Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Although the relationship metaphor dominates contemporary marketing thought and practice, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on relational phenomena in the consumer products domain, particularly at the level of the brand. In this article, the author: (1) argues for the validity of the relationship proposition in the consumer-brand context, including a debate as to the legitimacy of the brand as an active relationship partner and empirical support for the phenomenological significance of consumer-brand bonds; (2) provides a framework for characterizing and better understanding the types of relationships consumers form with brands; and (3) inducts from the data the concept of brand relationship quality, a diagnostic tool for conceptualizing and evaluating relationship strength. Three in-depth case studies inform this agenda, their interpretation guided by an integrative review of the literature on person-to-person relationships. Insights offered through application of inducted concepts to two relevant research domains — brand loyalty and brand personality — are advanced in closing. The exercise is intended to urge fellow researchers to refine, test, and augment the working hypotheses suggested herein and to progress toward these goals with confidence in the validity of the relationship premise at the level of consumers’ lived experiences with their brands.

Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research

Although the relationship metaphor dominates contemporary marketing thought and practice, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on relational phenomena in the consumer products domain, particularly at the level of the brand. In this article, the author: (1) argues for the validity of the relationship proposition in the consumer-brand context, including a debate as to the legitimacy of the brand as an active relationship partner and empirical support for the phenomenological significance of consumer-brand bonds; (2) provides a framework for characterizing and better understanding the types of relationships consumers form with brands; and (3) inducts from the data the concept of brand relationship quality, a diagnostic tool for conceptualizing and evaluating relationship strength. Three in-depth case studies inform this agenda, their interpretation guided by an integrative review of the literature on person-to-person relationships. Insights offered through application of inducted concepts to two relevant research domains—brand loyalty and brand personality—are advanced in closing. The exercise is intended to urge fellow researchers to refine, test, and augment the working hypotheses suggested herein and to progress toward these goals with confidence in the validity of the relationship premise at the level of consumers' lived experiences with their brands.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/209515.pdf

Consumers and their brands : developing relationship theory in consumer research

The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.

/pdf/bad-is-stronger-than-good-42gd5eyc1l.pdf

Bad is Stronger than Good

Bad is stronger than good

According to terror management theory, heightened concerns about mortality should intensify the appeal of charismatic leaders. To assess this idea, we investigated how thoughts about death and the 9/11 terrorist attacks influence Americans’ attitudes toward current U.S. President George W. Bush. Study 1 found that reminding people of their own mortality (mortality salience) increased support for Bush and his counterterrorism policies. Study 2 demonstrated that subliminal exposure to 9/11-related stimuli brought death-related thoughts closer to consciousness. Study 3 showed that reminders of both mortality and 9/11 increased support for Bush. In Study 4, mortality salience led participants to become more favorable toward Bush and voting for him in the upcoming election but less favorable toward Presidential candidate John Kerry and voting for him. Discussion focused on the role of terror management processes in allegiance to charismatic leaders and political decision making.

