The Wisdom of Some: Do We Always Need High Consensus to Shape Consumer Behavior?
通过四项实验，研究发现消费者对高共识与低共识信息的接受程度取决于其人际影响易感性特质，低易感者更被高共识说服，而高易感者则对任何他人行为线索都敏感，为政策制定者在低共识情境下推动行为改变提供了可能。
From the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to prompt healthier eating to the Environmental Protection Agency's desire to prompt people to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors, a wide range of policy makers aim to persuade consumers. To do so, they must decide how and whether to use information about the behavior of other consumers as part of their persuasive message. In four experimental studies, the authors demonstrate that the persuasive advantage of high- versus low-consensus information depends on the target consumer's trait level of susceptibility to interpersonal influence (SII). Low-SII consumers differentiate between low- and high-consensus information, such that they are more persuaded by high-consensus information. In contrast, high-SII consumers find any cue about the behavior of others persuasive, regardless of whether it is high or low consensus. Importantly, this finding suggests that policy makers may find success motivating behavioral change even in low-consensus situations. The authors close by reporting data from two broadscale correlational surveys that identify behavioral, psychographic, and demographic characteristics related to consumer SII as well as domains in which low consensus currently exists, so that policy makers can identify and target these individuals and related issues.