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Do moniker maladies afflict name letter brands? A dual process theory of name letter branding and avoidance effects
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 642–646
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Do moniker maladies afflict name letter brands? A dual process theory of name letter branding and avoidance effects Luke Kachersky ⁎ Fordham University Schools of Business, 441 East Fordham Road, Faber Hall-450, Bronx, NY 10458, United States
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Article history: Received 27 August 2010 Revised 3 December 2010 Available online 9 December 2010 Keywords: Dual process theories Self concept Self motives Self-enhancement Self-protection Implicit egotism
Introduction What do Dove chocolate, Dennis, Dentists, and Denver have in common? Aside from simply sharing the same first initial, women named Denise have a greater than chance propensity to choose all these things, an outcome of implicit egotism (the subconscious tendency to prefer things that resemble oneself; (Pelham, Carvallo, & Jones, 2005)) and its consumption counterpart, name letter branding (the subconscious tendency to prefer brand names that include one's own name letters; Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2005). Paradoxically, these effects have been shown to persist as “moniker maladies” in performance outcomes, making Denise more likely than people named Alice to earn D grades (Nelson & Simmons, 2007). This paradox is unsettling–suggesting that humankind is akin to Pavlov's dogs, proverbially salivating at self-resembling stimuli regardless of valence–and has prompted controversy (McCullough & McWilliams, 2010). Applied to name letter branding, would this mean that people are less able to resist even unwelcome marketing that uses the tactic? This research explores the influence of a heretofore-unstudied motive in this research stream. Building off the literature on selfprotection (e.g., Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1986), this research proposes that when name letter brands are attached to negative products, people might subconsciously reject the brand, an effect called name letter avoidance. More important, a dual-process explanation accounting for ⁎ Fax: + 1 718 817 5544. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0022-1031/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.005
both name letter branding and avoidance is tested. Findings indicate that name letter branding operates automatically, while name letter avoidance is situationally triggered and requires mental resources. Fortunately, it does appear that consumers can resist the Pavlovian tendencies associated with their name letters. Conceptual framework Implicit egotism is the proposition that people's unconscious positive self-evaluations create a latent tendency to gravitate toward things that resemble oneself. Pelham and colleagues (Jones, Pelham, & Mirenberg, 2002; Jones, Pelham, Carvallo, & Mirenberg, 2004; Pelham, Mirenberg, & Jones, 2002; Pelham, Carvallo, DeHart, & Jones, 2003) have shown that people have greater than chance tendencies to live in cities and states, and choose professions and romantic partners with names that resemble their own. Brendl et al. (2005) showed that consumers prefer products with brand names that resemble their own name, a phenomenon coined name letter branding. Moreover, Brendl et al. (2005) as well as Jones et al. (2002, 2004) demonstrated that implicit egotism is strengthened following ego threat, a manifestation of self-enhancement that speaks to the notion that self-concept underlies these effects. Yet people can be motivated to maintain their self-concepts in alternative ways. The most complementary motive is self-protection, or the motive to avoid damage to one's self-concept. People often attempt to manage their self-concepts by managing their associations — self-enhancing by strengthening associations with targets that have positive implications for self-concept (Cialdini et al., 1976) and self-protecting by diminishing associations that have negative implications (Snyder et al., 1986). As an example of the latter, people distance themselves from similar others who have negative traits people fear in themselves (Schimel, Greenberg, Pysczynski, O'Mahen, & Arndt, 2000). Similarly, if an association is established with a negative target via a shared name letter, then people should be motivated to distance themselves from the target. So in contrast to name letter branding, when one's name letter appears in the brand name of a negatively valenced product one should be motivated to distance themselves from it, what we call name letter avoidance. How might such an effect operate? To understand the process behind name letter avoidance, one must understand the process of implicit egotism and, hence, name letter branding. The experimental work on implicit egotism suggests that it is fundamentally associative and automatic. It has been shown to operate by subliminal association (Jones et al., 2004), in the absence of the motive to self-enhance (Brendl et al., 2005), and in contrast to
L. Kachersky / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 642–646
conscious motives to avoid name letters (Nelson & Simmons, 2007). While self-enhancement can strengthen the effect, it does not appear to be a necessary condition. Then how might this automatic process interface with the proposed motivated process of name letter avoidance? The heuristic–systematic model (HSM; Chaiken, 1980) and recent findings on self-protection lend insight. The HSM argues that appraisals result from both less thoughtful (i.e. heuristic) and more thoughtful (i.e. systematic) processes, the latter of which require commensurate cognitive resources. In the HSM the dominant mode of processing for a given appraisal depends on an individual's active motive. When individuals are motivated to protect their selfdefinitional beliefs, heuristic cues that are incongruent with one's self-beliefs tend to be processed systematically (Giner-Sorolla & Chaiken, 1997). Name letters are non-central, heuristic cues (Brendl et al., 2005). Thus, when name letters appear with objects that may be inconsistent with self-beliefs, such as in the brand name of a negative product, there should be an increased likelihood of systematic processing, which requires cognitive resources, to counter any automatic valence transfer. Though cognitively taxing, systematic processing in the service of self-protection need not reach awareness. Murray et al. (2008) demonstrated that self-protection can be triggered non-consciously, but that it invokes executive control to resolve potential self-threats. In other words, potential ego threats can be recognized subconsciously without mental capacity, but resolving the threat requires such resources. In two of their studies the motive to self-protect was manipulated while some participants' capacity for executive control was usurped via a cognitive load manipulation. Those participants failed to self-protect. This is consistent with prior work demonstrating the role of executive strength in usurping automatic effects (Gilbert, 1989; Muraven & Baumesiter, 2000). In sum, though the resolution of self-protection proposed here, name letter avoidance, should also require mental resources, the contents of that process are unlikely to reach awareness (e.g., Wilson, 2002). That is, while feeling the urge to self-protect people are not likely to notice that it is prompted by the pairing of their name letters with negative stimuli and resolved by the rejection of that association. This suggests a dual process account of name letter branding and name letter avoidance. When name letters appear in the brand names of safe products, an automatic transfer of valence occurs undisturbed. However, when name letters appear in the brand names of negative products, self-protection should activate, triggering systematic processing that utilizes executive control. Notably, the contexts studied in Nelson & Simmons (2007), such as taking an exam, require intense focus and thus tax the resources required for self-protection; this would explain why preferences for name lettered outcomes persisted even when negative. In short, the proposed model casts name letter branding as an automatic effect that, given the requisite mental resources, can be systematically reversed in the service of selfprotection.
