quantitative information was represented by numbers. The present study examined to what extent numeracy would still moderate the framing bias when it is graphically elicited. The results showed a significant framing bias for graphically as well as for numerically represented framing scenarios. Critically, whereas numeracy moderated the framing bias in numerically represented scenarios, it did not have a similar moderating effect when the quantitative information in the scenario was graphically represented. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Washing away your sins will set your mind free: physical cleansing modulates the effect of threatened morality on executive control

The effect of threatened morality on negative emotions and on altruistic behaviour has been shown to diminish following physical cleansing (hand-washing). We hypothesised that threatened morality will broadly impair the executive control system, and that physical cleansing will moderate this detrimental effect. Thirty-seven participants were asked to write about an immoral deed they had committed, whereupon half of them were allowed to wipe their hands. Three executive control tasks—Stroop, stop-signal, and object interference—were then administered to all participants. Participants who had not wiped their hands, but not those who did, demonstrated impaired performance, compared to hand-washing controls, in all three tasks. We conclude that threatened morality has a detrimental effect on executive control, specifically on conflict monitoring and response inhibition, and that physical cleansing “frees” this system, counteracting the detrimental effects of morality threats. We discuss possible implications for obsessive–compulsive disorder, which is characterised by deficient executive control and in which both threatened morality and physical cleansing are central concerns.     

Neo Homo Economicus and the End of the Subject

Neo-liberalism is now a dominant ideology and sociopolitical-economic organizing principle. Following Nancy Hollander’s (this issue) illuminating foray into its psychological demi-monde, and in full agreement with the understanding that the subject contains and reflects the social, my commentary aims to elaborate on neo-liberalism’s subjective and intersubjecrive correlates. I also raise some more general questions about the relations between the subjective and the social, and our ways of thinking about them. I begin in exploring the value attached to caregiving and attachment. Attachment as goods exchanged and as investment. I follow by highlighting the slippage between ethical and economic meanings in terms such as “value,” “debt,” “guilt,” and “redemption,” a slippage that points to the the probable co-emergence of ethics and markets. Leaning on Foucault’s notion of homo economicus and on the psychoanalytic concept of libidinal economy, I outline some questions about the psychology of the homo economicus of neo-liberalism. I question what seems to me a nostalgic sentiment that runs through neo-liberalism as well as recent psychoanalytic theories, suggesting that this similarity demonstrates how psychoanalytic thinking itself reflects the current order of things. Finally, I wonder whether, under this ideology, we are encountering not only a new kind of subjectivity but also the end of subjectivity as a fundament of human life.     

Using puns to study contextual influences on lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from eye movements

Participants’ eye movements were monitored while they read sentences containing biased homographs in either a single-meaning context condition that instantiated the subordinate meaning of the homograph without ruling out the dominant meaning (e.g., “The man with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”) or a dual-meaning pun context condition that supported both the subordinate and dominant meanings (e.g., “The king with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”). In both of these conditions, the homographs were followed by disambiguating material that supported the subordinate meaning and ruled out the dominant meaning. Fixation times on the homograph were longer in the single-meaning condition than in the dual-meaning condition, whereas the reverse pattern was demonstrated for fixation times on the disambiguating region; these effects were observed as early as first-fixation duration. The findings strongly support the reordered access model of lexical ambiguity resolution.     

Using analogical mapping to simulate time-course phenomena in perceptual similarity

We present a computational model of visual similarity. The model is based upon the idea that perceptual comparisons may utilize the same mapping processes as are used in analogy. We use the Structure Mapping Engine (SME), a model of Gentner’s structure-mapping theory of analogy, to perform comparison on representations that are automatically generated from visual input. By encoding visual scenes incrementally and sampling the output of SME at multiple stages in its processing, we are able to model not only the output of similarity judgments, but the time course of the comparison process. We demonstrate the model’s effectiveness by replicating the results from three psychological studies that bear on the time course of comparison.     

Inequality in Political Philosophy and in Epidemiology: A Remarriage

In political philosophy and in economics, unfair inequality is usually assessed between individuals, nowadays often on luck‐egalitarian grounds. You have more than I do (through no fault of my own) and that's unfair. By contrast, in epidemiology and sociology, unfair inequality is traditionally assessed between groups. More is concentrated among people of your class or race than among people of mine, and that's unfair. I shall call this difference the egalitarian ‘divorce’. Epidemiologists, and their ‘divorce lawyers’ Paula Braveman, Norman Daniels, and Iris Marion Young, explain that not every inequality between individuals is an inequity. Only inequality between social status groups is unfair. Only such inequality stems from problems like partiality, discrimination, oppression, inequality‐related population health problems, and unfair distribution of prospects. And it alone is actionable. By contrast, inequality between individuals, e.g. in longevity, is natural, inevitable, less important, or otherwise less informative — not unjust. In ‘divorce trial’ mode, I respond to epidemiologists that group inequalities lack the intrinsic disvalue that they ascribe them. They may be instrumentally or contingently bad or wrong, not essentially so. I then shift to ‘remarriage’: although group inequalities lack intrinsic badness or wrongness, for multiple reasons they remain useful to measure.     

Towards a new framework of personalized psychological interventions to improve intergroup relations and promote peace

Recent increases in intergroup tensions and violence have global negative implications and underline the need for effective interventions to ameliorate conflictual relations. Despite the ongoing trend in social psychology toward an interventionist approach, there is still a theoretical and empirical gap in personalizing intergroup interventions to achieve optimal effectiveness. Integrating interventions aimed at prejudice reduction and promoting peace, we present a theoretical framework for personalizing these intergroup interventions. We propose a three‐layer model: personalization parameters, intergroup interventions, and mechanisms that link parameter and intervention. To illustrate the model, three sample parameters are described (ideology, dominant emotional sentiments, and Big Five personality types) and three corresponding mechanisms (level of intervention congruency; the degree to which an intervention addresses core appraisal theme; and a needs‐based mechanism). We demonstrate how the parameters and mechanisms map onto different established intergroup interventions, and suggest some empirical directions to test and later apply the theoretical framework. Finally, we discuss the potential of personalized interventions to substantially improve intergroup relations.