Good Impressions
How Verb Tense Shapes Persuasion
Grant Packard, Jonah Berger & Reihane Boghrati
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
When sharing information and opinions about products, services, and experiences, communicators often use either past or present tense (e.g., “That restaurant was great” or “That restaurant is great”). Might such differences in verb tense shape communication’s impact, and if so, how? A multimethod investigation, including eight studies conducted in the field and lab, demonstrates that using present (vs. past) tense can increase persuasion. Natural language processing of over 500,000 online reviews in multiple product and service domains, for example, illustrates that reviews that use more present tense are seen as more helpful and useful. Follow-up experiments demonstrate that shifting from past to present tense increases persuasion and illustrate the underlying process through both mediation and moderation. When communicators use present (rather than past) tense to express their opinions and experiences, it suggests they are more certain about what they are saying, which increases persuasion. These findings shed light on how language impacts consumer behavior, highlight how a subtle, yet central linguistic feature shapes communication, and have clear implications for persuasion across a range of situations.
Who Made This? Algorithms and Authorship Credit
Arthur Jago & Glenn Carroll
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Producers and creators often receive assistance with work from other people. Increasingly, algorithms can provide similar assistance. When algorithms assist or augment producers, does this change individuals’ willingness to assign credit to those producers? Across four studies spanning several domains (e.g., painting, construction, sports analytics, and entrepreneurship), we find evidence that producers receive more credit for work when they are assisted by algorithms, compared with humans. We also find that individuals assume algorithmic assistance requires more producer oversight than human assistance does, a mechanism that explains these higher attributions of credit (Studies 1–3). The greater credit individuals assign to producers assisted by algorithms (vs. other people) also manifests itself in increased support for those producers’ entrepreneurial endeavors (Study 4). As algorithms proliferate, norms of credit and authorship are likely changing, precipitating a variety of economic and social consequences.
Tweeting like Elon? Provocative language, new-venture status, and audience engagement on social media
Benedikt David Christian Seigner et al.
Journal of Business Venturing, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article theorizes and empirically investigates how status and provocative language influence audience engagement with new-venture posts on social media platforms. Using venture capital funding as a status proxy, we analyzed 369,142 Twitter posts by 268 new ventures. We found that status (1) increases engagement with ventures' tweets, and that it (2) moderates the effect of provocative language on audience engagement so that provocative language has a negative effect for low-status ventures but a positive effect for high-status ventures. Post-hoc analyses provide a basis for pragmatic theorizing and explore the effects of status tiers and subdimensions of provocative language.
Consumer Aversion to Algorithm-Driven Price Volatility: Empirical Investigation of Airbnb
Jiaqi Shi et al.
University of California Working Paper, December 2022
Abstract:
Dynamic-pricing algorithms have enabled frequent price adjustments to improve sales. Yet, overly frequent price fluctuations may complicate consumers’ purchase decisions. This paper empirically investigates how algorithm-driven price volatility influences the occupancy rates of more than 105,000 rental properties in New York City listed on Airbnb. Because properties on Airbnb can be booked up to 12 months in advance, we compile two price-volatility measures: a property’s frequency of price changes across travel dates on a given booking date (i.e., volatility over travel dates) and a property’s frequency of price changes across booking dates on a given travel date (i.e., volatility over temporal distances). For both measures, the occupancy rates increase from flat pricing to a certain degree of dynamic pricing. However, the occupancy rates start to decrease when prices become too volatile, controlling for the magnitudes of price-level variation. A series of mechanism checks suggest the price volatility across travel dates leads to quality concerns, whereas the price volatility across temporal distances leads to fairness concerns. Our findings imply the algorithmic pricing optimality may not be achieved by ignoring consumers’ behavioral reactions.
Underdogs and One-Hit Wonders: When Is Overcoming Adversity Impressive?
Jerker Denrell, Chengwei Liu & David Maslach
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Success tends to increase and failure tends to decrease the chances of future success. We show that this impact of past outcomes can change how diagnostic success or failure are regarding the competence of an individual or a firm. Succeeding under adverse circumstances is especially impressive when initial failure reduces the chances of success more for low-quality agents than for high-quality agents. Succeeding after initial failure (being a “successful underdog”) can also indicate higher expected quality than succeeding twice if initial success increases the chances of success of all agents to a high level. In different circumstances, the outcome after success can be especially informative about quality, implying that failing after an initial success (a “one-hit wonder”) indicates lower quality than failing twice does. We find effects consistent with our model in data on Canadian professional hockey players and on data from the Music Laboratory experiment: Initial failure combined with eventual success is associated with high quality. The results help to clarify when failure should be attributed to the person in charge or to the situation, when underdogs and individuals who overcome adversity are especially impressive and when a naïve “more is better” heuristic for evaluating performance can be misleading.
Towards a World Wide Web without digital inequality
Moumena Chaqfeh et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 January 2023
Abstract:
The World Wide Web (WWW) empowers people in developing regions by eradicating illiteracy, supporting women, and generating economic opportunities. However, their reliance on limited bandwidth and low-end phones leaves them with a poorer browsing experience compared to privileged users across the digital divide. To evaluate the extent of this phenomenon, we sent participants to 56 cities to measure the cost of mobile data and the average page load time. We found the cost to be orders of magnitude greater, and the average page load time to be four times slower, in some locations compared to others. Analyzing how popular webpages have changed over the past years suggests that they are increasingly designed with high processing power in mind, effectively leaving the less fortunate users behind. Addressing this digital inequality through new infrastructure takes years to complete and billions of dollars to finance. A more practical solution is to make the webpages more accessible by reducing their size and optimizing their load time. To this end, we developed a solution called Lite-Web and evaluated it in the Gilgit-Baltistan province of Pakistan, demonstrating that it transforms the browsing experience of a Pakistani villager using a low-end phone to almost that of a Dubai resident using a flagship phone. A user study in two high schools in Pakistan confirms that the performance gains come at no expense to the pages’ look and functionality. These findings suggest that deploying Lite-Web at scale would constitute a major step toward a WWW without digital inequality.