Experiment 1 Method Participants and design Two hundred nine undergraduates at a large North Eastern university participated for either a cash payment or partial course credit. Like Brendl et al. (2005), participants were asked to assign brand names to products, and one of the name options for products of the targeted valence included the first three letters of the participant's own name. A cognitive load manipulation (Gilbert & Osborne, 1989) was used to parse the associative and motivated components of the framework. This experiment employed a 2 (cognitive load: high, and low) × 2 (product valence: positive, and negative) mixed design, with
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cognitive load manipulated between subjects and product valence manipulated within subjects. Stimuli and pretest To select the target products for the main experiment, twenty-six undergraduates from the same university participated in a pretest in exchange for cash payment. Participants viewed pictures of thirty-two different products with no brand identifiers, and rated the valence of each (Förster, 2004). A flat-screen television was the most positively rated (M = 6.24) while a rifle was the most negatively rated (M = 2.80). These were used as the target positive and target negative products, respectively. Procedure Participants sat at individual, PC-equipped carrels in a laboratory. Above each was a shelf that contained a personalized (unbeknownst to the participant) “Brand Assignment List”. This list contained two brand name choices for each of twelve products. The product types were not named on the list, but were numbered 1–12. In verbal instructions, participants were told that the study would be primarily computer-based, but that they would use the “Brand Assignment List” when instructed. Until instructed, the sheet was to remain on the shelf. Participants were first told that they would be asked to assign brand names to a series of products, similar to Brendl et al. (2005). Before they continued, they were asked to hold a number in memory while they completed the brand assignment task. Participants in the high cognitive load condition were asked to hold an eight-digit number in memory, while participants in the low cognitive load condition were asked to hold a one-digit number in memory (Gilbert & Osborne, 1989). They then viewed each of the 12 products on their computer screens, and indicated their brand name choice for each on the “Brand Assignment List”. Each product appeared on the screen with a number, and participants were asked to circle their brand name choice for the corresponding number on the “Brand Assignment List”. The target products appeared in positions two and eleven, and the order of the television and rifle was counterbalanced. Presentation order had no effect on the results and is not discussed further. For the television, the brand name choices were XXXyvia, where XXX represents the first three letters of the participant's own name for the name letter brand (NL) option and the first three letters of a fellow participant's name for the non-name letter brand (NNL) option. Similarly, the rifle brand name choices were XXXylok. To minimize differences due to the attractiveness of any particular letter combination, participants were run in pairs such that each pair saw the same set of brand name choices (Brendl et al., 2005). Participants finished the study on the computer. To check the cognitive load manipulation, participants were asked to type in the number they were asked to memorize. Five participants failed to recall their number and, following Gilbert & Osborne (1989), were removed from the analysis. In order to assess any conscious awareness of name letters, participants then were asked several open-ended questions (Brendl et al., 2005; Jones et al., 2004). Less than 5% of participants recognized the presence of their name letters (n = 10), and they were also excluded, yielding 194 observations for each level of product valence. Finally, to check the valence manipulation participants rated each product on a seven-point scale (Förster, 2004), with the rifle being rated below the neutral point (M = 2.55; t(193) = −11.74, p b .001) and the television above the neutral point (M = 5.79; t(193) = 21.62, p b .001). Results and discussion If one's name letters have no influence on brand name choice, then choice rates should be split evenly between name letter (NL) brands and non-name letter (NNL) brands (Brendl et al., 2005). Therefore,
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Experiment 2
Fig. 1. Rates of name letter brand choice by product valence and cognitive load, Experiment 1.
analyses followed Jones et al. (2004) and Brendl et al. (2005), and the following chi-square tests compare the observed rate of choosing a NL brand against the chance rate of 50%. As predicted, under high cognitive load participants tended to choose NL brand names over NNL brand names for both the television (NNL = 59, NNNL = 39; χ2 (1, n = 98) = 4.08, p b .05) and the rifle (NNL = 59, NNNL = 39; χ2 (1, n = 98) = 4.08, p b .05).1 However, as also predicted, participants in the low load condition avoided NL brand names for the rifle (NNL = 38, NNNL = 58; χ2(1, n = 96) = 4.17, p b .05), but preferred NL brand names for the television (NNL = 61, NNNL = 35; χ2(1, n = 96) = 7.04, p b .01). These results are depicted in Fig. 1. As a more comprehensive means of analysis, logistic regression was also employed, with choice of the name letter brand as the key dependent variable, coded as “0” for non-name letter choice and “1” for name letter choice. The independent variables were (i) product, coded as “0” for the rifle and “1” for the television, (ii) cognitive load, coded as “0” for low and “1” for high, and (iii) their interaction. Results revealed a significant two-way interaction between product valence and cognitive load (β = −.979, p b .05). The Johnson–Neyman approach was used to detect and explain the conditional effect of cognitive load at each level of product valence (Aiken & West, 1991). As expected, for the television the cognitive load manipulation exerted no influence (β = −.142, p = .63). However, for the rifle, high (vs. low) cognitive load lead to an increased likelihood of choosing the name letter brand (β = .837, p b .01). Prior work suggested that implicit egotism may be automatic and associative, but the present results give greater weight to that suggestion. Jones et al. (2004) subliminally conditioned a neutral number to take on the positive valence of one's name letters, but lacked a comparison to motivated behavior. Nelson and Simmons (2007) overcame this by pitting name letter preferences against motives to perform well in various tasks. However, the tasks they studied do not give people the requisite resources to systematically override implicit egotism. By manipulating cognitive load in the present study, associative effects were parsed from motivated effects. In the absence of motivational factors name letter branding dominates, but when people are able to self-protect, name letter avoidance occurs. This is consistent with prior work in which self-protection was primed subconsciously, but only manifested when individuals had the cognitive capacity to do so (Murray, Derrick, Leder, & Holmes, 2008).
