This dissertation explores the socio-cognitive system of collective influences on consumers’ evaluation and decision processes, which have not been discussed fully in consumer literature, by examining how people resolve a conflict between group orientation and trait regulatory focus. It is proposed that, depending on the interaction between group commitment and collective efficacy, consumers implement one of three conflict resolution processes (i.e., depersonalization, compliance, and self-preservation) to determine the outcome of their regulatory shift. The impact of these three conflict resolution processes on regulatory shift and following message evaluations are tested with a series of six experiments. The results of these studies showed that people shift their regulatory orientation from trait regulatory focus to group orientation if the group identity is strong enough (experiment 1 and 2), the impact of group orientation on message evaluation is stronger when group members have higher group commitment (i.e., depersonalization; experiment 3 and 4) or experience higher collective efficacy (i.e., compliance; experiment 5), and people experience regulatory non-fit when they follow compliance process and generated less favorable message evaluations than when they follow depersonalization process (experiment 6). These findings highlight the importance of understanding group influence on a consumer’s mindset that consequently affects his/her various psychological processes and consumption behaviors.

Past studies of cohesiveness-performance effects thriving from 1950¡¦s were mainly experimental studies and the results of whether group cohesiveness contributed to performance were always disputable. Researchers believed that the construct of cohesiveness was multidimensional; and the components of cohesiveness were therefore scrutinized to see its influence upon performance. Results varied from only task commitment contributed to performance (Mullen & Copper, 1994) to all three components bear significant influence to performance (Beal et al., 2003). Not only was the cohesiveness-performance relation discussed, but were cohesiveness components to performance criteria and work patterns as a moderator to cohesiveness-performance relation examined in Taiwanese work groups. Consequently, the purposes of this study are to (a) have empirical study for cohesiveness-performance effect in real groups, (b) reexamine the influences of the three components of cohesiveness to cohesiveness-performance effect in work groups, (c) know which cohesiveness component brings about each kind of members performance, and (d) figure out how each type of workflows relates to cohesiveness- performance effect. This study represented work groups¡¦ cohesiveness- performance relation. Furthermore, cohesion components to performance criteria were reexamined for better understanding of which component can substantially benefit to which kind of performance. As a result, interpersonal attraction led to group members¡¦ behaviors performance, and task commitment brought about group efficiency. Last, this study helped to realize the fact that work groups were cohesive disregarding how much interdependence the job required.

Since APRANET, the predecessor of global internet, came into being during the 1960s, the advancements of networking technologies over the decades have created online communities such as MUDs, BBS, and newsgroups that allow users in different locations to exchange messages and share information. Nowadays, there are even wiki websites that invite all users to edit any page or to create new pages, and Yahoo! Answers, a community-driven knowledge market website where users can submit their questions and answer questions asked by other users. With such a variety of digital communities, individuals choose their own favorites to interact with others. Especially in recent years, with personal blogs, online photo albums, and micro-blogging taking the lead, more personalized features such as the display picture and user name, deep profiling, avatar and even personal page, are integrated into online discussion forums for individual users to freely present themselves. On the other hand, there are Wikipedia and MIT OpenCourseWare, both web-base collaborative projects that invite the collaboration and contributions of users identifying with their founding goals. Based on these observations, this thesis takes personal and social perceive into account. The research adopted self-presentation and social identity as the factors that can affect community member¡¦s participation, commitment, and knowledge contribution in the online communities. As hypothesized, community member¡¦s participation can motivates their commitment and knowledge contribution to the community. Furthermore, community member's identification with the online communities fosters their participation and commitment while community member¡¦s self-presentation, reflecting the degree of their participation and commitment though, has no direct relation in making any knowledge contribution to online communities.

An organizational communication study of collegiate athletes concludes that social identity theory, time scarcity, and projected selves theory are correlated with psychological/physical health, as well as the ability to predict academic success. Findings indicate that striking a balance between athletics and academics, and the time devoted to both, is necessary in order to achieve physical and psychological health. Furthermore, findings provide a link between the projected future self, social identity and the present motivation to achieve academically. / text

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of social identity, coping style and cognitive impairment, on quality of life and well-being in a group of people with head injury compared to patients with chronic pain. Design: A correlational design using sixty participants recruited from Devon was employed: thirty adults with acquired brain injuries (ABI) were recruited from a charity and thirty adults with chronic pain difficulties from a NHS pain management service. Results: Analysis showed that there was little difference between the two groups on the variables measured. The role of social identity was not associated with better psychosocial outcome or coping style. Maladaptive coping strategies were associated with poorer adjustment in the ABI group and support-seeking strategies were correlated with improved outcomes in the chronic pain group. Objective neuropsychological variables were not associated with coping style, however, a relationship was observed between maladaptive coping styles and self-reported executive functioning. Conclusions: The results add to the literature on social identity, coping and quality of life post-ABI including improved understanding of how cognitive impairment might influence the use of particular coping strategies. The findings are discussed in relation to improved interventions to increase the use of more adaptive coping strategies.

