Does insincere flattery work?
is research uses a dual attitudes perspective to offer new insights into flattery and its consequences. The authors show that even when flattery by marketing agents is accompanied by an obvious ulterior motive that leads targets to discount the proffered compliments, the initial favorable reaction (the implicit attitude) continues to coexist with the discounted evaluation (the explicit attitude). Furthermore, the implicit attitude has more influential consequences than the explicit attitude, highlighting the possible subtle impact of flattery even when a…
1 min read
Does repeating yourself make you more influential?
spite the importance of doing so, people do not always correctly estimate the distribution of opinions within their group. One important mechanism underlying such misjudgments is people's tendency to infer that a familiar opinion is a prevalent one, even when its familiarity derives solely from the repeated expression of 1 group member. Six experiments demonstrate this effect and show that it holds even when perceivers are consciously aware that the opinions come from 1 speaker. The results also indicate that…
1 min read
Should every store have a beautiful female employee?
teris paribus, having her there should make the store better at selling expensive stuff to guys: Exposure to mating cues activates the goal to signal one's mate value to members of the opposite sex. This mate attraction goal may render men perceptually ready for products that signal their mate value to women. As men's mate value is partly determined by their financial prospects, men may be more likely to notice products that would signal their financial resources to women. The…
1 min read
Where should you sit during a meeting to be most influential?
t in the middle: This paper examines centrality of physical position as a cue that leads to systematic biases in people’s decisions to retain or eliminate a participant from a group. Termed the “centre- stage” effect, we argue that people use their belief that “important people sit in the middle” as a schematic cue that they substitute for individuating performance information for individuals who occupy central positions when the goal is to eliminate all but one of the group members.…
2 minutes
Here’s how you get people to donate money:
e authors find that appeals for charity that evoke personal nostalgia will have an effect on the charitable-donation intentions of consumers. In study 1 with 103 respondents, nostalgic charity appeals evoke higher levels of emotions and donation intentions than non-nostalgic appeals. Study 2 457 respondents indicates that this effect is moderated by the consumer's propensity towards being nostalgic. In study 3 sample: 186 consumers, the effect of nostalgia emotions and intentions is, in turn, moderated by the importance of the…
1 min read
Do blondes raise more funds?
is study uses a door-to-door fund-raising field experiment to explore the returns to physical appearance on fund-raising success. Interestingly, blonde females earn more on average than brunette counterparts. However, the returns to physical appearance depend critically on the race of a potential donor. Source: "Fund-raising success and a solicitor's beauty capital: Do blondes raise more funds?" from Economics Letters. Join over 185,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done…
1 min read
Is customer satisfaction higher when we buy from attractive salespeople?
is study assesses if the service worker's physical attractiveness has an impact on customer satisfaction in the moment of truth. An experimental approach, involving two different service settings (visiting a bookstore and traveling with an airline), was used to manipulate the level of the service worker's physical attractiveness. The results, for both experiments, show that a high level as opposed to a low level of physical attractiveness of the service worker produced a higher level of customer satisfaction. In addition,…
1 min read
Another simple trick for persuading people:
member their name: Three experiments demonstrate that remembering someone's name facilitates their compliance with a purchase request made by the rememberer. Experiment 1 shows that name remembrance increases request compliance, but name forgetting does not cause a decrease in compliance. Experiments 2 and 3 show that name remembrance is perceived as a compliment by the person remembered, which mediates compliance with the purchase request. Experimental manipulations of the likelihood of name remembrance (experiment 2) and need for self-enhancement (experiment 3)…
1 min read