1 The number of NL and NNL choices for the television and the rifle were exactly the same.
While the results of Experiment 1 are consistent with the proposed theory, the study was not without issue. First, choosing names for products may not reflect consumers' decision-making in the marketplace. Second, from an internal validity perspective, while the focal products in Experiment 1 were pretested to be different on valence, they are also different on a number of other factors that introduce potential confounds. Experiment 2 was designed with these two interrelated issues in mind. On the surface, to reflect marketplace decision-making while preserving internal validity it might seem sensible to have consumers choose between two identical products that differ only in their brand names. This, however, would make the name letter manipulation obvious and threaten internal validity. Thus, the choice paradigm was dismissed in favor of one in which the target product could indeed be held constant across experimental conditions without exposing the name letter treatment. Moreover, in this way product valence could be manipulated more cleanly and precisely. Specifically, while the same product was used in each condition of Experiment 2, its valence was manipulated via a bogus product review. Further, Experiment 2 sought further process evidence and employed an outcome, attitude toward the brand, which was reflective of the marketplace without introducing the threats to internal validity that a choice paradigm can bring about in this context. To triangulate the process, a measure of self-protection was added. To add external validity over the name choice paradigm employed in Experiment 1, an evaluative outcome was measured. Prior studies demonstrated the positive influence of name letters in evaluations (Jones et al., 2004), but could the same be said for their negative influence? While distancing is typically executed through denial, rejection, or inhibition of association, in certain contexts such tactics are unavailable. Eidelman and Biernat (2003) demonstrated that derogation can be used as a distancing mechanism in such cases, as when an individual is motivated to distance oneself from in-group members. Analogously, if name letters are a grouping characteristic, then when evaluating negatively valenced name lettered products in isolation (vs. choosing between name letter and non-name letter brands), it follows that derogation might be used to create psychological distance. In sum, an evaluative outcome would be grounded in theory while both preserving the level of internal validity and exceeding the level of external validity of the choice paradigm used in Experiment 1. Method Participants and design One hundred forty-three undergraduates at a large North Eastern university (different from Experiment 1) participated for a cash payment. Experiment 2 employed a 2 (brand name: name letter, and non-name letter) × 2 (product valence: positive, and negative) × 2 (cognitive load: high, and low) between participants design. Participants were shown a picture of a product, its brand name, and a bogus “quick review,” then asked to indicate their attitude toward the brand. Stimuli The target product was an ultra-portable camcorder. A photo of the camcorder was presented along with a price of $80, the brand name, and a “quick review.” Just like Experiment 1, the brand name of the camcorder was constructed as XXXyciné, where XXX represents either the first three letters of the participant's own name or the first three letters of a fellow participant's name; again, participants were run in pairs with each pair seeing the same brand name in order to minimize differences due to the attractiveness of any particular letter combination.
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The bogus “quick review,” used to manipulate valence, consisted of a rating out of five stars and a brief bulleted list of product pros (e.g., long battery life) and cons (e.g., poor usability) based on actual reviews from products in this category. The “quick review” was designed so that participants could make quick assessments; they could easily eye the star rating and weigh the balance between the number of pros and cons. In the negative product valence condition, the star rating was one out of five, with six cons and two pros. In the positive product valence condition, the star rating was four out of five, with two cons and six pros. Procedure Participants were instructed that they were about to complete a questionnaire about product offers. Following an introduction, participants received the cognitive load manipulation just as in Experiment 1. After seeing the number for as long as they needed, participants folded that page of the questionnaire completely over so that it could not be seen. The next page included the critical task. Participants were asked to imagine that they were shopping for an ultra-portable camcorder and came across the one shown, which appeared as described according to their randomly assigned experimental condition. After reviewing the stimuli, participants indicated their conscious motive to self-protect, perceived product valence, and attitude toward the brand. To measure compliance with the cognitive load manipulation, participants were asked to write down the number they had memorized. Finally, participants responded to the same battery of questions from Experiment 1 regarding hypothesis awareness. Measures The cognitive load manipulation was checked by participants' ability to recall their number. Two participants in the high cognitive load conditions failed to recall their number and were eliminated from analysis (Gilbert and Osborne, 1989). Less than 5% of total participants recognized the presence of their name letters (n = 7), and following prior work they were also excluded, yielding 134 usable observations. The valence manipulation was checked just as in Experiment 1, with those in the negative valence condition rating the camcorder below the seven-point scale neutral point (M = 2.13; t(66) = −14.64, p b .001) and those in the positive valence condition rating the camcorder above the neutral point (M = 4.61; t(66) = 4.07, p b .001). Motive to self-protect was measured with a single Likertscale adapted from Murray et al. (2008) — “When I think about owning this product, I think most about the bad things that might happen,” (M = 4.03). Finally, attitude toward the brand was measured on two seven-point semantic differentials including “unfavorable/ favorable” and “bad/good;” the measures demonstrated internal consistency (r = .94) and were averaged together to form a brand attitude index (M = 3.32).
