Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Create Workshop 2014: Leveraging Mobile Technology And Social Media In Behavioral Research, Andre M. Müller

Andre M Müller

The 2014 CREATE workshop brought together some forty young health behavior researchers from thirteen different countries, all sharing an interest in mobile technology and social media research. The three- day workshop was held in Innsbruck, Austria,...

Goats, Crayons And Bananas – Creative Ways To Fight Student Stress, Conny Liegl

Conny Liegl

More than 80% of US college students report feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, almost half of whom describe their academic experience as traumatic or very difficult to handle. Stress, sleep difficulties and anxiety are just some of the symptoms that manifest in college students. Undergraduates seem particularly susceptible to these stressors, but only one in five seeks medical consultation for their issues. (American College Health Association [ACHA], 2013)

To help students react to external and internal stressors, California Polytechnic State University’s Robert E. Kennedy Library initiated a program to support students during the most stressful times of the academic quarter. With …

Memory Restoration, Julianne E. Henderson Ms.

julianne e. henderson ms.

Memory maintains the power to shape our realities: it can rewrite the past, influence our future, and it constantly informs our present. When synaptic connections fire to retrieve desired information passing between neurons, memories appear to be amorphous, fluid, and impressionable. They are not set in stone, but rather open to edits and alterations belonging to the observer in question. Our recall is like time-lapse photography, with frames lined up side by side to create a living and dynamic succession of events that are rich with colors, sounds, scents, textures, and feelings. The human mind constantly oscillates back and forth …

Ethical Issues In The Provision Of Online Mental Health Services, Donna M. Midkiff, W. Joseph Wyatt

W. Joseph Wyatt

A number of ethical and legal implications of on-line therapy [e-Therapy] are examined. e-Therapy is defined and its strengths and weaknesses listed. Specific ethical issues addressed include boundaries of competence, basis in science, avoidance of harm, confidentiality, avoidance of false or deceptive statements, media presentations, testimonials, solicitation of clients, fees and informed consent. Legal issues are discussed including the issue of interstate eTherapy. As a necessary measure to protect the public, the profession and the practitioner, it is recommended that federal legislation be enacted, informed by the American Psychological Association based upon APA's review of other disciplines’ (e.g., medicine) e-Practice …

Assessment Of Likelihood Of A School Shooting Incident, W. Joseph Wyatt

W. Joseph Wyatt

After considering the profiles of several shooters, consideration is given to the efficacy of using a profile to predict future shooting incidents.

Make My Memory: How Advertising Can Change Our Memories Of The Past, Kathryn A. Braun, Rhiannon Ellis, Elizabeth F. Loftus

Kathryn A. LaTour

Marketers use autobiographical advertising as a means to create nostalgia for their products. This research explores whether such referencing can cause people to believe that they had experiences as children that are mentioned in the ads. In Experiment 1, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with Mickey Mouse as a child. Relative to controls, the ad increased their confidence that they personally had shaken hands with Mickey as a child at a Disney resort. The increased confidence could be due to a revival of a true memory or the creation of a new, false …

Coke Is It: How Stories In Childhood Memories Illuminate An Icon, Kathryn A. Latour, Michael S. Latour, George M. Zinkhan

Kathryn A. LaTour

This paper builds on consumer storytelling theory and childhood memory research by proposing that earliest childhood memory stories are useful for developing brand myths and providing relevance to iconic brands. This article investigates consumers' childhood memories with Coca-Cola and finds that memories from early childhood are more predictive and insightful for understanding current brand attitudes than memories coming from adolescence. A focus group is unable to elicit memories from as early in life as the childhood memory session. In addition, the memories elicited by the group interviewer are not as relevant and meaningful to participants. When participants read experiences coming …

Mood, Information Congruency, And Overload, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Nancy M. Puccinelli, Fred W. Mast

Kathryn A. LaTour

Marketers seek new ways of gaining attention in our age of information bombardment, and one popular way has been to utilize schema-incongruent language. The present article investigates how a common situational factor–consumer mood–influences consumers' ability to process incongruent information in an information overload environment. Two experiments find positive mood increases (and negative mood decreases) consumers' ability to respond to incongruent information. Both experiments utilize computer reaction tests on healthy adult consumers; the first uses the Stroop test, the second uses the IAT (Implicit Association Test). This article discusses the implications of the findings for marketers attempting to gain consumers attention …

Advertising's Misinformation Effect, Kathryn A. Braun, Elizabeth F. Loftus

Kathryn A. LaTour

This research explores whether post-experience advertising alters information learned in a consumer's direct experience. An advertising misinformation effect was obtained for colour memory of a previously seen candy bar wrapper upon both visual and verbal misinformation. However, the misleading visual information produced more ‘remember’ judgements than misleading verbal information. This advertising misinformation effect did not dissipate when the source was discredited. We found that such memory changes can be directly linked to consumer subjective judgements and choices when the misleading information is particularly salient. Not only do these findings constitute a novel generalizability of the misinformation effect, they also have …

Positive Mood And Susceptibility To False Advertising, Michael S. Latour, Kathryn A. Latour