The purpose of this research is twofold. Firstly, this research aims to investigate whether the design preferences of bloggers in selected countries from different cultural backgrounds are influenced by national culture traits. The investigation involves two categories of blogs selected within a country where the bloggers share similar attributes such as language or geographical location. Secondly, simultaneously, this research intends to discover the possibility of the impact of group level influence on design preferences of bloggers who are linked together in a network through bloggers’ linkage or blogrolls. To achieve the said purposes, observations on both the global and local blogs of six selected countries are conducted using the content analysis method. This method allows this research to observe web pages and rate design preferences of bloggers via a coding system, similar to the method used to analyse documents or manuscripts to find common themes or keywords. A total of 612 blogs (306 global and 306 local) are observed for a period of nine months to identify cultural traits on design behaviour based on national culture indicators chosen from prominent literatures. To prevent a systematic error, an independent second observer was appointed and the results obtained are compared using a statistical methodology. In addition, translators were also engaged to verify that the translations are of a correct meaning and comprehension since blogs use various national languages on their web pages. The data were statistically tested using SPSS engaging in statistical analysis of frequency table, Cross-Tabulation and cluster analyses and MANOVA. Results shown that design preferences between both the global and local blogs in each country, has significant differences in most of the design indicators chosen. The findings indicate that the national culture influence on design preferences in linked networks of blogs is weakening indicating another type of influence might be in existence. The results also provide evidence that blogs in linked networks are statistically significant as a cluster or a group by themselves and are independent from one cluster to another. The research, however, studies only six countries from six different cultural dimensions. The inclusion of other countries, similar to or different from the countries under investigation, would be an added advantage. Furthermore, the use of only a single type of global blog provider (blogspot.com) in this research could be extended to other global blog providers such as wordpress.com to give fairer coverage of major and popular global blogs as well as providing a wider generalisation effect of the research findings.

A wealth of research on social life has examined the causes and consequences of social identity. I build on this literature by expanding the study of the concept beyond its current focus on how social identity manifests in the individual to a collective-level understanding of social identity as it manifests in groups. This is achieved by bridging the study of social identity with the study of social networks. In this dissertation, I argue that sharing a social identity that meets certain criteria serves as a type of connection which binds group members together into a collective unit. I refer to these connections as symbolic social network ties. Symbolic social network ties exist in social entities characterized by entitativity, which is the property of a social group that defines it as a coherent social unit—a social object in and of itself. Three criteria are necessary for a set of individuals to possess entitativity: boundedness, membership-based interaction, and the capacity to act and be acted upon as a manifest corporate actor in relation to other (individual and corporate) actors. Entitativity varies by degree across entities due to differences in the extent to which the entity exceeds minimal levels of the criteria defining entitativity. The effects of symbolic social network ties are a consequence of the combined effects of entitativity and social identity. To provide an initial assessment of the effects of symbolic social network ties on social life, in this dissertation I use a two-study approach to examine their impact on cooperative collective action. In Study 1, I use the experimental method to test the effects of symbolic social network ties, and social identity more broadly, on cooperation in generalized exchange. Generalized exchange is a form of collective action that is risky but has a number of benefits for collectivities and their members. I compare effects across three levels of social identity: no social identity, category-based social identity, and entity-based symbolic social network ties. Results strongly support my theoretical argument; entity-based symbolic social network ties have a stronger impact on cooperation than category-based social identity. Indeed, the level of cooperation in the category-based social identity condition is not significantly different from the level of cooperation found in the no social identity control condition. The second study uses survey data to assess whether the causal findings from Study 1 hold in the context of real world entities. In Study 2, I examine the relationship between symbolic social network ties and community involvement in small towns. Community involvement is a contextually specific form of collective action that can be vital to the success of a community. Specifically, I examine how variations in each of the three criteria of entitativity—boundedness, interaction, and corporate actor capacity—relate to residents’ propensity to participate in two forms of community involvement: voluntary participation in community improvement activities and active membership in local organizations. As predicted, I find that boundedness and interaction are positively related to both forms of community involvement; corporate actor capacity, however, was not found to be significantly related to either form of community involvement. Implications of these results and potential directions for future research are discussed.