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not in the presence of a complementary, explicit causal factor — valence. This is consistent with prior studies in which participants were subconsciously primed to self-protect, did not report increased concerns with self-protection on explicit measures, but ultimately made judgments in the service of self-protection (Murray et al., 2008). The key here is that both under high and low cognitive load, NL participants were more concerned with self-protection when confronted with negative valence than with positive valence (high load: M NEG = 5.28 vs. M POS = 3.53; t(33) = 2.81, p b .01; low load: MNEG = 5.13 vs. MPOS = 2.25; t(30) = 4.90, p b .001). In other words, cognitive load did not usurp the motive to self-protect; but did it usurp the ability to resolve the conflict in the evaluations of name letter brands? Attitude toward the brand was analyzed using ANOVA with brand name, product valence, and cognitive load as independent factors. The expectation was that under high cognitive load there would be more positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands for both positive and negative valence, while under low cognitive load there should be more positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands with positive valence, but less positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands with negative valence. This three-way prediction was confirmed (F (1, 126) = 7.06, p b .05, η2 = .032). A graph of the means is presented in Fig. 2. Follow up comparisons revealed that the attitude toward the NL brand was less favorable than attitude toward the NNL brand under low cognitive load with negative product valence (MNL = 1.75 vs. MNNL = 2.78, t(30) = − 2.83, p b .01), but the opposite pattern emerged in all other NL-NNL brand attitude comparisons: high cognitive load, negative product valence (MNL = 2.19 vs. MNNL = 1.59, t(33) = 2.56, p b .05); low load, positive valence (MNL = 5.31 vs. MNNL = 4.50, t(30) = 2.23, p b .05); and high load, positive valence (MNL = 4.74 vs. MNNL = 3.78, t(33) = 2.12, p b .05). The predictions are supported. Self-protection was primed subconsciously, and cognitive resources influenced the ability of participants to resolve the potential ego threat, a pattern in harmony with Murray et al. (2008). Additionally, consistent with Eidelman and Biernat (2003), because participants had no other means to distance (e.g., by choosing something different) they derogated the NL brand when valence was negative and they had the requisite cognitive resources. General discussion The present study makes important contributions to theory. Name letter avoidance adds an additional piece to the puzzle of how motivation fits into implicit preferences for self-resemblance. Prior research showed
Results and discussion Motive to self-protect was analyzed using ANOVA with brand name, product valence, and cognitive load as independent factors. The expectation was that when name letters were paired with a positively (vs. negatively) valenced product, participants would be more concerned with self-protection. Results revealed a main effect of valence (F(1, 126) = 64.44, p b .001, η2 = .338) with no other significant main effects or interactions (all p's N .08). Participants in the negative valence conditions were more concerned with selfprotection than participants in the positive valence conditions (MNEG = 5.25 vs. MPOS = 2.88; t(132) = 8.01, p b .001), but no incremental impact of name letters was revealed. Upon reflection and investigation, this makes sense. The incremental self-protection invoked by the addition of name letters to negative valence occurs implicitly, and so the explicit measure did not pick it up, particularly
Fig. 2. Mean brand attitudes as a function of brand name, product valence, and cognitive load, Experiment 2.
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that people gravitate toward others, places, professions, and products that resemble themselves even in the most superficial way, thus causing implicit egotism and name letter branding (Brendl et al., 2005; Pelham et al., 2005). Others have shown that the motive to self-enhance strengthens the effect (Jones et al., 2004). This article demonstrates that an additional part of self-concept maintenance, self-protection, can cause people to distance from name lettered targets, but only when mental resources are available. In highlighting this, it becomes clear that moniker maladies (Nelson & Simmons, 2007) are not as pervasive as initially suggested, lending additional credence to recent refutations (McCullough & McWilliams 2010). The present findings have implications for recent findings on mechanisms that underpin preferences for self-associated stimuli. Self-anchoring, a process in which feelings about oneself automatically transfer to chosen, but not to rejected, objects (Gawronski, Bodenhausen, & Becker, 2007), is consistent with the positive effect of name letter branding observed here. But what does name letter avoidance say about self-anchoring? In one of four experiments, Gawronski et al. (2007) observed not only a lack of such transfer, but also derogation of objects one previously rejected. They speculate that the derogation is due to a negatively valenced “not me” tag associated with rejected objects. Name letter avoidance would appear to be complementary to such a process. The self-anchoring explanation accounts for derogation of neutral objects that have been already cleanly rejected from self-association. In contrast, name letter avoidance accounts for derogation of negative objects that are selfassociated via shared name letters. It would be fruitful for further research to unite these complementary effects under a single rubric. Such a rubric might be found in a comparison of self-enhancement and self-protection within the broader context of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Observers have noted that selfenhancement is typically pursued following an ego threat, while selfprotection is pursued in anticipation of an ego threat (Blaine & Crocker, 1993; Sommer, 2001). This is consistent with the present results and prior work on implicit egotism. Researchers have been able to boost preference for name lettered targets by manipulating ego-threat prior to name letter target evaluation, a manifestation of self-enhancement (e.g., Jones et al., 2004). More generally, schema-based self-enhancement does not appear to require cognitive resources (Spencer et al., 1998). In contrast, the present results showed that when participants were confronted with the potential association with a negative target, self-protection manifested; that is, the association was diminished to prevent damage from happening to one's self-concept in the first place. Unlike self-enhancement, self-protection required cognitive resources to executively resolve the potential threat. Returning to self-anchoring, then, the difference between derogation of the name letter avoidance variety and derogation based on self-anchoring may be that the former is motivated by self-protection while the latter may be motivated by self-enhancement. The present research demonstrated that negatively valenced targets provoke self-protective outcomes when paired with one's own name letters. Future research should explore other drivers of self-protection and the influence of other self motives on name letter preferences. In the former domain, for example, unfamiliar targets may introduce uncertainty, which has been tied to self-protection (Josephs, Larrick, Steele, & Nisbett, 1992). Therefore, unfamiliar (vs. familiar) targets might be more likely to induce name letter avoidance. In an example of the latter domain, sometimes people seek to verify their shortcomings, actively seeking negative feedback (Leary, 2007). How might this motive, self-verification, play into preferences for name letter brands? The answers to such questions
