How peer stress does—and doesn’t—affect our decisions | Vanderbilt Information

It’s a well-known situation: You exit to eat with a buddy, and she or he orders a Caesar salad. Your buddy’s selection evokes you to order a salad, too—solely you resolve to combine issues up a bit of and select a chef salad as an alternative. This situation sits on the middle of a persistent advertising puzzle: Why are we extra prone to copy our pals in sure domains however not in others?

A brand new principle developed by Kelly Haws, Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Advertising at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate College of Administration, means that we are likely to wish to match traits that may be measured or ranked, comparable to measurement or worth, however be happy to diverge on traits that may’t, comparable to taste or form. And we do that to keep away from awkwardness.

Her findings are reported in Conscious Matching: Ordinal Versus Nominal Attributes, forthcoming within the Journal of Advertising Analysis. Peggy Liu of the College of Pittsburgh and Brent McFerran of Simon Fraser College are her co-authors.

By way of a collection of 11 experiments, Haws and her co-authors explored numerous nuances that govern these choices. Whereas they targeted on meals decisions, additionally they checked out a charitable giving situation to check whether or not their findings may prolong to different decision-making areas.

Broadly talking, we are likely to match the alternatives of others alongside ordinal traces. These may be numerical traits comparable to measurement, worth or quantity, but additionally extra summary value-based ideas like perceived healthiness, status or authenticity.

“Ordinal attributes are ones through which we imagine on the whole that there’s a selected order through which they exist,” Haws mentioned. “So in different phrases, one is healthier than one other.”

We don’t really feel the identical stress to match what the researchers name nominal attributes. These are subjective traits, comparable to form or taste. Within the donation experiment, the charity selection served because the nominal attribute, and the researchers discovered that the identical impact—matching donation quantities however not charities—persevered.

Moreover, Haws and her co-authors discovered that we didn’t simply match our pals’ ordinal decisions, we matched retailer workers’, too. When requested, individuals who selected to match mentioned their choices have been pushed by a need to keep away from social discomfort.

“For those who order a double-scoop ice cream cone, I would infer that that is an event the place we’re celebrating or indulging collectively,” Haws mentioned. “However for those who order a single-scoop ice cream cone, I would as an alternative assume, ‘Nicely we’re having fun with a deal with, however we don’t wish to get too carried away with it.’ And that is an occasion the place I’m going to go for the smaller measurement. It’s a lot much less snug to mismatch on that dimension.”

Haws mentioned her findings can assist managers make higher choices about how you can form customers’ decisions by retailer signage, worker interactions and different cues. “There are various totally different areas through which these underlying nominal-versus-ordinal attributes may play out within the market.”