This research investigated the influence of television viewing on the social identity management or coping strategies endorsed by women. Three studies (N = 536) tested predictions formulated under the aegis of cultivation theory and social identity theory. Cultivation theory suggests that exposure to low-status mediated portrayals of female characters may lead to the internalization of low status in female heavy television viewers, possibly resulting in a negative ingroup or social identity. According to social identity theory, members of low-status groups may cope with negative social identity by adopting any of three identity management strategies: individual mobility (disassociating oneself from the ingroup), social creativity (changing the dimension of comparison with a high-status group or changing the comparison group altogether), and social competition (actively pursuing legal and/or civil means in order to obtain a higher status for the ingroup). By integrating the identity management strategies as outcome variables in a cultivation-led framework, the main predictions of this research were that television viewing would be directly related to strategies of mobility and creativity and inversely related to social competition. A model of television viewing's indirect effects on identity management via its influences on the sociostructural constructs (permeability, stability, and legitimacy) was also tested in this research. Finally, this research examined other theoretically important variables that were predicted to impact television's cultivation effects. These were (i) gender role attitudes, (ii) perceived ingroup vitality, (iii) ingroup identification, (iv) perceived ingroup efficacy, and (v) perceived realism of television programming. The findings from these three studies indicate that television viewing has both direct and indirect influences on identity management in women. Specifically, television viewing was significantly and positively related to individual mobility and significantly and inversely related to attitudes of social competition. As television viewing was not related to any of the sociostructural variables, the preliminary model testing television viewing's indirect effects on identity management was not successful. However, a revised model incorporating perceived status of women, and perceived ingroup vitality, was more successful and consistently explained the data across the three studies. In non-traditional women, television viewing and gender role attitudes interacted to predict heightened mobility and creativity scores, and dampened attitudes of social competition. Similar but weaker effects were observed for more traditional women. Perceived ingroup vitality, ingroup identification, perceived ingroup efficacy, and perceived realism of television did not moderate the relationship between television viewing and identity management. The findings from the dissertation expand and add to the growing body of work integrating media effects and intergroup communication theories. Specifically, it extends the work focusing on media's influences on low-status group members' identity cognitions.

This dissertation explores the role of social context in advertisement responses, specifically focusing on how the interaction between the social identities to which a person ascribes influence the manner in which they respond to advertisements. The first essay explores how social context and social identity influence perceptions of an advertisement's authenticity. A multi-method, four-study inquiry into perceptions of advertising authenticity combining depth interview, survey, and experimental techniques finds consumer perceptions of authenticity play a key role in attitudes toward advertisements. Findings show consumers naturally assess ads in terms of authenticity and that these perceptions are entwined with self-referencing. In addition, other-referencing is shown to also be linked to authenticity perceptions and ad liking. Finally, a boundary condition on the relationship between authenticity perceptions, self-referencing, and ad liking is discussed, where consumers' reflected appraisals of how they think others will view an advertisement moderates the relationship between self-referencing and attitude towards the ad.The second essay explores, using three experiments, the relationship between reflected appraisals, self-referencing, and ad liking in more detail. Specifically, this essay determines the conditions under which negative reflected appraisals do and not decrease attitude towards the ad. First, this essay shows that when identity and self-referencing are primed, consumers resist negative appraisals about an identity congruent advertisement such that negative appraisals do not decrease ad attitudes. This effect however, does not hold when the target market for an advertisement is external to the social identity and negative appraisals are attributed to out-group members. Here, consumers pay attention to the negative appraisals and decease their attitude toward the ad. This effect, referred to as the dirty laundry effect, occurs because consumers conceptualize identity congruent advertisements as a type of self-presentation. Thus, instead of engaging in defensive behaviors in the face of negative appraisals, consumers become concerned with how they think other people will view them based on the content of the advertisement.

The purpose of this research was to examine how non-Aboriginal Canadians might respond if the label genocide is used to describe the historical mistreatment of the Aboriginal Peoples’ of Canada. In two studies, I manipulated the perception of Residential Schools as genocide by informing (or not informing) undergraduate student participants that some people believe what happened should be labeled genocide. I also assessed the potential moderating role of knowledge by either measuring participants’ pre-existing knowledge of Residential Schools or manipulating how much participants learned about Residential Schools through a passage. Overall, participants’ reactions to the label depended on what they knew about Residential Schools such that participants with a superficial level of knowledge responded defensively to a description of Residential Schools as genocide, while participants with no knowledge or high levels of knowledge responded positively. Findings provide theoretical insight into how knowledge affects perpetrator group members’ reactions to historical harms.