The present paper shows that when a person has the experience of giving advice but that advice is not acted upon, there is a reduced openness to external information. We call this the “referral backfire effect”. We argue that this referral backfire effect is due to the identity threatening...

We present the referral-backfire effect, reflecting the phenomenon that consumers become less susceptible to persuasive attempts when they experienced referral failure. In two lab studies and one field study, we provide evidence for the effect and for the hypothesis that the effect occurs...