In instances of "twisted" self-deception, people deceive themselves into believing things that they do not want to be true. In this, twisted self-deception differs markedly from the "straight" variety that has dominated the philosophical and psychological literature on self-deception. Drawing partly upon empirical literature, I develop a trio of approaches to explaining twisted self-deception: a motivation-centered approach; an emotion-centered approach; and a hybrid approach featuring both motivation and emotion. My aim is to display our resources for exploring and explaining twisted (...) self-deception and to show that promising approaches are consistent with a plausible position on straight self-deception. (shrink)

As more and more instances of corporate hypocrisy become public, consumers have developed an inherent general skepticism towards firms’ corporate social responsibility claims. As CSR skepticism bears heavily on consumers’ attitudes and behavior, this paper draws from Construal Level Theory to identify how it can be pre-emptively abated. We posit that this general skepticism towards CSR leads people to adopt a low-level construal mindset when processing CSR information. Across four studies, we show that matching this low-level mindset with concrete CSR (...) messaging works to effectively mitigate the negative effects of inherent CSR skepticism on consumers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and word of mouth. The resulting construal-mindset congruency strengthens the favorability of consumer responses through increased positive elaboration and perceptions of CSR message credibility. Furthermore, this congruency effect is shown to persist over time in skeptical domains but to dissipate in less skeptical domains. (shrink)

Research in psychology and behavioral economics shows that individuals’ choices often depend on “irrelevant” contextual factors. This presents problems for normative economics, which has traditionally used preference-satisfaction as its criterion. A common response is to claim that individuals have context-independent latent preferences which are “distorted” by psychological factors, and that latent preferences should be respected. This response implicitly uses a model of human action in which each human being has an “inner rational agent.” I argue that this model is psychologically (...) ungrounded. Although references to latent preferences appear in psychologically based explanations of context-dependent choice, latent preferences serve no explanatory purpose. (shrink)

Claims about the occurrence of future events play an important role in pragmatic argumentation. Such claims can be supported by inductive arguments employing anecdotal, statistical, or causal evidence. In an experiment, the actual and perceived persuasiveness of these three types of evidence were assessed. A total of 324 participants read a newspaper article in which it was claimed that the building of a cultural centre would be profitable. This claim was supported by either anecdotal, statistical or causal evidence. The statistical (...) evidence proved to be more convincing than the anecdotal and causal evidence. Although the latter two evidence types were equally unconvincing, the anecdotal evidence was perceived as less persuasive than the causal evidence. Therefore, the actual and perceived persuasiveness of the evidence did not correspond. These results partly replicate the results obtained in previous experiments. They also underscore the need to distinguish between the perceived and the actual persuasiveness of an argument. (shrink)

This research aims at exploring the underlying mechanisms how consumers respond to statistical and narrative health claims when they evaluate food products. Moreover, personality traits and product-related information are also incorporated to discuss their effects on the relationship between message types and consumers’ food product evaluation. The results indicate that statistical health claims are more persuasive than narrative health claims. In addition, the results show that individuals’ health knowledge, NFC moderate the relationship between message types and product evaluation. It argues (...) that individuals with limited health knowledge evaluate food product more favorably when statistical health claims are used, while individuals with more health knowledge evaluate food product more favorably when narrative health claims are used. Moreover, it reveals that individuals with high NFC evaluate food product more favorably when statistical health claims are used, while individuals with low NFC evaluate food product more favorably when narrative health claims are used. (shrink)

I will argue that some changes of mind about what it is best to do are akratic occurrences and that the associated overt actions are derivatively akratic, and I will explain how akratic episodes of this kind are possible. Even if Socrates is mistaken in denying the reality of strict akratic action, he has identified an important phenomenon that deserves more attention than it has received.

