The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity

Silvia  Bellezza; Francesca  Gino; Anat   Keinan

Article | Journal of Consumer Research | June 2014

The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity

by Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan

Abstract

We examine how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. A series of studies demonstrates that people confer higher status and competence to nonconforming rather than conforming individuals. These positive inferences derived from signals of nonconformity are mediated by perceived autonomy and moderated by individual differences in need for uniqueness in the observers. We identify boundary conditions and demonstrate that the positive inferences disappear when the observer is unfamiliar with the environment, when the nonconforming behavior is depicted as unintentional, and in the absence of expected norms and shared standards of formal conduct.

Keywords: consumer behavior; marketing; Marketing; Consumer Behavior;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Bellezza, Silvia, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan. "The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity." Journal of Consumer Research 41, no. 1 (June 2014): 35–54. (Finalist, 2017 Best Article Award for a paper published in JCR in 2014.))

Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | December 2019

It Helps to Ask: The Cumulative Benefits of Asking Follow-up Questions

Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino

In a recent article published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP; Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, & Gino, 2017), we reported the results of 2 experiments involving “getting acquainted” conversations among strangers and an observational field study of heterosexual speed daters. In all 3 studies, we found that asking more questions in conversation, especially follow-up questions (that indicate responsiveness to a partner), increases interpersonal liking of the question asker. Kluger and Malloy (2019) offer a critique of the analyses in Study 3 of our article. Though their response is a positive signal of engaged interest in our research, they made 3 core mistakes in their analyses that render their critique invalid. First, they tested the wrong variables, leading to conclusions that were erroneous. Second, even if they had analyzed the correct variables, some of their analytical choices were not valid for our speed-dating dataset, casting doubt on their conclusions. Third, they misrepresented our original findings, ignoring results in all 3 of our studies that disprove some of their central criticisms. In summary, the conclusions that Kluger and Malloy (2019) drew about Huang et al. (2017)’s findings are incorrect. The original results are reliable and robust: Asking more questions, especially follow-up questions, increases interpersonal liking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Keywords: question-asking; communication; relationships; interpersonal communication; Conversation;

Citation:

Yeomans, Michael, Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Julia A. Minson, and Francesca Gino. "It Helps to Ask: The Cumulative Benefits of Asking Follow-up Questions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 117, no. 6 (December 2019): 1139–1144. View Details

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The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity

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