ESSAYS EXAMINING ROLE- BASED BEHAVIORS
- Project Research
- 1-5 Chapters
- Abstract : Available
- Table of Content: Available
- Reference Style: APA
- Recommended for : Student Researchers
- NGN 3000
ABSTRACT
My research examines role-based behavior in consumption contexts, with a particular focus on integrating contemporary social-role and identity theories with other, seemingly disparate theories like tokenism and mental accounting. My two essays are linked by the idea that “who we are” in terms of our social roles and identities affects judgments, attitudes, and evaluations of consumption choices in a wide array of previously unexamined contexts. My research shows that people often end up drawing on their social identity and roles, deliberately or not, in their response to the outside world. Furthermore, I show that this tendency has important consequences for marketers and consumers alike. The specifics are as follows. Essay 1 of my study examines how the extent to which an individual’s life roles (e.g., “employee” and “wife”) are integrated (i.e., the extent to which the psychological barriers between two or more life-roles are permeable and frequently traversed) moderates the fungibility of mentally-allocated funds. Specifically, I find that the more integrated two life roles are, the greater the cross-account fungibility of resources allocated to mental accounts corresponding with those roles (i.e., role-aligned accounts). Accordingly, individuals with more integrated roles are (i) more able to circumvent the constraints typically imposed by mental accounts and (ii) more likely to utilize resources from a mental account corresponding with one role to service the needs/wants of the other role. I obtain evidence that this effect arises because more integrated (vs. segmented) roles beget a higher degree of perceived psychological connectedness—the extent to which the individual feels two roles share defining psychological features. Perceptions of psychological connectedness allow for costs incurred in one role to be offset by benefits gained in another, because the roles share psychological properties like beliefs, values, ideals, x and goals. In contrast, I find no evidence that people with more integrated roles construct or maintain role-aligned mental accounts differently than people with more segmented roles. Essay 2 of my dissertation examines how being a token (often the lone representative of one’s social category) in a transient social group can influence private evaluations of identitylinked products. Five studies find that being an incidental token member in a transient group lowers private evaluations of products that typify the negative stereotypes of the tokenized identity. I argue that incidental tokenism activates negative stereotypes associated with the tokenized identity, which subsequently leads to a desire to disassociate specifically from identity-linked products that typify those stereotypes (as opposed to all identity-linked products in general). Consistent with this theorizing, similar results emerge when negative stereotypes are activated directly, and the effect is attenuated when tokenized individuals are self-affirmed. These results demonstrate the largely unexamined consequences of being a token group member on private evaluations (vs. public behavior) in subjective, preference-based (vs. objective, performance-based) domains. In addition to contributing to the broad literature on identity-based consumption, my dissertation essays take a more granular approach. Together, the two essays reveal that the influence of our roles and identities on our consumption choices is much more nuanced than previously thought.
Related Project Materials
WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE AMONG INFORMAL SECTOR PRACTITIONERS
Abstract
Out-of-pocket payment dominates the bulk of health care financing in Osun State as in other parts of Nigeria. P...
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS AFFECTING THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research work is to analysis socio-economic factors affecting the academic...
NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGY USE PATTERNS IN NEWSROOMS- A STUDY OF SELECTED BROADCAST STATIONS IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA
Background to the Study
Broadcast media thrived globally before the coming of the internet and new media as a very significant medium for...
TEACHING METHODS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SS2 STUDENTS IN GOVERNMENT SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN IBIONO IBOM LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, AKWA IBOM STATE
ABSTRACT
The main concern in education sector is how teaching methods affect students’ performance. This study examined teaching...
AN ASSESSMENT OF GUESTS SATISFACTION OF SERVICE QUALITY IN THE HOTEL INDUSTRY
ABSTRACT
This study was carried out to examine the assessment of guests satisfaction of service qu...
THE EFFECT OF ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER'S ACCEPTABILITY OF NEW PRODUCT
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nearly everyone in the modern world is influenced to some degree by advertisin...
ASSESSING THE EXTENT OF UTILIZATION OF INDIGENOUS MODES OF COMMUNICATION FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
EXCERPT FROM THE STUDY
Communication is a two way process that seeks to convey a message encoded by a Sender through a C...
THE USE OF IGBO PROVERBS IN SELECT PLAYS OF ZULU SOFOLA
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
African literature consists of a body of literary works in different languages and genres, ranging from oral lite...
THE EFFECT OF POOR TEACHER – PUPIL RELATIONSHIP ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF BIOLOGY STUDENTS IN ENUGU SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
ABSTRACT
This project was carried out to determine the effec...
INFLUENCE OF CLASS SIZE AND TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCE ON BUSINESS STUDIES STUDENTS ACADEMICS PERFORMANCE
ABSTRACT
This study examine the Influence of Class Size and Teachers’ Experience on Business Educ...
