No description available.

How we communicate about brands and companies has changed. CEOs have come into the spotlight of brand communications but little marketing research offers holistic knowledge about CEOs as brand endorsers. This research investigates how CEO endorsers influence consumer attitudes toward a brand differently from conventional endorsers (e.g., celebrities and athletes). Further, this research examines underlying mechanisms that determine consumer responses to CEOs as brand endorsers and especially consumer moral judgments of a brand’s wrongdoing. Building on research on brand endorsers and brand equity, as well as drawing theoretical support from research on leadership, anthropomorphism and mind perception, this dissertation proposes a moderated mediation model of CEO endorser effects on consumer moral judgments. Brand endorsers for decades have been viewed as essentially communicating via three characteristics: attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness. This dissertation identifies perceived leadership as an additional endorser dimension elicited from a CEO-brand endorser. Further, this dissertation introduces brand mind perception into marketing research and finds that perceived leadership positively influences consumers’ perception of brand mind, which in turn determines consumers’ moral judgments. Boundary conditions are explored and include endorser-brand relationship and crisis controllability. Two sets of studies provide empirical support. The first set defines and develops the scale of perceived leadership including item generation (Study 1), item purification (Study 2), and scale confirmation (Study 3). The second set tests the hypotheses in the conceptual model. Two exploratory studies first find preliminary evidence of that perceived leadership differs from existing endorser dimensions by its effects on moral judgments (Study 4), and that mind perception is possible for a brand and can be enhanced by CEO association (Study 5). Study 6 shows positive effects of CEO endorsers on consumer attitudes by communicating perceived brand leadership. Study 7 investigates a brand-wrongdoing scenario and shows that perceived brand leadership yields negative results for a brand by increasing blame and reducing forgiveness; Study 8 demonstrates these relationships are mediated by brand mind perception. Study 9 shows that the inspiring aspects of perceived leadership can enhance perceptions of brand mind (to feel and experience), thus reducing consumers’ blame. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Thesis advisor: Andrea Heberlein / Dehumanization of outgroup members in situations of intergroup competition has been widely reported (Haslam, 2006), but the effects of individual competition on dehumanization have not yet been extensively explored. A previous study in our lab examined this effect and found an unexpected gender difference, with women showing greater implicit dehumanization than men. The present study aimed to explore a possible mechanism for that gender difference: gendered expectations of maintaining positive interpersonal relations, and subsequent discomfort in competitive situations, may motivate the implicit dehumanization of competitors. Participants interacted briefly with a confederate and were then given instructions for a competitive or non-competitive game. Participants then completed two Single-Category Implicit Association Tests measuring dehumanization of their game partner. Participants also completed the Mind Perception Questionnaire, which measures explicit dehumanization of participants’ game partners. We predicted that in the Competition condition, female participants would implicitly dehumanize their game partners more than men would. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Psychology.

No description available.

No description available.

Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur l’étude de la perception dans le domaine de la religion et de l'alimentation dans deux contextes culturels différents: chinois et français. Dans deux chapitres indépendants, nous avons étudié l'effet de la croyance religieuse sur la perception des cibles religieuses et l'effet du comportement de la consommation de viande sur la perception des animaux. Le chapitre 1 présente une brève introduction à propos de la perception, et le chapitre 2 explore les différences culturelles sur la religiosité et la perception, notamment, la façon dont la croyance religieuse affecte la perception des individus vis-à-vis des dieux et des chrétiens en utilisant un amorçage du paradigme religieux. Les principaux résultats montrent que sur la religiosité, les participants agnostiques chinois étaient plus semblables aux participants religieux chinois, mais les participants agnostiques français étaient plus semblables aux participants athées français. Quant à la perception, les participants agnostiques chinois étaient plus semblables aux participants religieux chinois, mais pour les participants français, les athées, les agnostiques et les religieux étaient différents les uns des autres. Quand des concepts liés aux dieux sont amorcées, la perception des dieux est attribuée davantage à la dimension agence dans l'échantillon chinois, mais non pas dans l'échantillon français. Les participants religieux chinois ont attribué davantage la perception des dieux sur la dimension agence que les athées chinois. Les participants religieux et agnostiques français attribuent davantage la perception des dieux à la fois sur la dimension agence et sur la dimension expérience que les athées français. Cependant, l'objectif chrétien est moins attribué à l'esprit par les participants athées chinois, et plus par les participants religieux chinois sur la dimension de l'expérience, lorsque les concepts de Dieu connexes sont amorcés. Dans l'échantillon français, l'amorçage religieux n'a aucun effet sur l'attribution de l’esprit à la cible chrétienne, mais les participants religieux attribuent davantage l'esprit à la cible chrétienne que à l'objectif control, et les participants agnostiques attribuent davantage l'esprit à la cible chrétienne qu’à la cible athée. Le chapitre 3 traite la question de savoir si des rappels du paradoxe de la viande vont influencer la réduction de la volonté de manger de la viande et/ou de l'attribution de l’esprit à des animaux. Les résultats suggèrent que lorsque le lien entre la viande et son origine animale est relativement claire et forte, à la fois les participants français et les participants chinois déclarent une grande volonté de manger de la viande dans un état qui met l'accent sur la viande elle-même, et une volonté faible dans un état qui met l'accent sur l'abattage de la production viande. Les participants français accordent moins d'esprit à un animal comme nourriture quand ils ont établi le lien entre la viande et son origine animale, alors que les participants chinois ne le font pas. Lorsque le lien est relativement vague et faible, le paradoxe de la viande n'a pas d'effets significatifs sur la réduction de l'attribution de l’esprit à des animaux chez les participants chinois et français, mais permet de comprendre pourquoi les chinois déclarent une volonté plus faible de manger de la viande dans un état qui met l'accent sur l’origine animale de la viande. Enfin, le chapitre 4 traite des implications théoriques et pratiques de nos résultats empiriques. / This doctoral dissertation focuses on mind perception in the field of religion and diet in two different cultural contexts: Chinese and French. In two independent chapters, it investigates the effect of religious belief on mind perception concerning religious targets and the effect of meat-eating behavior on mind perception concerning food animals. Following a brief introduction of mind perception in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 explores cross-cultural differences in religiosity and mind perception and how religious belief affects people’s mind perception of gods and Christians using a religious priming paradigm. The main results reveal that on religiosity, Chinese agnostic participants were more similar to Chinese religious participants, but French agnostic participants were more similar to French atheist participants; on mind perception of gods, Chinese agnostic participants were more similar to Chinese religious participants, but French atheist, agnostic and religious participants were different from each other. When God-related concepts are primed, gods are attributed more mind on the agency-dimension in the Chinese sample, but not in the French sample. The Chinese religious participants attributed more mind to gods on the agency-dimension than the Chinese atheist ones. The French religious and agnostic participants attributed more mind to gods on both the agency-dimension and the experience-dimension than French atheist ones. However, the Christian target is attributed less mind by the Chinese atheist participants, and more mind by the Chinese religious participants on the experience dimension, when God-related concepts are primed. In the French sample, religious priming has no effect on mind attribution to the Christian target, but religious participants attribute more mind to the Christian target than to the Control target, and agnostic participants attribute more mind to the Christian target than to the atheist target. Chapter 3 addresses the question of whether reminders of the meat paradox will influence reduction of willingness to eat meat and/or mind attribution to food animals. The results suggest that when the link between meat and its animal origin is relatively clear and strong, both French and Chinese participants report high willingness to eat meat in a condition that emphasizes meat itself, and low willingness in a condition that emphasizes the slaughter required to produce meat. French participants attribute less mind to a food animal when they realize the link between meat and its animal origin, but Chinese participants do not. When the link is relatively vague and weak, the meat paradox does not have significant effects on the reduction of mind attribution to food animals among Chinese and French participants, but makes Chinese participants report lower willingness to eat meat in a condition that emphasizes the animal origin of meat. Finally, Chapter 4 discusses the theoretical and practical implications of our empirical findings.

Portrayals of artificially intelligent robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in children’s culture. This affects how children perceive robots, which have been found to affect the way children in school understand subjects like technology and programming. Since teachers need to know what influences their pupils' understanding of these subjects, we need to know how children’s preconceptions about robots affect the way they attribute mental states to them. We still know relatively little about how children do this. Based on the above, a qualitative approach was deemed fit. This study aimed to (1) investigate the reasoning and preconceptions underlying children’s mental state attribution to robots, and (2) explore the effectiveness of moral questions as a way to do this. 16 children aged 5- and 6 years old were asked to rate the mental states of four different robots while subsequently being asked to explain their answers. Half of the children were interviewed alone and half in small groups. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the qualitative data. Children’s mental state attribution was found to be influenced by preconceptions about robots as a group of entities lacking mental states. Children were found to perceive two robots, Atlas, and Nao, differently in various respects. This was argued to be because the children perceived these robots through archetypal frameworks. Moral questions were found successful as a way to spark reflective reasoning about the mental state attribution in the children.