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Do moniker maladies afflict name letter brands? A dual process theory of name letter branding and avoidance effects Luke Kachersky ⁎ Fordham University Schools of Business, 441 East Fordham Road, Faber Hall-450, Bronx, NY 10458, United States
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Article history: Received 27 August 2010 Revised 3 December 2010 Available online 9 December 2010 Keywords: Dual process theories Self concept Self motives Self-enhancement Self-protection Implicit egotism
Introduction What do Dove chocolate, Dennis, Dentists, and Denver have in common? Aside from simply sharing the same first initial, women named Denise have a greater than chance propensity to choose all these things, an outcome of implicit egotism (the subconscious tendency to prefer things that resemble oneself; (Pelham, Carvallo, & Jones, 2005)) and its consumption counterpart, name letter branding (the subconscious tendency to prefer brand names that include one's own name letters; Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2005). Paradoxically, these effects have been shown to persist as “moniker maladies” in performance outcomes, making Denise more likely than people named Alice to earn D grades (Nelson & Simmons, 2007). This paradox is unsettling–suggesting that humankind is akin to Pavlov's dogs, proverbially salivating at self-resembling stimuli regardless of valence–and has prompted controversy (McCullough & McWilliams, 2010). Applied to name letter branding, would this mean that people are less able to resist even unwelcome marketing that uses the tactic? This research explores the influence of a heretofore-unstudied motive in this research stream. Building off the literature on selfprotection (e.g., Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1986), this research proposes that when name letter brands are attached to negative products, people might subconsciously reject the brand, an effect called name letter avoidance. More important, a dual-process explanation accounting for ⁎ Fax: + 1 718 817 5544. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0022-1031/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.005
both name letter branding and avoidance is tested. Findings indicate that name letter branding operates automatically, while name letter avoidance is situationally triggered and requires mental resources. Fortunately, it does appear that consumers can resist the Pavlovian tendencies associated with their name letters. Conceptual framework Implicit egotism is the proposition that people's unconscious positive self-evaluations create a latent tendency to gravitate toward things that resemble oneself. Pelham and colleagues (Jones, Pelham, & Mirenberg, 2002; Jones, Pelham, Carvallo, & Mirenberg, 2004; Pelham, Mirenberg, & Jones, 2002; Pelham, Carvallo, DeHart, & Jones, 2003) have shown that people have greater than chance tendencies to live in cities and states, and choose professions and romantic partners with names that resemble their own. Brendl et al. (2005) showed that consumers prefer products with brand names that resemble their own name, a phenomenon coined name letter branding. Moreover, Brendl et al. (2005) as well as Jones et al. (2002, 2004) demonstrated that implicit egotism is strengthened following ego threat, a manifestation of self-enhancement that speaks to the notion that self-concept underlies these effects. Yet people can be motivated to maintain their self-concepts in alternative ways. The most complementary motive is self-protection, or the motive to avoid damage to one's self-concept. People often attempt to manage their self-concepts by managing their associations — self-enhancing by strengthening associations with targets that have positive implications for self-concept (Cialdini et al., 1976) and self-protecting by diminishing associations that have negative implications (Snyder et al., 1986). As an example of the latter, people distance themselves from similar others who have negative traits people fear in themselves (Schimel, Greenberg, Pysczynski, O'Mahen, & Arndt, 2000). Similarly, if an association is established with a negative target via a shared name letter, then people should be motivated to distance themselves from the target. So in contrast to name letter branding, when one's name letter appears in the brand name of a negatively valenced product one should be motivated to distance themselves from it, what we call name letter avoidance. How might such an effect operate? To understand the process behind name letter avoidance, one must understand the process of implicit egotism and, hence, name letter branding. The experimental work on implicit egotism suggests that it is fundamentally associative and automatic. It has been shown to operate by subliminal association (Jones et al., 2004), in the absence of the motive to self-enhance (Brendl et al., 2005), and in contrast to
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conscious motives to avoid name letters (Nelson & Simmons, 2007). While self-enhancement can strengthen the effect, it does not appear to be a necessary condition. Then how might this automatic process interface with the proposed motivated process of name letter avoidance? The heuristic–systematic model (HSM; Chaiken, 1980) and recent findings on self-protection lend insight. The HSM argues that appraisals result from both less thoughtful (i.e. heuristic) and more thoughtful (i.e. systematic) processes, the latter of which require commensurate cognitive resources. In the HSM the dominant mode of processing for a given appraisal depends on an individual's active motive. When individuals are motivated to protect their selfdefinitional beliefs, heuristic cues that are incongruent with one's self-beliefs tend to be processed systematically (Giner-Sorolla & Chaiken, 1997). Name letters are non-central, heuristic cues (Brendl et al., 2005). Thus, when name letters appear with objects that may be inconsistent with self-beliefs, such as in the brand name of a negative product, there should be an increased likelihood of systematic processing, which requires cognitive resources, to counter any automatic valence transfer. Though cognitively taxing, systematic processing in the service of self-protection need not reach awareness. Murray et al. (2008) demonstrated that self-protection can be triggered non-consciously, but that it invokes executive control to resolve potential self-threats. In other words, potential ego threats can be recognized subconsciously without mental capacity, but resolving the threat requires such resources. In two of their studies the motive to self-protect was manipulated while some participants' capacity for executive control was usurped via a cognitive load manipulation. Those participants failed to self-protect. This is consistent with prior work demonstrating the role of executive strength in usurping automatic effects (Gilbert, 1989; Muraven & Baumesiter, 2000). In sum, though the resolution of self-protection proposed here, name letter avoidance, should also require mental resources, the contents of that process are unlikely to reach awareness (e.g., Wilson, 2002). That is, while feeling the urge to self-protect people are not likely to notice that it is prompted by the pairing of their name letters with negative stimuli and resolved by the rejection of that association. This suggests a dual process account of name letter branding and name letter avoidance. When name letters appear in the brand names of safe products, an automatic transfer of valence occurs undisturbed. However, when name letters appear in the brand names of negative products, self-protection should activate, triggering systematic processing that utilizes executive control. Notably, the contexts studied in Nelson & Simmons (2007), such as taking an exam, require intense focus and thus tax the resources required for self-protection; this would explain why preferences for name lettered outcomes persisted even when negative. In short, the proposed model casts name letter branding as an automatic effect that, given the requisite mental resources, can be systematically reversed in the service of selfprotection.
