Respondents in five experiments were more likely to choose a brand when the brand name started with letters from their names than when it did not, a choice phenomenon we call "name letter branding." We propose that during a first stage an active need to self-enhance increases the positive...

Five experiments demonstrate that brands cause priming effects (i.e., behavioral effects consistent with those implied by the brand), whereas slogans cause reverse priming effects (i.e., behavioral effects opposite to those implied by the slogan). For instance, exposure to the retailer brand...

One's own emotions may influence someone else's behavior in a social interaction. If one believes this, she or he has an incentive to game emotions-to strategically modify the expression of a current emotional state-in an attempt to influence her or his counterpart. In a series of three...

The proposed model integrates two streams of research on affect by specifying how evaluative and regulatory mechanisms interact to guide behavior. Two experiments demonstrate that when no mood changes are expected, the affective evaluation mechanism guides behavior, leading to a monotonic...

How can the hedonistic assumption (i.e., people's willingness to pursue pleasure and avoid pain) be reconciled with people choosing to expose themselves to experiences known to elicit negative feelings? We assess how (1) the intensity of the negative feelings, (2) positive feelings in the...

Prior research examining how negative feelings influence aesthetic preferences (e.g., liking of different kinds of music, movies, or stories) has reported inconsistent findings. This article proposes a theoretical argument to explain when people are more likely to prefer mood-congruent to...

This study examines the effects of incidental similarity shared between a salesperson and a potential customer. We show that an incidental similarity, such as a shared birthday or birthplace, can result in a more favorable attitude and a higher intention to purchase. We argue and find that the...

Do the effects of attitude toward the ad on consumer decisions endure beyond the scenarios that characterize previous research? In examining this question, the authors focus on the persistence of ad-attitude effects as a function of the level of attention at encoding and the delay between ad...

Existing evidence for affect's influence on information processing and choice under high elaboration is mixed. In addition, affective choice is often viewed as erroneous in that it is assumed to lead to regret. We show that affect has a reliable impact on choice under high elaboration, which...