Deborah A. Small

When do brands get credit for contributing to the greater good? Prior research has shown that consumers reward brands for prosocial initiatives (e.g., corporate philanthropy, social responsibility, cause marketing) in line with the perceived purity of their motives. We report four experiments demonstrating that consumers interpret the order in which brands launch prosocial initiatives as a signal of their underlying motivations for doing good. Whereas prosocial first movers appear to care genuinely about the causes they support, prosocial followers (i.e., those that imitate the prosocial actions of other brands) typically seem to have more selfish intentions, even if their initiatives have an equal or greater social impact. This discrepancy in perceived motives, in turn, serves as an additional source of first mover preference, above and beyond previously studied first mover effects and unique to greater good marketing contexts. It also leads consumers to reward followers for launching more original prosocial initiatives, even if these seem less impactful for society. These findings bridge literatures on prosocial behavior and entry order, and they offer practical insight for brands looking to combine profits and purpose.

Theories of authenticity usually try to explain what leads consumers to see something as authentic. Here, we address the inverse question instead: What makes a brand, individual, or product seem inauthentic? This shift in focus reveals a distinct psychology that is more than just the absence or inverse of responses to authenticity. Whereas authenticity typically confers meaning and value, invoking inauthenticity typically implies the detection of a moral violation. Specifically, consumers judge an entity to be inauthentic if they perceive a mismatch between what that entity claims to be (e.g., a socially responsible apparel brand, 100% orange juice) and what it really is upon closer scrutiny. Such judgments give rise to a powerful, non‐compensatory reactance we term inauthenticity aversion. We segment inauthenticity violations into three principle types: deceptions, ulterior motives, and adulterations. This conceptualization allows us to capture a wide variety of inauthenticity cases and outline psychological commonalities across them. It also helps to explain the powerful outrage consumers display at perceived inauthenticity and illuminates potential hazards in common marketing approaches.

True altruism involves sacrifice and is thus incompatible, in people’s minds, with benefits to the benefactor. Consistent with this prototype, selflessly motivated prosocial actors are perceived as less likely to benefit from their acts compared with selfishly motivated actors (“Nice guys finish last”), and prosocial actors who benefit are perceived as less benevolent than those who do not (“Guys in last are nice”)—even in situations for which benefits are randomly determined and completely out of the control of the actor. The studies present supportive evidence of the reflexive association between a pure, selfless motive and sacrifice with respect to both individuals and organizations.

The authors document an age penalty in racial discrimination: Charitable behavior toward African American children decreases—and negative stereotypical inferences increase—with the age of those children. Using data from an online charity that solicits donations for school projects, the authors found that proposals accompanied by images of older African American students (Grades 6–12) led to fewer donations than proposals with images of younger African Americans (pre-K-Grade 5), with the opposite pattern for proposals with images of multiples races or of all White students. A laboratory experiment demonstrated that negative stereotypical beliefs about African Americans (e.g., that they are lazy) increased with age more for African American children than for White children, a pattern that predicted decreases in giving.

Although much research has found that “birds of a feather flock together,” the authors suggest that opposites tend to attract when it comes to certain spending tendencies; that is, tightwads, who generally spend less than they would ideally like to spend, and spendthrifts, who generally spend more than they would ideally like to spend, tend to marry each other, consistent with the notion that people are attracted to mates who possess characteristics dissimilar to those they deplore in themselves. Despite this complementary attraction, tightwad–spendthrift differences within a marriage predict conflict over finances, which in turn predicts diminished marital well-being. These relationships persist when controlling for important financial outcomes (household-level savings and credit card debt). These findings underscore the importance of studying the relationships among money, consumption, and happiness at an interpersonal level.