[Marketing] Minjung Koo, Kyeongheui Kim - The timing of help: Receiving help toward the end (vs. beginning) undermines psychological ownership and subjective well-being

Professors Minjung Koo and Kyeongheui Kim&#39;s paper, &quot;The timing of help: Receiving help toward the end (vs. beginning) undermines psychological ownership and subjective well-being,&quot; has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Abstract&nbsp;<br /> <br /> Giving help is a generous act, but it can cause psychological distress for the recipients by inducing feelings of dependency, incompetence, or indebtedness. The current research identifies a novel factor&mdash;the timing of help in the course of an activity&mdash;that modulates the negative effect of help on the recipient&rsquo;s subjective well-being. Across nine studies, we show that people experience less happiness and satisfaction when they receive help in a later (vs. earlier) stage of an activity. We attribute this timing effect to the recipient&rsquo;s loss of psychological ownership of the activity; help causes a temporary, perceived shift of ownership from the recipient to the helper, and the recipient perceives a greater loss of ownership after receiving help in a later (vs. earlier) stage. &nbsp;We also identify two theoretical moderators: The effect holds when the activity is pursued for intrinsic reasons (e.g., for enjoyment) but not when the activity is pursued for extrinsic reasons (e.g., out of obligation), and the effect holds when help is dependency-oriented (e.g., providing full solutions) but not when help is autonomy-oriented (e.g., providing tools).<br /> <br /> Our findings advance the current understanding of how the provision of help can hurt a recipient&rsquo;s well-being and offer practical insight into when help should be given to minimize such harmful effects.<br /> (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

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[Marketing] Minjung Koo - Remember Me, Will You?: Overusing Material Gifts for Interpersonal Memory Management

Professor Minjung Koo&#39;s paper, &quot;Remember Me, Will You?: Overusing Material Gifts for Interpersonal Memory Management,&quot; has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <strong>Abstract&nbsp;</strong><br /> <br /> Six experiments (N=2,350) uncover a prevalent giver&ndash;recipient preference discrepancy: gift givers prefer giving material gifts (vs. experiential gifts) more than gift-recipients prefer to receive them. The experiments reveal congruent evidence that a mnemonic gifting strategy underlies this preference discrepancy. Givers are more likely than recipients to consider the memory consequences of gift options, as givers intuitively use material gifts as interpersonal mnemonic devices to facilitate the recipient&rsquo;s retrieval of giver-related memories. As such, this preference discrepancy occurs in various stages of developing relationships but is mitigated in very close relationships. In addition, two theoretical moderators are identified: the preference discrepancy disappears when the gift would be associated with an unpleasant occasion (instead of a pleasant one), and when the giver and recipient expect an incidental increase in future interactions. This research reveals an interpersonal memory-management motive that underlies the miscalibrated gift choices, and bridges prior findings on material and experiential gifts. These findings also offer insights for consumers and marketers to mitigate miscalibrated choices and their perverse economic and relationship consequences.

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[Marketing] Minjung Koo - When Temptations Come Alive

When Temptations Come Alive: How Anthropomorphism Undermines Self-Control.<br /> We examine how anthropomorphizing a temptation impacts consumer self-control. Six studies show that anthropomorphizing a tempting product impairs self-control not by boosting desire strength but by decreasing consumers&rsquo; experience of conflict toward consuming the product&mdash;an alarm that signals a need for self-control.<br /> As a result, consumers are less likely to initiate self-control and more likely to indulge in the product. This process occurs because an anthropomorphized product acts as another agent in the self-control dilemma, which decreases the extent to which consumers attribute the cause of and responsibility for their consumption to themselves (i.e., internal attribution).

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