Kathryn A. LaTour

This paper examines the impact of mood on consumers' implicit and explicit responses to false advertising. In our first experiment, we find that those consumers in a positive (versus a negative or neutral) mood state are more likely to notice the false information in the advertising, but paradoxically, are also likely to develop positive feelings toward the brand. In that experiment, we used both a hedonic brand (Disney) and a hedonic/emotional ad (autobiographical). In our second experiment, we extend the ad stimulus context beyond Disney to Wendy's to more readily facilitate autobiographical versus informational manipulations. We find that, indeed, the …

Digging Deeper: Art Museums In Las Vegas?, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Flavia Hendler, Rom Hendler

Kathryn A. LaTour

[Excerpt] Las Vegas has been called the “city of reinvention” (Douglass and Raento 2003). Part of its more recent reinvention efforts has included the opening of five fine-art venues. However, one of the art museums––the Las Vegas Guggenheim––was shut down in its first year due to low attendance; another, the Bellagio Fine Art Gallery, has seen attendance dwindle (Schemeligian 2004). The question addressed here is whether the museums are bringing the intended intangible benefits to the host resort, or whether the sales and attendance figures represent overall disinterest. More broadly one considers the potential “fit” between sin-city and the high-art …

Memory Change: An Intimate Measure Of Persuasion, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Gerald Zaltman

Kathryn A. LaTour

A major goal for advertising is to have an enduring emotional impact on an audience by facilitating their creation of personally relevant understandings of an advertisement. This is achieved through a process of cocreation in which consumers integrate advertising content with their own attitudes, beliefs, and values to produce the meaning of an advertisement. This article proposes an approach to evaluating advertisements that builds on the reconstructive nature of memory, the dominant view of memory today. The reconstructive view of memory holds that the memory for the same event is different each time it is recalled and that the person …

The Impact Of Program Context On Motivational System Activation And Subsequent Effects On Processing A Fear Appeal, Robert F. Potter, Michael S. Latour, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour

Kathryn A. LaTour

This manuscript reports three experiments investigating the impact of television programming context on the processing of a fear-appeal message. This is done using a dual-motivation system theory conceptualizing emotion as arising from activation of the appetitive and/or aversive motivational systems. Results show that, as predicted, sad programming activates viewers' aversive motivational systems, whereas comedic programming activates their appetitive motivational systems. Furthermore, by activating these systems through programming context, we were able to predict both retrospective self-report and real-time physiological reactions to a persuasive message employing a fear-appeal strategy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are suggestions for future experiments …

Assessing The Long-Term Impact Of A Consistent Advertising Campaign On Consumer Memory, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Michael S. Latour

Kathryn A. LaTour

How effective is an advertising campaign that has consistently used the same theme since consumers' early childhood? To answer that question one has to consider the effect the campaign has had on consumers' memory. This research begins by discussing the structure of memory and schematic processes that occur when similar or related information is presented over time. Evidence is reviewed which suggests that early exposure would be critical in the brand schema's development. An experiment that tests the strength of the brand schema in a competitive environment and a survey that explores the importance of time of initial exposure to …

Transforming Consumer Experience: When Timing Matters, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Michael S. Latour

Kathryn A. LaTour

How advertising can influence or change consumers' product experience has been a topic of great interest to marketers. The majority of research has suggested that advertising received prior to an experience can exert the most influence. In 1999, however, Braun introduced the concept of reconstructive memory, and demonstrated that advertising received after an experience can alter how consumers remember their experience. The issue of which order of framing of an experience through advertising is most influential on consumer memory has not yet been investigated. A constructive memory framework that can take into account both forward- and backward-framing effects and an …

I’Ll Have What She’S Having: Gauging The Impact Of Product Placements On Viewers, Sharmistha Law, Kathryn A. Braun

Kathryn A. LaTour

Product placement in TV shows is becoming increasingly common, yet little is known about its effectiveness nor even how to define and measure such effectiveness. This research examined the effectiveness of product placement with the use of two different types of measures: explicit measures that tap memory directly (with the use of a recognition and recall task), and an implicit measure that measures the effect of exposure on product choice indirectly. It was hypothesized that the ability of product placement to enhance memory and choice may be mediated by distinct mechanisms. The results showed an overall enhancement in product recall, …

How And When Advertising Can Influence Memory For Consumer Experience, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Michael S. Latour, Jacqueline E. Pickrell, Elizabeth F. Loftus

Kathryn A. LaTour

Recent "paradigm shifting" research in consumer behavior dealing with reconstructive memory processes suggests that advertising can exert a powerful retroactive effect on how consumers remember their past experiences with a product. Building on this stream of research, we have executed three studies that incorporate the use of false cues with the aim of shedding new light on how post-experience advertising exerts influence on recollection. Our first experiment investigates an important but yet unexplored issue to advertisers who are perhaps reticent about embracing this paradigm: Does the false cue fundamentally change how consumers process information? After finding that when the false …

