This dissertation investigates how feelings of ownership drive people to donate their physical goods (in lieu of making monetary donations) to charitable organizations during relief campaigns. In a mix of scenario and laboratory studies, we demonstrate that people are more likely to donate items they feel a stronger (versus weaker) sense of ownership over all while holding objective ownership and the tangibility of donation options constant. Importantly, this work demonstrates a reversal of the often-documented consequence of endowment effect in for profit contexts, in which stronger feelings of ownership over an item typically increases the difficulty in parting with the item. Consistent with previous work on the endowment effect, we find stronger feelings of ownership increase owners’ valuation of the item in donation markets. However, counter to traditional endowment effect outcomes, this increased expectation of value to the receiver in turn increases, rather than decreases, the likelihood that donors will part with their own items and items over which they feel stronger feelings of ownership.

Designing health messages that successfully elicit message-consistent behavior continues to be a challenge, in large part because people are often poor predictors of their future actions. Past work that aimed to improve our predictive abilities has suggested that activation in a ventral subregion of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during receipt of a persuasive message can reliably predict downstream behavior (Falk et al., 2010; Falk et al., 2011; Falk, Berkman, & Lieberman, 2012; Falk et al., 2015; Cooper, Tompson, O’Donnell, & Falk, in press), that gain-framed messages are more effective in promoting prevention behaviors than loss-framed messages (Detweiler, Bedel, Salovey, Pronin, & Rothman, 1999; Rothman et al., 1993; Christophersen & Gyulay, 1981; Robberson & Rogers, 1988; Treiber, 1986), and that persuasive messages that contain action plans are more effective than those that do not (Gollwitzer, 1993; Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Hagger & Luszczynska, 2014; Sniehotta, Scholz, & Schwarzer, 2006); however, the psychological mechanisms that support these effects are not fully understood. In the current experiment, we argue that persuasion may occur via self-integration—the incorporation of persuasive messages into one’s self-concept and identity—by connecting these bodies of literature in our study design. Pulling from the topics of framing effects and action planning in health psychology, along with neuroscience work in persuasion and action understanding, we exposed participants to four types of messages about sunscreen use in the fMRI scanner while also tracking their sunscreen use behaviors and intentions: 1) Fact – facts about sunscreen (control), 2) How – how to wear sunscreen, 3) Whygain – why one should wear sunscreen to garner a benefit, and 4) Whyloss – why one should wear sunscreen to avoid a loss. We replicated past findings on the relationship between MPFC activity during message exposure and future behavior controlling for intentions, along with past action understanding work on the role of rostral inferior parietal lobule (rIPL) and posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) in response to How>Why and conversely MPFC in response to Why>How; however, we also found preliminary support for our theory of persuasion as a self-integration process by focusing on different message types individually. We found greater MPFC activity during gain-framed messages relative to loss-framed messages, raising the possibility that gain frames tend to be more effective than loss frames for prevention behaviors because they lead individuals to consider the personal positive value of the behavior, which may support the integration of the behavior into one’s self-concept. We also found stronger correlations between MPFC activity and future behavior for participants who were not preexisting sunscreen users than for those that were, potentially suggesting that non-users may have more room for self-integration to facilitate behavioral choices (whereas users already consider sunscreen use part of their self-concept). Finally, the fact that activity in both MPFC and rIPL was related to message-consistent behavior suggests that both personal valuation and cognitive rehearsal may contribute to self-integration during message encoding and may support downstream behavioral choices. Both theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed along with future directions.

The human desire for belonging and group membership has long been recognized as a fundamental psychological need. From this need comes a tendency for people to look to others’ behavior as a clue for how they themselves should act. As a result, learning about the descriptive social norms for behavior can often cause people to assimilate their own behavior in the direction of the social norm. In this research, I explore factors influencing people’s perceptions of norms as well as people’s reactions to normative information and normative violations. In Chapter 1, we decompose normative comparisons into three separate components, each with their own causal contribution to people’s response to such comparisons: Target (the reference group to whom an individual is compared), Distance (how far the individual is from the Target), and Valence (whether the individual has over- or under-performed relative to this benchmark). In establishing these three distinct factors, we are better able to predict how people will respond to receiving normative comparison feedback. In Chapter 2 we use Norm Theory to explain what otherwise appears to be an aversion to utilizing algorithmic recommendations, even when such algorithms obviously outperform human judges. This research endeavor represents but one example of how otherwise puzzling human behavior can be better understood by considering the broader normative context. Finally, in Chapter 3 we document an ironic effect of behavioral interventions on people’s perceptions of descriptive social norms. We show that awareness of the presence of a nudge can be enough to lower people’s perceived descriptive social norm. Taken together, this body of research seeks to contribute to the theory and understanding of the causes and consequences of perceived descriptive social norms.

Power and status hierarchies are ubiquitous in human society. Although a significant amount of evidence suggests that people seek power and status, there is a general emphasis in the extant literature on hierarchy acceptance and reinforcement. This dissertation examines the actions people take to challenge and modify the hierarchies of which they are a part, particularly in response to structural characteristics of those hierarchies. Chapter 1 introduces the central concepts investigated in the dissertation. Chapter 2 examines the effects of status hierarchy dispersion and legitimacy on group members' behaviors. Two studies indicate that hierarchy dispersion increases individuals' motivation to attain high status, particularly in hierarchies perceived to be illegitimate, leading to status challenges, which are detrimental for group performance. Chapter 3 investigates the interaction of power and legitimacy on the tendency to conform to social norms. Whereas legitimate power decreases conformity to norms, illegitimate power increases conformity, compared to being powerless. Chapter 4 examines how people value power and status distinctly. There is a general tendency for people to place greater importance on status, defined as the respect they receive from others, compared to power, the control they have over valuable resources. This is moderated by gender, with men tending to value power more than women, and women valuing status more than men. Furthermore, whereas legitimacy does not change the value of having power, legitimate status is significantly more valuable than illegitimate status. Chapter 5 captures common themes across the projects, identifies implications for researchers and organizations, and highlights additional questions that should be addressed in future research.

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