Experiment 1 Method Participants and design Two hundred nine undergraduates at a large North Eastern university participated for either a cash payment or partial course credit. Like Brendl et al. (2005), participants were asked to assign brand names to products, and one of the name options for products of the targeted valence included the first three letters of the participant's own name. A cognitive load manipulation (Gilbert & Osborne, 1989) was used to parse the associative and motivated components of the framework. This experiment employed a 2 (cognitive load: high, and low) × 2 (product valence: positive, and negative) mixed design, with
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cognitive load manipulated between subjects and product valence manipulated within subjects. Stimuli and pretest To select the target products for the main experiment, twenty-six undergraduates from the same university participated in a pretest in exchange for cash payment. Participants viewed pictures of thirty-two different products with no brand identifiers, and rated the valence of each (Förster, 2004). A flat-screen television was the most positively rated (M = 6.24) while a rifle was the most negatively rated (M = 2.80). These were used as the target positive and target negative products, respectively. Procedure Participants sat at individual, PC-equipped carrels in a laboratory. Above each was a shelf that contained a personalized (unbeknownst to the participant) “Brand Assignment List”. This list contained two brand name choices for each of twelve products. The product types were not named on the list, but were numbered 1–12. In verbal instructions, participants were told that the study would be primarily computer-based, but that they would use the “Brand Assignment List” when instructed. Until instructed, the sheet was to remain on the shelf. Participants were first told that they would be asked to assign brand names to a series of products, similar to Brendl et al. (2005). Before they continued, they were asked to hold a number in memory while they completed the brand assignment task. Participants in the high cognitive load condition were asked to hold an eight-digit number in memory, while participants in the low cognitive load condition were asked to hold a one-digit number in memory (Gilbert & Osborne, 1989). They then viewed each of the 12 products on their computer screens, and indicated their brand name choice for each on the “Brand Assignment List”. Each product appeared on the screen with a number, and participants were asked to circle their brand name choice for the corresponding number on the “Brand Assignment List”. The target products appeared in positions two and eleven, and the order of the television and rifle was counterbalanced. Presentation order had no effect on the results and is not discussed further. For the television, the brand name choices were XXXyvia, where XXX represents the first three letters of the participant's own name for the name letter brand (NL) option and the first three letters of a fellow participant's name for the non-name letter brand (NNL) option. Similarly, the rifle brand name choices were XXXylok. To minimize differences due to the attractiveness of any particular letter combination, participants were run in pairs such that each pair saw the same set of brand name choices (Brendl et al., 2005). Participants finished the study on the computer. To check the cognitive load manipulation, participants were asked to type in the number they were asked to memorize. Five participants failed to recall their number and, following Gilbert & Osborne (1989), were removed from the analysis. In order to assess any conscious awareness of name letters, participants then were asked several open-ended questions (Brendl et al., 2005; Jones et al., 2004). Less than 5% of participants recognized the presence of their name letters (n = 10), and they were also excluded, yielding 194 observations for each level of product valence. Finally, to check the valence manipulation participants rated each product on a seven-point scale (Förster, 2004), with the rifle being rated below the neutral point (M = 2.55; t(193) = −11.74, p b .001) and the television above the neutral point (M = 5.79; t(193) = 21.62, p b .001). Results and discussion If one's name letters have no influence on brand name choice, then choice rates should be split evenly between name letter (NL) brands and non-name letter (NNL) brands (Brendl et al., 2005). Therefore,
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Experiment 2
Fig. 1. Rates of name letter brand choice by product valence and cognitive load, Experiment 1.
analyses followed Jones et al. (2004) and Brendl et al. (2005), and the following chi-square tests compare the observed rate of choosing a NL brand against the chance rate of 50%. As predicted, under high cognitive load participants tended to choose NL brand names over NNL brand names for both the television (NNL = 59, NNNL = 39; χ2 (1, n = 98) = 4.08, p b .05) and the rifle (NNL = 59, NNNL = 39; χ2 (1, n = 98) = 4.08, p b .05).1 However, as also predicted, participants in the low load condition avoided NL brand names for the rifle (NNL = 38, NNNL = 58; χ2(1, n = 96) = 4.17, p b .05), but preferred NL brand names for the television (NNL = 61, NNNL = 35; χ2(1, n = 96) = 7.04, p b .01). These results are depicted in Fig. 1. As a more comprehensive means of analysis, logistic regression was also employed, with choice of the name letter brand as the key dependent variable, coded as “0” for non-name letter choice and “1” for name letter choice. The independent variables were (i) product, coded as “0” for the rifle and “1” for the television, (ii) cognitive load, coded as “0” for low and “1” for high, and (iii) their interaction. Results revealed a significant two-way interaction between product valence and cognitive load (β = −.979, p b .05). The Johnson–Neyman approach was used to detect and explain the conditional effect of cognitive load at each level of product valence (Aiken & West, 1991). As expected, for the television the cognitive load manipulation exerted no influence (β = −.142, p = .63). However, for the rifle, high (vs. low) cognitive load lead to an increased likelihood of choosing the name letter brand (β = .837, p b .01). Prior work suggested that implicit egotism may be automatic and associative, but the present results give greater weight to that suggestion. Jones et al. (2004) subliminally conditioned a neutral number to take on the positive valence of one's name letters, but lacked a comparison to motivated behavior. Nelson and Simmons (2007) overcame this by pitting name letter preferences against motives to perform well in various tasks. However, the tasks they studied do not give people the requisite resources to systematically override implicit egotism. By manipulating cognitive load in the present study, associative effects were parsed from motivated effects. In the absence of motivational factors name letter branding dominates, but when people are able to self-protect, name letter avoidance occurs. This is consistent with prior work in which self-protection was primed subconsciously, but only manifested when individuals had the cognitive capacity to do so (Murray, Derrick, Leder, & Holmes, 2008).
