Browsing by Author "White, Katherine"
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- ItemOpen AccessAre all Outgroups Created Equal? Consumer Identity and Dissociative Influence(University of Chicago Press, 2007) White, Katherine; Dahl, Darren WPast research finds that consumers exhibit weak self-brand connections to brands associated with out-groups. We extend this work by demonstrating that products associated with dissociative reference groups have a greater impact on consumers’ negative self-brand connections, product evaluations, and choices than do products associated with out-groups more generally. In addition, both situational priming and chronic identification with one’s in-group moderate the avoidance of products associated with dissociative reference groups. Further, we demonstrate the conditions under which dissociative influence does not occur and discuss the implications of the research.
- ItemOpen AccessConceptually delineating time and money: construal level theory and the case of charitable contributions(2012) MacDonnell, Rhainnon; White, KatherineThis thesis contributes to the marketing and psychology literatures by identifying a critical distinction in the perceptual nature that time and money each assumes using Construal Level Theory (Trope and Liberman 2003). With time being more psychologically distant and thus abstract than money, the results of seven experiments demonstrate that merely drawing individuals' attention to time, or to money, can significantly alter one's mindset, intentions and behaviors. After first examining how time and money differ on a construal level, I examine how the psychological construal of each resource affects intentions to make charitable contributions of time and money as a means of delineating these two concepts. This thesis begins by presenting an overview of the literature on Construal Level Theory (CLT) and the concepts of time and money (Chapter 1), followed by a set of seven experiments. Chapter 2 examines to what extent time (vs. money) is construed abstractly (vs. concretely; Studies 1-3). Next, the match between time (vs. money) and abstract (vs. concrete) construal level is examined as an individual difference (Study 4) and within the context of a charitable message (Study 5 and 6). Thus, Chapter 3 examines to what extent individual differences in construal predict contributions of time (vs. money; Study 4), and whether construal of a charitable message as abstract (vs. concrete) and a charitable request of time (vs. money) interact to predict consumers' intentions to contribute (Study 5) and contribution behaviors (Study 6). Finally, I examine the effect of reconstruing money in more abstract (vs. concrete) terms on charitable donation intentions (Study 7). I discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as future considerations in Chapter 4. This research contributes to the charitable-giving literature by suggesting that matching based on construal level, operationalized as both an individual difference (i.e., construal preference) and a tactical approach (i.e., matching message construal with the type of ask), can improve contribution outcomes. It also distinguishes specificity of the cause from identifying the "victim" and suggests marketing managers can identify prospects and develop marketing materials in a manner consistent with their desired time-raising or fundraising objectives. Finally, the current research proposes a mechanism for these effects. Specifically, that a match between construal level and the type of resource requested creates greater processing fluency, which increases consumer perceptions of the campaign's likelihood of success and, in turn, enhances contribution intentions.
- ItemOpen AccessFive-year-olds’ Social Preferences and Cultural Inferences About Foreign-Accented Speakers(2022-09) Zepeda, Michelle; Graham, Susan; Curtin, Suzanne; Pexman, Penny; McMorris, Carly; White, KatherineTwo experiments investigated whether five-year-olds’ accent-based cultural inferences and social preferences varied depending on the information provided about the speakers, and whether they were associated with children’s linguistic experiences. In each experiment, 96 five-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of three between-subjects conditions. First, children were introduced to a native-accented speaker and a foreign-accented speaker and were taught limited information about both (i.e., the colours of their notebooks). Next, children in the baseline conditions proceeded to the test trials. In the differences minimized and differences maximized conditions, children were first taught cultural information about the speakers. In the differences minimized conditions, both speakers were associated with cultural items (i.e., food and clothing) that were familiar. In the differences maximized condition, the two speakers were associated with different cultural items (i.e., the native-accented speaker with the familiar object, foreign-accented with the less familiar object). In the cultural inference trials, children were asked which item matched the speaker’s voice (i.e., the voice of the native or foreign-accented speaker). In the social preference trials, children were asked to indicate which of the two speakers they wanted as a friend. Finally, parents completed a language and accent questionnaire. Methodological considerations were identified in Experiment 1 and changes to the design of the study were implemented in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, children’s selections did not differ as a function of the information provided to them on either the cultural inference or social preference tasks. In Experiment 2, children’s cultural inferences about foreign-accented speakers varied across the differences minimized and maximized conditions (i.e., children in the differences minimized condition selected significantly more familiar cultural items). Moreover, across all conditions, children associated familiar objects more with the native-accented speaker and unfamiliar objects with the foreign-accented speaker. In the social preference task, children in the differences maximized condition preferentially selected the native-accented speaker on an initial trial. Finally, no association emerged between children’s linguistic experiences and their accent-based cultural inferences and social preferences. Together, the results of these experiments offer insight into the conditions under which children’s accent-based inferences and social preferences are modulated.
- ItemOpen AccessSocial Comparison Theory and Deception in the Interpersonal Exchange of Consumption Information(University of Chicago Press, 2006) White, Katherine; Argo, Jennifer J; Dahl, Darren WFour experiments demonstrate that self-threatening social comparison information motivates consumers to lie. Factors related to self-threat, including relevance of the social comparison target (i.e., the importance of the comparison person), comparison discrepancy (i.e., the magnitude of the performance difference), comparison direction (i.e., whether one performs better or worse), nature of the information (i.e., whether the comparison is social or objective), and perceived attainability (i.e., the possibility of achieving the compared performance), influenced consumers' willingness to engage in deception. Results extend social comparison theory by demonstrating that comparisons that threaten public and private selves have implications for lying behaviors.
- ItemOpen AccessVowel Space, Variability, and Lexical Context in Infant Speech Perception(2020-06-29) Burkinshaw, Kelly D.; Curtin, Suzanne; Rose, Yvan; George, Angela; White, Katherine; Winters, Stephen J.Infant-directed speech (IDS) differs from adult-directed speech (ADS) in a number of phonetic dimensions, including mean pitch, pitch range, and speech rate (Fernald et al., 1989). Studies also find that the vowel space, as defined by centroids of the first and second formants for point vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/, is expanded in IDS as compared to ADS (e.g. Burnham et al., 2002; Kuhl et al., 1997; Liu et al., 2003). This expansion, when found in caregivers’ speech, is correlated with improved infant performance on discrimination tasks (Liu et al., 2003) and vocabulary tests (Hartman et al., 2017). Studies also find that individual vowels in IDS are more variable than in ADS, leading to reduced distances between vowel categories in the vowel space (e.g. Cristia & Seidl, 2014; McMurray et al., 2013). In Chapter 2, I explore the speech input of infants learning their first language in terms of the properties of IDS and ADS. I analyze naturalistic speech productions by mothers of 7-month-old or 15-month-old infants to determine whether vowel space expansion in IDS leads to easier categorization of vowels despite increases in variability of individual vowels, and whether this pattern changes depending on addressee age. In Chapter 3, I explore lexical context as a mechanism by which infants might interpret ambiguous vowels in their speech environment. Studies find that adults’ interpretation of ambiguous sounds can be biased by their lexical context, leading to shifted perception of ambiguous sounds outside of that lexical context (e.g. Norris et al., 2003). I expose infants to vowels that are perceptually ambiguous between /i/ and /ɪ/, in familiar words which are intended to bias interpretation of those sounds, in order to determine whether infants can use context as a means to resolve variability in IDS. I find that statistically speaking, there is no advantage of IDS vowels in terms of their categorizability, and that infants do not show a shift in their perception of ambiguous vowels based on context. I discuss the implications of these findings and future directions that could be taken to illuminate them in Chapter 4.