Less about Me, More about You: How Self-Affirmation Changes Word-of-Mouth Intentions for the Self versus Others

Previous literature on WOM has focused on consumers’ communications about their own experiences (Berger and Schwartz 2011; Dichter 1966; Dye 2000), however, consumers may also talk about others’ consumption experiences, sometimes when jointly experiencing a product or service (e.g., dining companions) or when another consumer reports an experience and the target consumer must consider whether to pass that story on. The present research shows that self-affirmation decreases the tendency for consumers to complain about their own, but to increase the tendency to talk about others’ negative experiences, the “Consumer Champion Effect.” We trace this effect to the broader perspective adopted by affirmed individuals, which mutes the extremity of their own emotional responses to events while it concurrently produces a more accurate understanding and deeper appreciation of the intensity of others’ emotions. These responses thereby lead to an ironic effect of self-affirmation in which very calm consumers, who are not upset about their own negative experiences, may nevertheless be vocal critics of a firm on behalf of others. Prior research has shown that the “self-affirmation task,” that is, reflecting on core values, reminds people of their broader identity (Sherman and Cohen 2006). Within this broader perspective, people feel more secure in their self-integrity and less pressure to defend a particular aspect of the self. As a consequence, affirmed consumers are more likely to process potentially threatening messages, for example, reports that favored products might have negative health consequences, in an open-minded way (Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000). We build on this prior research to explore additional consequences of a broadened self-view. First, in a direct extension of prior work, we posit that a broader view of self may mute the intensity of people’s own feelings about a product or services failure because each event is “just one thing” in a broader view of the self. That is, the affirmed individual is not whipsawed about by each individual passing event because the broader view incorporates other, more stabilizing influences (thoughts and feelings about the rest of one’s life). This theorizing leads to the hypothesis that affirmed consumers will be less angry after experiencing product or service failures, and, in turn, when they have a chance to spread negative WOM, they will be less likely to do so.