Current empirical evidence regarding nonconsciously priming emotion concepts is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This article demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotion concepts can be nonconsciously activated, remain inaccessible to conscious awareness, and still affect behavior in an emotion-specific fashion. In Experiment 1A, participants subliminally primed with guilty emotion adjectives showed lower indulgence than did participants subliminally primed with sad emotion adjectives; even after the addition of a 5-min time delay, these results were replicated in Experiment 1B. Participants in the different priming conditions showed no differences in their subjective emotion ratings and were unaware of the emotion prime or concept activation. Experiments 2A and 2B replicated these findings using a helping measure, demonstrating that individuals primed with guilt adjectives show more helping than do individuals primed with sadness adjectives. In all studies, effects were moderated by individuals' specific emotion-response habits and characteristics.

Whereas most existing self-control research and scales focus on singular self-control choice, the current work examines sequential self-control behavior. Specifically, this research focuses on behavior following initial self-control failure, identifying a set of key cognitive and emotional responses to initial failure that jointly underlie post-failure behavior. The tendency to experience these responses is captured in a new scale, the Response-to-Failure scale, which the authors develop and test in three consumer domains: eating, spending, and cheating. The results support the use of the same emotional and cognitive factors to predict post-failure behavior across these three domains, providing evidence of the generalizability of the scale structure. The data support the scale's structure, nomological and discriminant validity, and test–retest reliability across five studies. In five additional studies, the scale's predictive validity is demonstrated beyond other existing relevant scales. The authors also develop and test a short form of each domain scale. Finally, the authors discuss the implications for understanding post-failure behavior and suggest practical uses for the scale.

Research shows that assertive ads, which direct consumers to take specific actions (e.g., Visit us; Just do it!), are ineffective due to reactance. However, such ads remain prevalent. We reexamine assertive ads, showing that their effectiveness depends on consumers' relationship with the advertising brand. Across studies, we compare committed and uncommitted consumers' reactions to assertive ads. We find that because committed (vs. uncommitted) brand relationships involve stronger compliance norms, assertive ads create greater pressure to comply for committed consumers. Specifically, we propose and show that committed consumers anticipate feeling guilty if they ignore an assertive message, creating pressure to comply. Pressure to comply increases reactance, which paradoxically reduces compliance, ultimately leading to decreased ad and brand liking as well as decreased monetary allocations to the brand. Our results show the perils that assertive ads pose for marketers and their most valuable customers.

The present work examines the effectiveness of pairing a charitable donation with a product purchase. We propose a compensatory process, in which the guilt‐laundering properties of charitable donations are more appealing the more consumption guilt is experienced. Consumption guilt is dependent on both product type (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and consumer characteristics (guilt‐sensitivity), such that adding a charitable donation to hedonic products is more impactful than adding the same donation to utilitarian products, especially for guilt‐sensitive consumers. As a result of the impact of product type and guilt‐sensitivity, several non‐intuitive findings emerge. For example, guilt‐sensitive consumers, who normally indulge in hedonic consumption the least, indulge at least as much as their less guilt‐sensitive counterparts when hedonic products are paired with a charitable donation. Moreover, guilt‐sensitive consumers are relatively insensitive to the nature of the supported cause, indulging in hedonic consumption even when it supports disliked causes. Six studies demonstrate the impact of adding charitable donations to products as well as the unique role that consumption guilt and its alleviation play in the underlying process.