The Impact of Childhood Exposure to Interparental Conflict on Consumer Response to Online Reviews

Online reviews often exhibit less consensus, wherein reviewers disagree on aspects of product performance. Research on the effect of review consensus exhibits mixed results (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). In the current research, we focus on an important but previously unexamined moderating variable: the level of exposure to interparental conflict (IPC) during one’s childhood. Interparental conflict (IPC) refers to the extent to which a person observed his or her caregivers engaging in destructive conflict during childhood. It is typically measured via self-reports regarding the frequency and intensity of having observed parental arguing, as well as the extent to which such disputes were not constructively resolved (Grych, Seid, and Fincham 1992). Our research shows that adults who witnessed high levels of IPC as children evaluate products with low (versus high) levels of review consensus less favourably. We further show the underlying mechanism. Across three studies, we demonstrate that high IPC individuals devaluate a product with lack of review consensus and that pessimistic expectations underlie the effect.