/pdf/deliver-us-from-evil-the-effects-of-mortality-salience-and-42e1y42qkw.pdf

Deliver us from Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush

Concrete Word M Word M Word M Word M Peaceful 5.56 Sensitive 4.56 Fat 1.50 Energetic b 2.43 Artistic 5.56 Serene 4.50 Bad tempered 2.13 Cruel 2.50 Creative 5.54 Awkward a 4.50 Impatient 2.19 Conceited 2.50 Intelligent 4 . 8 8 Withdrawn ~ 4.44 Organized b 2.19 Nervous 2.56 Satisfied 4.81 War m 4.44 Tired 2.25 Spoiled 2.63 Good-natured 4 . 8 1 Open-minded 4.43 Messy 2.31 Rude 2.63 Happy 4.81 Raw ~ 4.43 Sloppy 2.38 Grumpy 2.63 Liberal 4.75 Hopeful 4.38 Active, b 2.38 Lazy 2.68 Well-rounded 4.63 Open 4.31 Stupid 2.38 St ubborn 2.69 Erratic ~ 4 . 5 6 Sentimental 4.31 Honest b 2.38 Friendly b 2.69 a Words from list of undesired-self features. b Words from list of ideal-self features. pendent, needy, and selfish. His primary goal in life is to be constantly available for the unselfish help of others and, thereby, to become a living contrast to his undesired self. In this instance, it is likely that his ideal self was derived from his undesired self and not vice versa, and it is suspected that this is the normal course of events. This revised way of thinking about the self-system has implications for therapists. Rather than focusing on making goals more realistic (e.g., breaking up the "tyranny of the should"), more rapid insight might be gained by working with the equally nonrational "tyranny of the should not.'" This might be especially useful for persons who appear to be propelled through life by the push or avoidance of unwanted emotions and undesired conditions of life--emotions and conditions that provoked anxiety in the past but, in fact, have no objective bearing on the present. However, caution must be applied to unrestrained speculation. For instance, the question of the generalizability of these results is unanswered. The data used in this study were gathered from students who volunteered to participate. Several motives, including a desire to please the instructor, a belief that noncooperation would affect one's grade (despite clear statements that it would not do so), and a desire to learn more about themselves, may have made participators different from nonparticipators in ways that made them unrepresentative of the general population. Setting aside this problem and assuming that the sample was a representative one, one must note that the sample was only representative of college students. One thing distinctive of many students is that they are in the process of reevaluating their relationships with their parents and are forming new relationships with peers. They are also reassessing their goals, and by virtue of having to select courses to take and deciding on majors, they are determining new directions for their lives. In sum, they are in the throes of identity formation at a level beyond the identity issues faced by adolescents. Thus, the results of this study may hold for only 19to 2 l-year-olds attending college. Next, a few comments on the procedures and methods used in this research. In terms of procedures, all identities and all features used by subjects were self-generated. These identities and features provided the context for ratings of their undesired, ideal, and real selves. This enabled subjects to describe the particulars of their lives in their own terms. The self-generative emphasis of this study makes it similar to and different from the Q-sort technique used by Rogers in his research on the real and ideal self. A strength of Rogers's study was that his subjects created their own self-sorts and ideal sorts. However, the contents of the cards to be sorted were experimenter generated and may have included items that were irrelevant to the lives of his subjects and excluded items of central importance. Finally, the method of matrix analysis used discards assumptions of linearity and symmetry. Stated simply, the algorithms do not force inconsistent or contradictory data into a mold of consistency. For example, several subjects gave the same ratings to their ideal selves and to their undesired selves on several features. One subject, for instance, rated herself as a flirt and a compulsive thinker on the category how I hope to never be. Later, she gave the same ratings to flirt and compulsive thinker when making judgments of how I would like to be. The algorithm cared not about such contradictions and, instead, computed a statistic that described a degree of overlap between the undesired and ideal selves; a statistic that described a paradox that made sense only in the subjective experience of the subject. In summary, the results of this study suggest that the past tendency to theorize about the relation between the real and ideal selves has diverted us from another dimension of personality herein called the undesired self. It has been proposed that the undesired self is an implicit baseline individuals use to subjectively measure their well-being. This view challenges the heretofore preferred notion that satisfaction is mostly a function of drawing close to one's construction of an ideal self. Evidence has been given that this more comprehensive view of the self may warrant further attention by personologists.

/pdf/the-undesired-self-a-neglected-variable-in-personality-2vmsgf5rd8.pdf

The Undesired Self: A Neglected Variable in Personality Research

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that a mortality salience induction would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. In late September 2004, following a mortality salience or control induction, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush's re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election

Self-with-other representation as a unit of analysis in self-concept research.

In 2 cross-sectional studies, adolescent, middle-age, and older adults were asked to describe their personal projects and give reasons for their involvement in them. These purposes were then coded into 4 motivational categories. The motive to acquire, the desire to obtain a future positive outcome, characterized the highest percentage of purposes in all 3 groups, accompanied by a stepwise decline in its prevalence in the middle-age and older groups. Keep, the motive to avoid losing an existing positive condition, was more characteristic of the older group than the 2 younger groups. The desire to cure an existing negative condition rose in the middle-age group in Study 1, but not in Study 2. The intention to prevent a negative outcome showed no significant trends.

Daniel M. Ogilvie

Papers

Deliver us from Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush

The Undesired Self: A Neglected Variable in Personality Research

American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election

Self-with-other representation as a unit of analysis in self-concept research.

A Comparison of Personal Project Motives in Three Age Groups