Words Meet Photos: When and Why Photos Increase Review Helpfulness (with Kristin Diehl and Davide Proserpio, Journal of Marketing Research & Supp Appendix )
Are reviews with photos more helpful? If so, do consumers find reviews more helpful when photos and text convey similar or different information? This article examines the effect of content similarity between photos and text on review helpfulness and its underlying mechanism. Using a data set of 7.4 million reviews associated with 3.5 million photos from Yelp, and applying machine learning algorithms, the authors quantify the similarity of the content between text and photos. They find that, overall, photos increase the helpfulness of a review. More importantly, though, greater similarity between photos and text heightens review helpfulness more. The authors then validate algorithm-based similarity assessments with similarity perceptions of human judges. Using real-world reviews from Yelp and carefully designed stimuli, they replicate the core findings in five laboratory experiments. Further, testing the underlying mechanism, they find that greater similarity facilitates the ease with which consumers can process the review, which, in turn, increases that review’s helpfulness to consumers. Finally, they show that factors that impede the ease of processing (e.g., language difficulty or poor image quality) can reduce the effect of similarity on helpfulness. These findings provide novel insights into the value of user-generated content that includes text and photos and its underlying mechanism.
Sharing of Misinformation is Habitual, Not Just Lazy or Biased (with Ian Anderson and Wendy Wood, PNAS & ResearchBox )
Why do people share misinformation on social media? In this research (N = 2,476), we show that the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important than individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias—commonly cited drivers of misinformation. Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers. Suggesting that sharing of false news is part of a broader response pattern established by social media platforms, habitual users also shared information that challenged their own political beliefs. Finally, we show that sharing of false news is not an inevitable consequence of user habits: Social media sites could be restructured to build habits to share accurate information.
From Mentally Doing to Actually Doing: A Meta-Analysis of Induced Positive Consumption Simulations (with Kristin Diehl and Wendy Wood Journal of Marketing )
Mental simulation is an important tool for managers who want consumers to imagine what life would be like if they engaged in positive consumption behaviors. However, research has found mixed effects of mental simulation on behavior. To understand this inconsistency, the authors conduct a meta-analysis to quantify the effect of different mental simulation prompts. This multivariate three-level meta-analysis of 237 effect sizes spanning four decades (1980–2020) and representing 40,705 respondents yields a positive but small effect of mental simulation on behavioral responses. Managers and researchers can amplify this effect by using dynamic visual inductions (e.g., augmented reality), inductions involving both visuals and verbal instructions, and repeated inductions spaced over time (e.g., weekly, akin to real-world marketing campaigns). Inducing simulations repeatedly but massed (e.g., using the same message at the same time across different platforms or retargeting ads) actually reduces subsequent behavioral performance. The authors explain the implications of these findings for theory and practice and identify novel avenues for research.
Perfectionism Paradox: Perfectionistic Concerns (Not Perfectionistic Strivings) Affect the Relationship between Risk and Choice (with Ceren Kolsarici and Deborah MacInnis, Journal of Consumer Behaviour )
We investigate whether, when, and why perfectionism moderates the relationship between risks and choice. Three studies using different choice domains (appearance and performance), and different samples (women and general population) show consistent results. People with high perfectionistic concerns (PC) are less sensitive to high levels of risks and, hence, are more willing to consider options (i.e., products and services) that entail higher risks. These effects emerge because those with high PC have more favorable threat appraisals believing that the benefits of the option outweigh the high risks entailed. Our findings suggest that people with high PC may be a vulnerable segment in society, particularly since (a) people are frequently confronted with decisions about options that promise perfectionistic outcomes, (b) these options can come with high levels of risk, and (c) maladaptive perfectionistic tendencies have become more prevalent over time.
More Pictures, More Words: Choosing Redundancy in Visual and Verbal Communication (with Kristin Diehl)
With the ubiquity of camera phones, people communicate their experiences in both words and pictures. How do people use pictures and words jointly to share their experiences? Gricean Maxims and language theorists suggest that people prioritize efficiency in their verbal communication. Across two large-scale, real-world datasets of 887,280 restaurant reviews and four laboratory experiments (N=1,462), we find that pictures do not replace words for efficiency. Instead, to inform receivers, people convey the same (relevant) information in both words and pictures redundantly. We demonstrate that people act as if they hold a redundancy (vs. efficiency) goal, especially when they want to be informative (vs. establish their expertise). People convey experiences redundantly to close (e.g., texting a friend) as well as distant others (e.g., writing a review). By connecting theories from linguistics and psychology and using a multi-method approach, we show that relevance is the driving force that shapes multi-modal communication.