While most studies dealing with waste reduction at the consumer level focus on recycling, this paper rather concentrates on precycling strategies and purchasing behaviors in order to understand how to promote waste reduction at the source. More specifically, the purpose of this work is to grasp consumers’ perceptions of overpackaging and understand the mechanisms underlying their choice of overpackaged versus non-overpackaged food products. Based on the different themes that emerged from a qualitative study, a quantitative research was conducted among French (...) interviewees in order to identify relevant groups of consumers. Five profiles emerged from the cluster analysis: the supporters, the self-sacrificing, the detractors, the indifferent, and the self-centered. Finally, an experiment was conducted that highlights the influence of range positioning and salience of non-overpackaging on consumer choice. Implications for public policy makers and companies are discussed. (shrink)

The mechanisms by which delusion and anxiety affect the tendency to make hasty decisions (Jumping-to-Conclusions bias) remain unclear. This paper proposes a Bayesian computational model that explores the assignment of evidence weights as a potential explanation of the Jumping-to-Conclusions bias using the Beads Task. We also investigate the Beads Task as a repeated measure by varying the key aspects of the paradigm. The Bayesian model estimations from two online studies showed that higher delusional ideation promoted reduced belief updating but the (...) impact of general and social anxiety on evidence weighting was inconsistent. The altered evidence weighting as a result of a psychopathological trait appeared insufficient in contributing to the Jumping-to-Conclusions bias. Variations in Beads Task aspects significantly affected subjective certainty at the point of decisions but not the number of draws to decisions. Repetitions of the Beads Task are feasible if one assesses the Jumping-to-Conclusions bias using number of draws to decisions. (shrink)

This study focuses on learning effects between firms connected by common ownership. We explore the learning effects in a certain setting that how decision-makers in focal firms learn from punishments for fraudulent disclosure in their co-owned firms. Baseline results show that punishments for fraudulent disclosure in co-owned firms reduce information disclosure fraud in focal firms. The effects still exist after excluding other potential channels of learning. In mechanism analyses, similarities between focal firms and their co-owned firms and influential common shareholders (...) enhance the learning effects. Further, after the events in co-owned firms, there is improvement in internal control in focal firms, which contributes to the reduction of fraudulent disclosure. Additionally, empirical results mitigate the concern that the reduction of fraud is not driven by the learning argued in this paper but decision-makers alternatively conducting more other unethical behaviors such as real earnings management. In sum, empirical results support the existence of learning effects. As common ownership is an important but highly underexplored linkage between firms, future research can study learning effects between firms connected by common ownership in other suitable settings. (shrink)

Companies faced with a crisis sometimes blame others in their communications, when they feel that responsibility for the negative event lies elsewhere. Research has argued that stakeholders often react negatively to this type of message, because they perceive them as an unfair attempt to deny responsibility. In four experiments, examining blame directed at an employee and a supplier, we complement existing research by demonstrating that blame-giving messages can be persuasive in certain circumstances. Blame-giving communications can improve perceptions of firm ethicality (...) more than apologies or an absence of corporate communication. This effect, in turn, reduces negative word-of-mouth intentions. The study identifies several boundary conditions for this effect. For blame-giving to be effective, a credible third party needs to identify who is responsible for wrongdoing, and the company needs to use vivid communication with detailed information about the culprit. Furthermore, blame-giving can backfire: when stakeholders doubt the company’s honesty, this type of messaging is seen as manipulative. The study contributes to a developing research stream on the relative effectiveness of different types of crisis communications by demonstrating that, in certain circumstances, blame-giving messages are more persuasive than apologies. Moreover, our analysis offers guidelines on how to design these messages to make them acceptable to stakeholders. (shrink)

Terrorism researchers have long discussed the role of psychology in the radicalization process. This work has included research on the respective roles of individual psychological traits and responses to terrorist propaganda. Unfortunately, much of this work has looked at psychological traits and responses to propaganda individually and has not considered how these factors may interact. This study redresses this gap in the literature. In this experiment (N = 268), participants were measured in terms of their narcissism, Machiavellianism, subclinical psychopathy, and (...) everyday sadism—collectively called the Dark Tetrad. Participants were then exposed to a vivid or nonvivid terrorist narrative (or a control message). Results indicate that Machiavellianism interacts with both narrative exposure and narrative vividness to amplify the persuasive effect of terrorist narratives. Neither narcissism, subclinical psychopathy, nor everyday sadism had such an effect. These results highlight the importance of considering the psychological traits of audiences when evaluating proclivity for radicalizationviapersuasion by terrorist narratives. (shrink)

This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer change in people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. With the increasing presence of such visuals comes a more (...) emotive media environment with which people are forced to engage, and, under certain circumstances, disengage. (shrink)