Jonah Berger

What Makes Online Content Viral

Why are certain pieces of online content (e.g., advertisements, videos, news articles) more viral than others? This article takes a psychological approach to understanding diffusion. Using a unique data set of all the New York Times articles published over a three-month period, the authors examine how emotion shapes virality. The results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. These results hold even when the authors control for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured). Experimental results further demonstrate the causal impact of specific emotion on transmission and illustrate that it is driven by the level of activation induced. Taken together, these findings shed light on why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns.

Where Consumers Diverge from Others: Identity Signaling and Product Domains

We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of other social groups, in product domains that are seen as symbolic of identity (e.g., music or hairstyles, rather than backpacks or stereos). In identity domains, participants avoided options preferred by majorities and abandoned preferences shared with majorities. The social group associated with a product influenced choice more in identity domains and when a given product was framed as identity relevant. People diverge, in part, to avoid communicating undesired identities.

What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth

Word of mouth (WOM) affects diffusion and sales, but why are certain products talked about more than others, both right after consumers first experience them and in the months that follow? This article examines psychological drivers of immediate and ongoing WOM. The authors analyze a unique data set of everyday conversations for more than 300 products and conduct both a large field experiment across various cities and a controlled laboratory experiment with real conversations. The results indicate that more interesting products get more immediate WOM but, contrary to intuition, do not receive more ongoing WOM over multiple months or overall. In contrast, products that are cued more by the environment or are more publicly visible receive more WOM both right away and over time. Additional analyses demonstrate which promotional giveaways in WOM marketing campaigns are associated with increased WOM. overall, the findings shed light on psychological drivers of WOM and provide insight into designing more effective WOM campaigns.

Positive Effects of Negative Publicity: When Negative Reviews Increase Sales

Can negative information about a product increase sales, and if so, when? Although popular wisdom suggests that “any publicity is good publicity,” prior research has demonstrated only downsides to negative press. Negative reviews or word of mouth, for example, have been found to hurt product evaluation and sales. Using a combination of econometric analysis and experimental methods, we unify these perspectives to delineate contexts under which negative publicity about a product will have positive versus negative effects. Specifically, we argue that negative publicity can increase purchase likelihood and sales by increasing product awareness. Consequently, negative publicity should have differential effects on established versus unknown products. Three studies support this perspective. Whereas a negative review in the New York Times hurt sales of books by well-known authors, for example, it increased sales of books that had lower prior awareness. The studies further underscore the importance of a gap between publicity and purchase occasion and the mediating role of increased awareness in these effects.

Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information

Social transmission is everywhere. Friends talk about restaurants, policy wonks rant about legislation, analysts trade stock tips, neighbors gossip, and teens chitchat. Further, such interpersonal communication affects everything from decision making and well-being (Asch, 1956; Mehl, Vazire, Holleran, & Clark, 2010) to the spread of ideas, the persistence of stereotypes, and the diffusion of culture (Heath, 1996; Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001; Kashima, 2008; Schaller, Conway, & Tanchuk, 2002; Schaller & Crandall, 2004). But although it is clear that social transmission is both frequent and important, what drives people to share, and why are some stories and information shared more than others?

Variety, Vice, and Virtue: How Assortment Size Influences Option Choice

Assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to justify. Virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences; consequently, choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to virtues and from hedonic to utilitarian options. These effects reverse, however, when situational factors provide accessible reasons to indulge, underscoring the role of justification. Implications for choice difficulty and justification processes are discussed.

Shifting Signals to Help Health: Using Identity-Signaling to Reduce Risky Health Behaviors

This research examines how identity-based interventions can improve consumer health. Results of laboratory and field experiments reveal that associating risky health behaviors with a social identity people do not want to signal can contaminate the behaviors and lead consumers to make healthier choices. College freshman reported consuming less alcohol (experiment 2), and restaurant patrons selected less fattening food (experiment 3), when drinking alcohol and eating junk food were presented as markers of avoidance groups. These findings demonstrate that identity-based interventions can shift the identities associated with real-world behaviors, thereby improving the health of populations.

Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice

How do consumers reconcile conflicting motives for social group identification and individual uniqueness? Four studies demonstrate that consumers simultaneously pursue assimilation and differentiation goals on different dimensions of a single choice: they assimilate to their group on one dimension (by conforming on identity-signaling attributes such as brand) while differentiating on another dimension (distinguishing themselves on uniqueness attributes such as color). Desires to communicate social identity lead consumers to conform on choice dimensions that are strongly associated with their group, particularly in identity-relevant consumer categories such as clothing. Higher needs for uniqueness lead consumers to differentiate within groups by choosing less popular options among those that are associated with their group. By examining both between- and within-group levels of comparison and using multidimensional decisions, this research provides insight into how multiple identity motives jointly influence consumer choice.

Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message

Consumers share word of mouth face to face, over social media, and through a host of other communication channels. But do these channels affect what people talk about and, if so, how? Laboratory experiments, as well as analysis of almost 20,000 everyday conversations, demonstrate that communicating via oral versus written communication affects the products and brands consumers discuss. Compared to oral communication, written communication leads people to mention more interesting products and brands. Further, this effect is driven by communication asynchrony and self-enhancement concerns. Written communication gives people more time to construct and refine what to say, and self-enhancement motives lead people to use this opportunity to mention more interesting things. These findings shed light on how communication channels shape interpersonal communication and the psychological drivers of word of mouth more broadly.

When the Same Prime Leads to Different Effects

Research on priming effects has shown that primes with widely shared associations (i.e., stereotypes) affect the subsequent behavior of people in consistent ways (i.e., acting stereotypically). In this article, we present two experiments that show that the same primed construct can have different effects on the subsequent choices of different groups of people. These differences in effects are attributable to the groups having different prime associations. These results highlight the importance of understanding unique, personal associations to primes and suggest that segmentation is also important for predicting nonconsciously influenced choices.