Postexperience Advertising Effects On Consumer Memory, Kathryn A. Braun

Kathryn A. LaTour

Past research suggests that marketing communications create expectations that influence the way consumers subsequently learn from their product experiences. Since postexperience information can also be important and is widespread for established goods and services, it is appropriate to ask about the cognitive effects of these efforts. The postexperience advertising situation is conceptualized here as an instant source-forgetting problem where the language and imagery from the recently presented advertising become confused with consumers’ own experiential memories. It is suggested that, through a reconstructive memory process, this advertising information affects how and what consumers remember. Consumers may come to believe that their …

Tourist Memory Distortion, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Melissa J. Grinley, Elizabeth F. Loftus

Kathryn A. LaTour

Tourists' memories of prior vacation experiences are an important source of information as they, their family, and their friends make future travel plans. However, those memories may be distorted by other types of information to which the tourists are exposed after they visit, such as advertising and other tourists' memory stories. In the present article, we utilize the false memory paradigm from cognitive psychology to assess whether external information sources can distort how tourists remember their own past. We end with a discussion of the implications of our results for tourism research and propose some future areas for investigation.

A Behavior Analytic Look At Contemporary Issues In The Assessment Of Child Sexual Abuse, W. Joseph Wyatt

W. Joseph Wyatt

The assessment of child sexual abuse has largely been ignored by behavior analysts, although behavior analytic theory and methodology, if applied, likely would advance the field. Three classic cases demonstrate historic errors that might have been avoided, had a behaviorally based approach been employed. Functional analytic interpretations are provided for phenomena that have been explored in a representative sample of studies that, though empirical, do not appear in the behavioral literature. Specific recommendations for practice, and a call for greater involvement of behavior analysis, are presented.

On Being Better But Not Smarter Than Others: The Muhammad Ali Effect, Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals, David M. Messick

Scott T. Allison

Past research suggests that people believe that they perform socially desirable behaviors more frequently and socially undesirable behaviors less frequently than others (Goethals, 1986; Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985). The present research examined whether this perception also characterizes people's thinking about intelligent and unintelligent behaviors. In Study 1, subjects wrote lists of behaviors that they or others did. Subjects indicated that they performed more good and intelligent behaviors and fewer bad and unintelligent behaviors than others, although the magnitude of these differences was greater for good and bad acts than for intelligent and unintelligent ones. In Study 2, a …

Older Adults And Technology-Based Instruction: Optimizing Learning Outcomes And Transfer, Natalie Wolfson, Thomas M. Cavanagh, Kurt Kraiger

Thomas M. Cavanagh

Bridging Aficionados’ Perceptual And Conceptual Knowledge To Enhance How They Learn From Experience, Kathryn A. Latour, Michael S. Latour

Kathryn A. LaTour

The aficionado consumer is one who consumes and enjoys a hedonic product regularly but has failed to obtain product expertise from his/her many experiences. We conceptualize the aficionado as having asymmetric perceptual and conceptual knowledge and posit that when these two types of knowledge are bridged with a sensory consumption vocabulary, the aficionados are better able to learn from their experiences. In experiment 1, we find that providing aficionados a cross-modal learning tool (wine aroma wheel) during their tasting helps them strengthen their experiential memory and withstand influence from misleading marketing communications. We also find that when aficionados are presented …

Using Childhood Memory To Gain Insight Into Brand Meaning, Kathryn A. Braun-Latour, Michael S. Latour, George M. Zinkhan

Kathryn A. LaTour

In this article, the authors introduce the concept that people's earliest and defining product memories can be used as a projective tool to help managers more fully understand consumers' relationships to their products. The authors use a study on three generations of automobile consumers to illustrate how these memories symbolize the consumer-brand relationship and how they can be used to gain insights into brand meaning. The findings indicate that people's earliest and defining experiences have an important influence on current and future preferences in predictable ways across the consumer life cycle. These memory experiences are symbolic to the consumer and …

Variations In The Offence Actions Of Deliberate Firesetters: A Cross-National Analysis, Katarina Fritzon, Rebekah Doley, Kerrilee Hollows

Rebekah Doley

Since Canter and Fritzon first introduced their “4D” classification system for arson, many studies have replicated the model with samples of arsonists from around the world. However, scholars have reported differences in the offence actions of arsonists across samples. No study as yet has attempted to statically examine the relevance of these differences. Using multidimensional scaling procedures and two-way chi-square contingency analyses, this study examined whether cross-national differences in arson variables existed between Australian and British arsonists. The results indicated that differences did exist and, furthermore, that differences reflected the environmental characteristics of the country from which each sample was …

Profiling Arson, Katarina Fritzon, Rebekah Doley, Ryan Bell

Rebekah Doley

Overview: Criminal psychological profiling is the forensic technique of inferring personal, psychological, demographic, and behavioral characteristics of offenders based on crime scene evidence. While the majority of research concerning criminal pro-filing has been focused on the investigation of crimes of sexual violence such as murder and rape, criminal psychological profiling is frequently described as being applicable to the investigation of serial arson crimes, and the frequency with which psychological profiling has been used in the investigation of arson crimes has been growing steadily over the past 30 years (Drabsch 2004; Kocsis 2004, 2006; Turvey1999). This current entry reviews the growing …