1 The number of NL and NNL choices for the television and the rifle were exactly the same.
While the results of Experiment 1 are consistent with the proposed theory, the study was not without issue. First, choosing names for products may not reflect consumers' decision-making in the marketplace. Second, from an internal validity perspective, while the focal products in Experiment 1 were pretested to be different on valence, they are also different on a number of other factors that introduce potential confounds. Experiment 2 was designed with these two interrelated issues in mind. On the surface, to reflect marketplace decision-making while preserving internal validity it might seem sensible to have consumers choose between two identical products that differ only in their brand names. This, however, would make the name letter manipulation obvious and threaten internal validity. Thus, the choice paradigm was dismissed in favor of one in which the target product could indeed be held constant across experimental conditions without exposing the name letter treatment. Moreover, in this way product valence could be manipulated more cleanly and precisely. Specifically, while the same product was used in each condition of Experiment 2, its valence was manipulated via a bogus product review. Further, Experiment 2 sought further process evidence and employed an outcome, attitude toward the brand, which was reflective of the marketplace without introducing the threats to internal validity that a choice paradigm can bring about in this context. To triangulate the process, a measure of self-protection was added. To add external validity over the name choice paradigm employed in Experiment 1, an evaluative outcome was measured. Prior studies demonstrated the positive influence of name letters in evaluations (Jones et al., 2004), but could the same be said for their negative influence? While distancing is typically executed through denial, rejection, or inhibition of association, in certain contexts such tactics are unavailable. Eidelman and Biernat (2003) demonstrated that derogation can be used as a distancing mechanism in such cases, as when an individual is motivated to distance oneself from in-group members. Analogously, if name letters are a grouping characteristic, then when evaluating negatively valenced name lettered products in isolation (vs. choosing between name letter and non-name letter brands), it follows that derogation might be used to create psychological distance. In sum, an evaluative outcome would be grounded in theory while both preserving the level of internal validity and exceeding the level of external validity of the choice paradigm used in Experiment 1. Method Participants and design One hundred forty-three undergraduates at a large North Eastern university (different from Experiment 1) participated for a cash payment. Experiment 2 employed a 2 (brand name: name letter, and non-name letter) × 2 (product valence: positive, and negative) × 2 (cognitive load: high, and low) between participants design. Participants were shown a picture of a product, its brand name, and a bogus “quick review,” then asked to indicate their attitude toward the brand. Stimuli The target product was an ultra-portable camcorder. A photo of the camcorder was presented along with a price of $80, the brand name, and a “quick review.” Just like Experiment 1, the brand name of the camcorder was constructed as XXXyciné, where XXX represents either the first three letters of the participant's own name or the first three letters of a fellow participant's name; again, participants were run in pairs with each pair seeing the same brand name in order to minimize differences due to the attractiveness of any particular letter combination.
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The bogus “quick review,” used to manipulate valence, consisted of a rating out of five stars and a brief bulleted list of product pros (e.g., long battery life) and cons (e.g., poor usability) based on actual reviews from products in this category. The “quick review” was designed so that participants could make quick assessments; they could easily eye the star rating and weigh the balance between the number of pros and cons. In the negative product valence condition, the star rating was one out of five, with six cons and two pros. In the positive product valence condition, the star rating was four out of five, with two cons and six pros. Procedure Participants were instructed that they were about to complete a questionnaire about product offers. Following an introduction, participants received the cognitive load manipulation just as in Experiment 1. After seeing the number for as long as they needed, participants folded that page of the questionnaire completely over so that it could not be seen. The next page included the critical task. Participants were asked to imagine that they were shopping for an ultra-portable camcorder and came across the one shown, which appeared as described according to their randomly assigned experimental condition. After reviewing the stimuli, participants indicated their conscious motive to self-protect, perceived product valence, and attitude toward the brand. To measure compliance with the cognitive load manipulation, participants were asked to write down the number they had memorized. Finally, participants responded to the same battery of questions from Experiment 1 regarding hypothesis awareness. Measures The cognitive load manipulation was checked by participants' ability to recall their number. Two participants in the high cognitive load conditions failed to recall their number and were eliminated from analysis (Gilbert and Osborne, 1989). Less than 5% of total participants recognized the presence of their name letters (n = 7), and following prior work they were also excluded, yielding 134 usable observations. The valence manipulation was checked just as in Experiment 1, with those in the negative valence condition rating the camcorder below the seven-point scale neutral point (M = 2.13; t(66) = −14.64, p b .001) and those in the positive valence condition rating the camcorder above the neutral point (M = 4.61; t(66) = 4.07, p b .001). Motive to self-protect was measured with a single Likertscale adapted from Murray et al. (2008) — “When I think about owning this product, I think most about the bad things that might happen,” (M = 4.03). Finally, attitude toward the brand was measured on two seven-point semantic differentials including “unfavorable/ favorable” and “bad/good;” the measures demonstrated internal consistency (r = .94) and were averaged together to form a brand attitude index (M = 3.32).
