George E. Newman

Despite the proliferation of multifunctional products, survey data suggests that instead of relying on one multifunctional product, consumers now rely on a community of multifunctional products, using them interchangeably to perform similar tasks. Such consumption patterns stand in stark contrast to consumers’ well-documented aversion towards waste. Why are consumers willing to dispose of multifunctional products that still have some working capabilities and/or to pay for functional redundancies? We suggest that controlling for the absolute level of performance (e.g., the megapixels of the camera), consumers perceive the same functionality to be less valuable when it is performed by a multifunctional product (e.g., the camera on a smartphone) than by a single, dedicated product (an inexpensive digital camera). We investigate this phenomenon across a series of four experiments which are aimed at documenting the basic effect and elucidating the underlying psychology.

Heritage branding is a common marketing strategy that has been shown to increase product appeal. Here, we find that certain forms of heritage branding can also have potentially negative consequences by leading consumers to react negatively to changes made to the brand’s original, flagship product—even if those changes objectively improve it. We demonstrate that when firms engage in heritage branding that emphasizes a brand’s longevity, consumers evaluate enhanced products less favorably than the original versions of those same products due to decreased perceptions of continuity authenticity. We demonstrate this effect across a variety of product domains (e.g., cosmetics, cookware, and food products), using online experiments as well as in-person product trials. Moreover, we provide a framework that distinguishes between types of heritage branding cues that lead to negative evaluations of enhanced products versus those that do not. Finally, beyond identifying an important boundary condition based on specific aspects of heritage branding, we further show how the negative evaluations of enhanced products can be attenuated if brands reframe product changes as continuous with the brand’s origins. Together, these studies contribute to existing theory regarding heritage branding and authenticity, while also providing a number of practical recommendations for heritage brands.

Existing research has examined why consumers are drawn to things from their past (personal nostalgia). However, little empirical work has examined why consumers prefer products that were never a part of their personal history (communal nostalgia). For example, a consumer may purchase vinyl records even though she grew up listening to mp3 files. Here, we find that one reason why consumers may be drawn to communal nostalgia is that it can provide a sense of social stability. Drawing on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1994 and 1–27), we demonstrate that perceived threats to the social system increase consumer demand for communal nostalgia and enhance the pleasure consumers get from certain retro products. We further show that a retro product’s ability to provide a sense of stability to consumers mediates the effect of system justification on communal nostalgia. Together, these findings suggest that communal nostalgia may be driven by its own unique motivational antecedents that are distinct from personal nostalgia, as individuals seek to connect to aspects of society that are perceived as stable and unchanging.

It is common for charities to bundle donation requests with some type of product, such as a tote bag, pen, or coffee mug. The current studies find that people are more likely to donate when those bundles are framed as “charitable purchases” vs. “donations with a gift.” We show that this effect arises because consumers want to avoid the negative self‐signal associated with receiving a gift in exchange for donating. Five experiments provide evidence for the role of self‐signaling, identify key moderators of the framing effect, and demonstrate the downstream consequences for people's likelihood of donating in the future. More broadly, the current studies lend further evidence to the role of self‐signaling in charitable giving and provide greater clarity regarding how and when different donation solicitation techniques may be most effective.

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H₂O). Debates about natural kind concepts have sought to accommodate an apparent fact about ordinary people's judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results showing that people do not have this intuition. Instead, people tend to judge that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which itiswater.

Over the past several decades,psychological essentialismhas been an important topic of study, incorporating research from multiple areas of psychology, philosophy and linguistics. At its most basic level, essentialism is the tendency to represent certain concepts in terms of a deeper, unobservable property that is responsible for category membership. Originally, this concept was used to understand people's reasoning about natural kind concepts, such astigerandwater, but more recently, researchers have identified the emergence of essentialist‐like intuitions in a number of other contexts, including people's representation of concepts likescientistorChristian.This paper develops an account that aims to capture how essentialism may operate across these varied cases. In short, we argue that while there is diversity in the forms essentialism can take, these varied cases reflect the same underlying cognitive structure.

Prospective donors are often sensitive to the amount of overhead in charitable fundraising. The present studies examine how differences in one’s personal commitment to a cause moderate the relative focus on overhead versus outcomes in charitable fundraising. Three experiments find that donors who are more committed to the cause are, in fact, accepting of higher levels of overhead. Experiment 1 demonstrates that people are willing to accept a higher level of overhead for causes that are more (vs. less) important to them. Experiment 2 provides process evidence by showing that perceptions of cause importance generally influence how people evaluate the intentions behind charitable fundraising versus its outcomes. Experiment 3 directly manipulates cause importance and demonstrates a downstream effect on actual donations. Together, these studies suggest a more general framework whereby differences in personal commitment change the relative focus on the intentions behind pro-social behavior versus the outcomes achieved.

The concept of authenticity plays an important role in how people reason about objects, other people, and themselves. However, despite a great deal of academic interest in this concept, to date, the precise meaning of the term, authenticity, has remained somewhat elusive. This paper reviews the various definitions of authenticity that have been proposed in the literature and identifies areas of convergence. We then outline a novel framework that organizes the existing definitions of authenticity along two key dimensions: (i) describing the type of entity that is evaluated and (ii) describing the source of information that is consulted. We argue that this convergence across a number of papers, and more importantly, across a number of domains, reflects significant progress in articulating the meaning(s) of authenticity. We conclude by suggesting new avenues for research in this area, with particular attention toward psychological process.