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PublicationEnacting Rituals to Improve Self-Control(American Psychological Association, )Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in six experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual prior to a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4 and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts. We conclude by briefly describing the results of a number of additional experiments examining rituals in other self-control domains. Our body of evidence suggests that rituals can have beneficial consequences for self-control. Keywords: rituals, self-regulation, self-control, health, prosociality, decision-making As “a hallmark virtue of human character” (Prelec & Bodner, 2003, p. 277), self-control refers to the capacity to inhibit prepotent responses that are immediately gratifying but ultimately detrimental, in order to align short-term behavior with longer-term goals (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Carver & Scheier, 1998). Individuals must exercise self-control to accomplish tasks ranging from eating healthily and exercising to behaving prosocially and saving money. However, people generally find exerting self-control to be challenging, and often fail despite their good intentions (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994; Baumeister et al., 2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). Self-control failures have been linked to obesity, smoking, and binge drinking, with economic, health, and social costs for individuals and society (Baumeister, 2002; Baumeister et al., 1994). Interventions that help people to exercise self-control are therefore critical (Patrick & Hagtvedt, 2012). We propose a simple yet effective tool to help people exercise self-control: engaging in rituals. Anecdotal evidence supports this notion: popular online blogs suggest that rituals can facilitate self-control, offering “A Simple Ritual That Will Make Your Goals ‘Stick’” (Reynolds, 2011) and describing “The Power of Ritual: Conquer Procrastination, Time Wasters, and Laziness” (Young, 2015). However, research has not empirically tested the effects of personal rituals on improving self-control. We investigate whether rituals play a causal role in facilitating self-control by randomly assigning individuals to enact rituals in contexts that require self-control – such as healthy eating and prosocial decision-making. Moreover, we document a psychological mechanism that at least in part underlies the effectiveness of rituals. The performance of rituals – characterized by rigidity and repetition – increases feelings of self-discipline; in turn, this heightened sense of self-discipline drives the effect of rituals on self-control.
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PublicationMachine Talk: How Verbal Embodiment in Conversational AI Shapes Consumer-Brand Relationships(University of Chicago Press, 2023-03-02)
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PublicationOne-of-a-Kind Products: Leveraging Strict Uniqueness in Mass Customization(Elsevier, 2023)
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PublicationMixing it up: Disfluent Product Display Formats Promote the Choice of Unfamiliar Products(American Marketing Association, 2020)Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
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PublicationBidding Frenzy: Speed of Competitor Reaction and Willingness to Pay in Auctions(Journal of Consumer Research, in press, 2018)
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PublicationEnacting Rituals to Improve Self-Control(Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018)
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PublicationSocial Product-Customization Systems: Peer Input, Conformity, and Consumers’ Evaluation of Customized Products(Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2018-03-30)Many product-customization systems enable consumers to obtain input from their peers during the customization process. The design characteristics of these customization systems vary significantly, and some systems provide consumers with the opportunity to receive peer input only privately (i.e., unobservable to fellow consumers) while others allow consumers to receive peer input publicly (i.e., observable to other consumers). Building on prior research on thinking styles and social impact theory, the current work examines the interplay between user, social network, and system design characteristics in social product-customization systems as drivers of whether consumers conform to input received from others on their customized products and of their evaluation of these products. Evidence from one field study and four experiments shows that consumers with more holistic (vs. analytic) thinking styles make more conforming product modifications when receiving public rather than private peer input, and this greater conformity to peer input boosts (vs. diminishes) consumers’ evaluation of customized products when they feel close (vs. distant) to input providers. These findings offer novel insights into how the design of social product-customization systems affects consumers’ evaluation of customized products.Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
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PublicationGamified Information Presentation and Consumer Adoption of Product Innovations(Journal of Marketing, 2017)
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PublicationGamified Information Presentation and Consumer Adoption of Product Innovations(Publications Group of the American Marketing Association, 2017-03)This research examines the effect of gamified information presentation—conveying information about a product innovation in the form of a game—on consumer adoption of that innovation. The key hypothesis is that gamified information presentation promotes consumer innovation adoption and that it does so through two parallel psychological processes—by increasing consumer playfulness, which stimulates curiosity about the innovation, and by enhancing the perceived vividness of information presentation, which increases the perceived advantage of the innovation relative to (less innovative) competing products. Evidence from seven studies, including two field experiments, supports this theorizing. The results also show that for gamified information presentation to increase innovation adoption, it is essential that the information is integrated into the game. These findings advance the understanding of the psychological forces that govern how consumers respond to receiving product information in the form of games, and they have important practical implications for how firms might use gamified information presentation to promote sales of new products.
Scopus© Citations 118 -
PublicationRepayment Concentration and Consumer Motivation to Get Out of Debt( 2016-10)Many indebted consumers carry multiple credit cards with significant balances and do not generate enough income to pay off these balances in full at the end of each repayment period. In managing their debt over time, these consumers must decide how to allocate repayments across their debt accounts. This research examines how different monthly repayment allocations, varying from entirely concentrated into one debt account (i.e., a concentrated strategy) to equally dispersed across all debt accounts (i.e., a dispersed strategy), influence consumers’ motivation to repay their debts. Evidence from a field study of indebted consumers with multiple debt accounts and from three experiments shows that concentrated (vs. dispersed) repayment strategies tend to boost consumers’ motivation to become debt free, leading them to repay their debts more aggressively. Importantly, this motivating effect is most pronounced when the repayments are concentrated into consumers’ smallest accounts because consumers tend to infer overall progress in debt repayment from the greatest proportional balance reduction (proportion of starting balance repaid) within any one account. These findings advance our understanding of how consumers repay their debts and help pinpoint the psychological process by which debt repayment strategies affect consumers’ motivation to get out of debt.
Scopus© Citations 27
