The secrets to a good apology
esults indicated that relationships recovered significantly when offending partners used behaviors labeled as explicit acknowledgment, nonverbal assurance, and compensation." Therapists and theologians claim that the process of forgiveness is essential to the restoration of damaged relationships, but this possibility has received limited empirical attention. Furthermore, the role of an offender's communicative behavior in the forgiveness process remains understudied. This project first analyzed an inductively derived list of communication behaviors to develop a taxonomy of forgiveness-seeking approaches used by 186 romantic…
1 min read
How can you make someone think they’re getting a discount when they aren’t?
e a yellow price tag: The purpose of this article is to find out the relationship between yellow price tags and consumer reference prices. A laboratory study was conducted among 150 respondents, who were put in an experimental purchase situation and their initial internal reference prices were compared affected reference prices. The results revealed that consumers perceive yellow price tags as presenters of discounts. A comparison of the mean values showed that yellow price tags influence the reference price and,…
1 min read
Can which products are next to each other on a store shelf influence what you buy?
is research demonstrates the strong influence of disgust in a consumer context. Specifically, it shows how consumer evaluations may change in response to physical contact with products that elicit only moderate levels of disgust. Using evidence from six studies, the authors develop a theory of product contagion, in which disgusting products are believed to transfer offensive properties through physical contact to other products they touch, thus influencing evaluations. Source: "Product Contagion: Changing Consumer Evaluations Through Physical Contact with “Disgusting” Products"…
1 min read
Is a cheeseburger an effective persuasion tool?
e purpose of this experiment was to follow up on previous findings of a gain in opinion change produced by eating-while-reading (Razran, 1940; Janis, Kaye, and Kirschner, 1965) by testing predictions from a “conditioning” theory and from an alternative explanation in terms of greater receptivity to any communication endorsed by E, the donor of the food. A factorial design was used to determine the extent to which the opinion changes induced by two persuasive communications were influenced by (1) E's giving…
2 minutes
Does name-dropping work?
ior research on impression management has focused more on the kinds of tactics that people use to be perceived by others as likeable and competent than on the effects. Do these tactics actually affect the way others see us? Name-dropping is an indirect self-presentational tactic that asserts social closeness between a person who employs the tactic and the individual who is mentioned. In our study an individual mentioned his or her association with tennis champion Roger Federer during a get-acquainted…
1 min read
An Easy Way To Get More People To Vote, Backed By Research
nd them a text message: Current explanations of effective voter mobilization strategies maintain that turnout increases only when a potential voter is persuaded to participate through increased social connectedness. The connectedness explanation does not take into account, however, that registered voters, by registering, have already signaled their interest in voting. The theory presented in this article predicts that impersonal, noticeable messages can succeed in increasing the likelihood that a registered voter will turn out by reminding the recipient that Election Day…
1 min read
Are daydreamers better liars?
is study investigated whether high fantasy-prone individuals have superior storytelling abilities. It also explored whether this trait is related to specific linguistic features (i.e. self-references, cognitive complexity, and emotional words). Participants high (n = 30) and low (n = 30) on a fantasy proneness scale were instructed to write down a true and a fabricated story about an aversive situation in which they had been the victim. Stories were then examined using two verbal lie detection approaches: criteria-based content analysis…
1 min read
If it’s clear you intentionally did something wrong, is an apology effective?
: An apology is a strong and cheap device to restore social or economic relationships that have been disturbed. In a laboratory experiment we find that harmdoers use apologies in particular if they fear punishment and when their intentions cannot be easily inferred. After offenses with ambiguous intentionality apologizers are punished less often than nonapologizers. Victims expect an apology and punish if they do not receive one. If an apology is possible, harmdoers who apologize are punished with lower probability.…
1 min read
