Hakkyun Kim

Stereotype Threat in the Marketplace: Consumer Anxiety and Purchase Intentions

How do consumers react when they believe that a transaction partner will view them through the lens of a stereotype? We predicted and found that being aware of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs (e.g., gender) made consumers sensitive to whether service providers were in-group versus out-group members and lowered purchase intentions when the provider was an out-group member. We observed stereotype threat effects across diverse marketplace settings: financial services (experiment 1), automobile repairs (experiment 2), and automobile purchases (experiment 3). Furthermore, we found that reluctance to purchase from out-group (vs. in-group) members was caused by heightened anxiety. The presence of a soothing scent, as a situational factor to alleviate anxiety, mitigated stereotype threat effects on marketplace decisions.

Claiming the Validity of Negative In-group Stereotypes When Foreseeing a Challenge: A Self-handicapping Account

This research proposes a self-handicapping process in which people proactively endorse negative in-group stereotypes when there is the prospect of failure in a task. In Experiment 1, we found that women were more likely to endorse the math-gender stereotype stigmatizing their gender group when they anticipated a difficult versus easy math task. In Experiment 2, the same pattern was observed among men stigmatized with relatively poor verbal skills. In Experiment 3, we found that such a self-handicapping tendency was most prominent among individuals with high trait self-esteem, who are presumably more motivated to maintain self-esteem versus those with low trait self-esteem. All together, these results suggest that endorsing negative in-group stereotypes can be used as an anticipatory coping mechanism, occurring even before receiving failure feedback in the presence of a high risk of failure.

In distrust of merits: the negative effects of astroturfs on people's prosocial behaviors

Astroturf organizations are fake grassroots organizations that hide their true identity by using deceptive and fraudulent tactics as propaganda, but try to convince the public that they are authentic. In this study, we focus on the potential influences of astroturf organizations within the context of prosocial behaviors. Building on the notion that deceptive advertisements engender distrust and undermine the trustworthiness of subsequent advertising, we suggest that people who read messages from astroturf organizations will become more distrustful toward nonprofit organizations and will display lower willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors than people who read messages from grassroots organizations. Results from studies 1 and 2 indicate that messages from astroturf organizations can engender peoples distrust toward nonprofit organizations, thereby lowering their willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors. In addition, the negative effect of astroturf organizations is moderated by skepticism toward advertising. Given that the insidious use of astroturf organizations is growing in popularity, we provide meaningful insights into the influence of fake grassroots organizations, with the possibility to forewarn the public about their undesirable effects on the community.

The Influence of Implicit Self-Theories on Causal Inferences about Superstitions and Consequences on Subsequent Tasks

When people succeed in a challenging task after using a product associated with a good luck superstition cue, will they infer that their superstitious consumption is a key reason for their success? We found that entity theorists (but not incremental theorists) tend to attribute their success to their superstitious consumption (studies 1, 2, and 3). Moreover, we found that such causal inferences create negative consequences on subsequent tasks, which vary depending on whether people can continue to engage in superstitious consumption. Specifically, entity theorists tend to feel a weaker sense of self-efficacy toward a subsequent task if they cannot engage in the same superstitious consumption as in the prior task (study 2). Moreover, if they continue to engage in the same superstitious consumption as in the prior task, entity theorists reduce their effort on the subsequent task (study 3).

When Does "Facebooking" Make Us Avoid Risks? The Effect of Social Networking Orientation on Risk Preference

Will consumers’ social networking orientations influence their psychological functioning on subsequent tasks in seemingly remote, unrelated domains? Prior research on social capital suggests the distinction between a bonding orientation, with which people seek to cement connectedness among exclusive and relatively homogeneous groups, and a bridging orientation, with which people focus on creating new contacts with different groups, resulting in spanning diverse social cleavages. Building on the resource depletion paradigm, we propose and find that consumers become more risk-averse after performing bridging- versus bonding-oriented activities on Facebook. We also confirm the depletion of risk-taking resources as the underlying process by showing its mediating role between social networking orientation and risk preference.

Promoting Positive Employee Health Behavior with Mobile Technology Design

In this paper, we present an augmented mobile technology that can enhance the positive health behavior of employees, as well as companies’ social welfare. Our proposed mobile technology encourages walking behaviors among employees, which are then transformed into monetary incentives or a tangible donation. We draw on two social behavior theories for our technology design and also introduce a conceptual model that provides a “step-by-step” approach to enhance employees’ health and improve social welfare.