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not in the presence of a complementary, explicit causal factor — valence. This is consistent with prior studies in which participants were subconsciously primed to self-protect, did not report increased concerns with self-protection on explicit measures, but ultimately made judgments in the service of self-protection (Murray et al., 2008). The key here is that both under high and low cognitive load, NL participants were more concerned with self-protection when confronted with negative valence than with positive valence (high load: M NEG = 5.28 vs. M POS = 3.53; t(33) = 2.81, p b .01; low load: MNEG = 5.13 vs. MPOS = 2.25; t(30) = 4.90, p b .001). In other words, cognitive load did not usurp the motive to self-protect; but did it usurp the ability to resolve the conflict in the evaluations of name letter brands? Attitude toward the brand was analyzed using ANOVA with brand name, product valence, and cognitive load as independent factors. The expectation was that under high cognitive load there would be more positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands for both positive and negative valence, while under low cognitive load there should be more positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands with positive valence, but less positive attitudes toward NL (vs. NNL) brands with negative valence. This three-way prediction was confirmed (F (1, 126) = 7.06, p b .05, η2 = .032). A graph of the means is presented in Fig. 2. Follow up comparisons revealed that the attitude toward the NL brand was less favorable than attitude toward the NNL brand under low cognitive load with negative product valence (MNL = 1.75 vs. MNNL = 2.78, t(30) = − 2.83, p b .01), but the opposite pattern emerged in all other NL-NNL brand attitude comparisons: high cognitive load, negative product valence (MNL = 2.19 vs. MNNL = 1.59, t(33) = 2.56, p b .05); low load, positive valence (MNL = 5.31 vs. MNNL = 4.50, t(30) = 2.23, p b .05); and high load, positive valence (MNL = 4.74 vs. MNNL = 3.78, t(33) = 2.12, p b .05). The predictions are supported. Self-protection was primed subconsciously, and cognitive resources influenced the ability of participants to resolve the potential ego threat, a pattern in harmony with Murray et al. (2008). Additionally, consistent with Eidelman and Biernat (2003), because participants had no other means to distance (e.g., by choosing something different) they derogated the NL brand when valence was negative and they had the requisite cognitive resources. General discussion The present study makes important contributions to theory. Name letter avoidance adds an additional piece to the puzzle of how motivation fits into implicit preferences for self-resemblance. Prior research showed
Results and discussion Motive to self-protect was analyzed using ANOVA with brand name, product valence, and cognitive load as independent factors. The expectation was that when name letters were paired with a positively (vs. negatively) valenced product, participants would be more concerned with self-protection. Results revealed a main effect of valence (F(1, 126) = 64.44, p b .001, η2 = .338) with no other significant main effects or interactions (all p's N .08). Participants in the negative valence conditions were more concerned with selfprotection than participants in the positive valence conditions (MNEG = 5.25 vs. MPOS = 2.88; t(132) = 8.01, p b .001), but no incremental impact of name letters was revealed. Upon reflection and investigation, this makes sense. The incremental self-protection invoked by the addition of name letters to negative valence occurs implicitly, and so the explicit measure did not pick it up, particularly
Fig. 2. Mean brand attitudes as a function of brand name, product valence, and cognitive load, Experiment 2.
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that people gravitate toward others, places, professions, and products that resemble themselves even in the most superficial way, thus causing implicit egotism and name letter branding (Brendl et al., 2005; Pelham et al., 2005). Others have shown that the motive to self-enhance strengthens the effect (Jones et al., 2004). This article demonstrates that an additional part of self-concept maintenance, self-protection, can cause people to distance from name lettered targets, but only when mental resources are available. In highlighting this, it becomes clear that moniker maladies (Nelson & Simmons, 2007) are not as pervasive as initially suggested, lending additional credence to recent refutations (McCullough & McWilliams 2010). The present findings have implications for recent findings on mechanisms that underpin preferences for self-associated stimuli. Self-anchoring, a process in which feelings about oneself automatically transfer to chosen, but not to rejected, objects (Gawronski, Bodenhausen, & Becker, 2007), is consistent with the positive effect of name letter branding observed here. But what does name letter avoidance say about self-anchoring? In one of four experiments, Gawronski et al. (2007) observed not only a lack of such transfer, but also derogation of objects one previously rejected. They speculate that the derogation is due to a negatively valenced “not me” tag associated with rejected objects. Name letter avoidance would appear to be complementary to such a process. The self-anchoring explanation accounts for derogation of neutral objects that have been already cleanly rejected from self-association. In contrast, name letter avoidance accounts for derogation of negative objects that are selfassociated via shared name letters. It would be fruitful for further research to unite these complementary effects under a single rubric. Such a rubric might be found in a comparison of self-enhancement and self-protection within the broader context of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Observers have noted that selfenhancement is typically pursued following an ego threat, while selfprotection is pursued in anticipation of an ego threat (Blaine & Crocker, 1993; Sommer, 2001). This is consistent with the present results and prior work on implicit egotism. Researchers have been able to boost preference for name lettered targets by manipulating ego-threat prior to name letter target evaluation, a manifestation of self-enhancement (e.g., Jones et al., 2004). More generally, schema-based self-enhancement does not appear to require cognitive resources (Spencer et al., 1998). In contrast, the present results showed that when participants were confronted with the potential association with a negative target, self-protection manifested; that is, the association was diminished to prevent damage from happening to one's self-concept in the first place. Unlike self-enhancement, self-protection required cognitive resources to executively resolve the potential threat. Returning to self-anchoring, then, the difference between derogation of the name letter avoidance variety and derogation based on self-anchoring may be that the former is motivated by self-protection while the latter may be motivated by self-enhancement. The present research demonstrated that negatively valenced targets provoke self-protective outcomes when paired with one's own name letters. Future research should explore other drivers of self-protection and the influence of other self motives on name letter preferences. In the former domain, for example, unfamiliar targets may introduce uncertainty, which has been tied to self-protection (Josephs, Larrick, Steele, & Nisbett, 1992). Therefore, unfamiliar (vs. familiar) targets might be more likely to induce name letter avoidance. In an example of the latter domain, sometimes people seek to verify their shortcomings, actively seeking negative feedback (Leary, 2007). How might this motive, self-verification, play into preferences for name letter brands? The answers to such questions
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